Samantha: An American Girl Holiday [10th Anniversary] [DVD] [2004]

Holiday Inn, directed by Mark Sandrich and starring Bring Crosby, Fred Astaire, and Marjorie Reynolds, did not have a very distinguished history on home video until this release. The laserdisc and original two-movie-on-one DVD release (paired with Going My Way), were both based on an old, grainy transfer off of a fairly clean but otherwise rather flat looking 35mm print, and had no special features whatsoever. This 2006 Special Edition DVD, by contrast, is special indeed, with a crystaline transfer off of what look like preservation-quality materials, which yield a full-screen (1.33-to-1) image infinitely sharper and cleaner than any previously seen on this movie in a home viewing format. The sound has also been significantly improved, with far less compression and a lot finer detail than one could previously hear from this movie. And that's just the beginning -- the picture also comes with a commentary track by Ken Barnes, who worked with Crosby and Astaire late in their careers and does a marvelous job (take it from someone who did a commentary track of his own for this same movie, for broadcast by WNET-Channel 13 in New York) of ranging across the music, the performers, composer Irving Berlin, and most everyone else involved in the production of Holiday Inn. He's lively, engaging, and a lot of fun to listen to, and one only wishes that Warner Bros. would have gotten Barnes or someone like him to perform a similar function on some of the Astaire and/or Berlin musicals that they got as part of Ted Turner's MGM library. There are also a pair of documentaries featuring Barnes, focusing on Crosby and Astaire and also on the strange parallels between their careers at various points; and on the history and technical development of the movie musical across the 1930's and early 1940's, which affords the producers a chance to dip into some of the highlights of the early Paramount library. The only thing that might have been added was something more on the director, Mark Sandrich, who was a major producer/director at Paramount and before that at RKO, and who had a lot to do with bringing this project off as well as it came out (and who died tragically young in 1946). The movie and all of the extras are easily accessible in a very simple two-layer menu and also offers a look at the trailer for the film. The whole package is a delight, and one can only hope the Universal will make a similarly ambitious effort with the follow-up movie to this, Blue Skies (1946).