20th Century Studios has released a 4K UHD edition of The Devil Wears Parada 2, also available in a separate Blu-ray edition from the Disney subsidiary

The original, released by the defunct 20th Century-Fox, may not have been a great film but it had some great things in it, mainly the performances of the film’s three leading ladies, Meryl Streep as a cold as ice fashion magazine editor, Anne Hathaway as her new assistant, and Emily Blunt in a star-making turn as her former assistant who is Hathway’s nemesis for much of the film.

Directed by David Frankel, the Emmy winning director of TV’s Band of Brothers, the 2006 film was stylish fun. Sadly, the sequel of twenty years later, also directed by Frankel, is not. It may be stylish, but it is all glitz and has no heart. Streep’s character is a shell of her former self. Hathway, now a self-assured version of a once endearing character, is a bore, and Emily Blunt, very funny in the original, is just obnoxious here. The cardboard male characters are even worse except for Stanley Tucci, the only other holdover from the original, who occasionally shows some bite, but not much.

You would do well to avoid this glitzy mess.

Universal has released a 4K UHD edition of its 1959 smash hit, Pillow Talk. One of the studio’s biggest successes, the 4K UHD treatment really doesn’t add much to the packed 2013 release of the restored film which still has legions of fans.

1959 audiences found the coy sex comedy amusing with Doris Day as an interior decorator and Rock Hudson as an egotistical playboy who are forced to share an NYC telephone party line, something that was already quaintly outmoded in the city, the script having been written in 1942 and updated several times through the years until it was finally filmed.

Day’s change of style set the stage for her subsequent career, making her the no. 1 box-office star for much of the 1960s while Hudson, an established dramatic star, is her equal as a younger version of Cary Grant in his first comedy role. Tony Randall as Day’s dull boyfriend and Thelma Ritter as her boozy maid lend strong support. Day won a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Actress while Ritter received the fifth of her six nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

It was produced by Ross Hunter and directed by blacklisted Michel Gordon, his first film in eight years.

Extras are all imported from the 2013 release including historical references of Universal classics celebrating the studio’s 100th anniversary.

Vinegar Syndrome has released an extras-packed edition of William Friedkin’s 1970 film of Matt Crowley’s 1968 play, The Boys in the Band.

The play about a group of nine NYC homosexuals celebrating the birthday of one of them was originally a workshop production that was supposed to last a week in a 99-seat Greenwich Village theatre. Word spread after the opening night performance that led to a 500-person line for tickets the following morning. The play later transferred to a larger off-Broadway theatre followed by a hit run in London before being filmed with its original cast intact. Director Robert Moore (Murder by Death) was replaced by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) for the film version.

Kenneth Nelson, Fredrick Combs, Leonard Frey, Cliff Gorman, Laurence Luckinbill, Keith Prentice, Peter White, Reuben Greene, and Robert La Tourneaux were the stars. Between 1984 and 1993, five of them (Nelson, Combs, Frey, Prentice, and La Tourneaux) along with director Moore and producer Richard Barr, died of AIDS. Gorman, White, and Greene have also since subsequently died. Luckinbill is the only one still alive.

Extras include a fascinating new interview with 91-year-old Laurence Luckinbill as well as interviews with film historian Mark Harris, entertainment reporter Michael Musto, a video essay from film historian David Kremer, and a feature-length documentary on Friedkin from 2018, as well as a Turner Classic Movies introduction by Ben Mankiewicz and Mario Cantone.

Vinegar Syndrome has also released a 4K UHD upgrade of Robert Altman’s 1982 film, Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean starring Sandy Dennis, Cher, and Karen Black.

Altman had earlier directed the play on Broadway where the big draw was Cher in the role that proved she could act but the standout over the years has proven to be Karen Black in arguably her greatest role.

Sudie Bond, Kathy Bates, Marta Heflin, and Mark Patton, all of whom were also in the play, are the film’s primary supporting players. It takes place in a Texas diner on September 30, 1955, and twenty years later as the participants of that fateful day reunite, except for the boy (Patton) who worked in the diner and disappeared soon after that day. Enter Karen Black as the trans woman Patton’s character has become, with another surprise waiting in the wings.

Extras include new audio commentary by trans film critics Willow Catelyn Maclay and Caden Mark Gardner as well as the previously recorded commentary by critic and historian Lee Gambin, and several new documentaries on the film.

Some day we may get a Blu-ray of 1951’s Royal Wedding from Warner Archive. Until then, we will have to get by with the public domain release of Stanley Donen’s film from Leomark Studios.

This is the one in which Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling in a lightweight romance about a brother and sister dance team attending the London wedding of Princess Elizabeth. Jane Powell plays the sister who has a romance with Peter Lawford, while Astaire’s love interest is played by Sarah Churchill, the real-life daughter of Winston Churchill.

The release is acceptable but be forewarned that it is bare bones and doesn’t even include closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

Indicator has released a limited U.S. edition Blu-ray of Alain Resnais’ 1974 film, Stavisky.

The film which stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as the 1930s French gangster and Charles Boyer as his debonair friend is best remembered for Stephen Sondheim’s jaunty score but it’s still a headscratcher for me how Boyer, though charming as he is, won the New York Film Critics award for Best Supporting Actor the year that Robert De Niro won the Oscar for The Godfather Part II and Fred Astaire the Golden Globe for The Towering Inferno.

Happy Viewing.