"HOLIDAY INN" (1942. NOT RATED. UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. $26.98 (THREE DISCS)Some movies really should have been made in color. We're not talking about "Citizen Kane" or "Casablanca" here. But "Holiday Inn" (1942), a piece of musical-comedy froth that introduced the song "White Christmas," really could have used a bright, lively backdrop. In this three-disc edition of the classic, the picture is presented in its original black-and-white. But there's also a colorized version, made by a new process that produces much better results than we saw in the 1980s. Plus, the project was made in consultation with an associate of clothing designer Edith Head, so the costume colors are authentic. Nothing can replace a film in its original version, but to revisit this movie in color is a real pleasure. It stars Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, and the scant story is built on their talent. (It's about a romantic rivalry between two men, a guy who run an inn that opens only on holidays and his former stage partner.) In addition to "White Christmas," highlights include Astaire singing and dancing to "You're Easy to Dance With" and "I Can't Tell a Lie." The latter is sung to commemorate Washington's Birthday and may be the worst song Irving Berlin ever wrote. But who cares? This is good, old-fashioned fun, featuring two performers who were already stars at the time of filming and have gone into show business history undiminished and unequaled. The third disc is a soundtrack CD. -- Mick LaSalleAKI KAURISMAKI'S "PROLETARIAT TRILOGY" (1986, '88, '90. NOT RATED. ECLIPSE. $44.95 (THREE DISCS)The first time I saw an Aki Kaurismaki film, I was at a private screening and was the only one in the theater. The film was so depressing and so bleak, and the people onscreen so hopeless and pathetic, that after 15 minutes or so, I started laughing. I laughed at the movie, intermittently, for the next 20 minutes, thinking I wasn't supposed to, until I finally caught on: The movie was a comedy. Kaurismaki is a Finnish director and completely one of a kind. His humor is deadpan and dark as pitch. This collection features his "Proletariat Trilogy," made up of the films "Shadows in Paradise" (1986), about the romance between a garbage man and a cashier; "Ariel" (1988), about a coal miner who unexpectedly finds love; and "The Match Factory Girl" (1990), about an unbelievably downtrodden woman who finally decides she can't take it anymore and begins to exact her revenge. Here's a typical Kaurismaki exchange: A man announces that the slogan for his garbage-collecting business will extol its reliable service "since 1986." When someone points out that it is 1986, he says that's the point; it will stick in people's minds. What's wonderful about Kaurismaki is that his comedy is the product of acute observation and that, underneath the humor, there's a core of sympathetic feeling. There is a distinct sensibility at work here, a filmmaker worth getting to know. -- Mick LaSalle(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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