"Again, toss up between The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain. This one is perfect. Not a frame is off. There’s not a weak character, there’s not a weak moment, it’s just a delight all the way through. There’s Donald O’Connor doing Make ‘Em Laugh. They turned him loose and he just went. [And there’s] that wonderful scene where they’re talking to the voice coach. They make it look so easy and effortless — and if you’ve ever danced on stage, if you’ve ever tried tap dancing and singing at the same time, there is nothing easy about it. It is just astonishing. “Whaddya think, I’m dumb or something?” Oh, Jean Hagen."

"True, other Elsa Lanchester albums have her husband Charles Laughton introducing each track, but only this one has both "When a Lady Has a Piazza" and "If You Peek in My Gazebo." Lanchester, most famous for playing the Bride of Frankenstein (technically, the bride of Frankenstein's monster) and Laughton's wife in Witness For The Prosecution, has an actor's voice, with perfect stage-Cockney enunci-OY-tion, which is perfect for this material. "Please sell no more drink to my father. It makes him so strange and so wild. Heed the prayer of my heart-broken mother, and pity the poor drunkard's child." She sings this with such relish, it's easy to see whose side she's really on. "

"The story of singer Sally Bowles in the Weimar Republic, which came out late in 1972, into a very dreary Britain. I think of it as a glam-rock document, really: all those fantastic songs, confined to the stage, plus the brilliant makeup, in this frightening city. The notion of “divine decadence” was very intriguing when you were an 18-year-old student from Newcastle, recently arrived in London. It also had an impact on punk – look at Siouxsie Sioux: obviously influenced by Liza Minnelli. My friends and I would listen to the soundtrack in our Tottenham student flat, back-to-back with Lou Reed’s Transformer and Roxy Music’s second album. It had the same impact."

"This is a flawed film from the master, and I read in his autobiography that after it tanked, he tried to kill himself and did not make a film for five years. I love it! Such gorgeous vignettes, like the man who stops talking and loses all the color in his flesh after he finds out his wife cheated on him! Or the drunk couples who swap partners every night! He built a whole artificial dumpster on a stage and painted it in radiant colors, and then went about telling the most heartbreaking short stories of madness and despair in it. It’s like Raymond Carver on some very good acid, taking no prisoners!"