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George Strait and Chris Stapleton have been playing stadiums together for the past few summers. They finally come together in the studio on “Honky Tonk Hall of Fame,” a boisterous trad-country duet on Strait’s new album Cowboys and Dreamers, out now.

The pairing is a match made in honky-tonk heaven, with Strait’s smooth country voice complementing Stapleton’s gruff rasp. A true duet, the men alternate lyrics in the verses and sing together in the chorus: “I’ll say it once again/I’m the best that’s...

This favorite animal film takes a half-step sideways out of the cute animal subgenre: the delightful Mij is no super-otter, just an ordinary playful garden-variety otter, as an Otter oughta be. (cough) Champion mellow English couple Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers have put together a film guaranteed to lower your blood pressure. But see it first before deciding it’s for your kids, as reality is not sugarcoated in its uplifting, but certainly not sentimentalized, view of our place in a world that still has some animals left alive.

Ring of Bright Water

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1969 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date May 21, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers, Peter Jeffrey, Jameson Clark, Helena Gloag.

Cinematography: Wolfgang Suschitsky

Film Editor: Reginald Mills

Original Music: Frank Cordell

Written by Jack Couffer and Bill Travers from a book by Gavin Maxwell

Produced by Joseph Strick

Directed by Jack...

'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...