Kino Lorber has released a newly 4K-mastered Blu-ray of Louis Malle’s controversial 1978 film, Pretty Baby.

Based on the real-life happenings at New Orleans’ infamous red-light district, Storyville, which existed from 1897 until it was forcibly closed by the U.S. Navy in 1917, and the famed photographs of E.J. Bellocq (1873-1949), the film stars Brooke Shields as a 12-year-old raised by her prostitute mother (Susan Sarandon) to become a prostitute herself. The film takes place circa 1912 when Bellocq (Keith Carradine) took the famed photograph of a naked Shields. The film gives us a fictitious romance between Bellocq and the girl but is otherwise true to the times.

Extras include audio commentary by Film Historian Kat Ellinger and interviews with Shields and Film Historian Leonard Maltin.

New films streaming on various platforms continue to be disappointing. Fortunately, most of the sites have a library of older films that you can catch up on.

My streaming lately has been geared toward series that I missed the first time around. Binge-watching one series often leads to another, another one after that.

Earlier this year, I started to watch the second Perry Mason miniseries in the reimagined world of Erle Stanley Gardner’s classic lawyer. I was not a fan of the first one, and found the second one even less to my liking so I gave up midway through and searched for something else…

I had always liked Matthew Rhys, who plays Mason in the miniseries, so I decided to rewatch one of his earlier series, either Brothers & Sisters, in which he played Sally Field’s gay lawyer son, or The Americans, in which he and real-life wife Keri Russell played Russian spies. I settled on Brothers & Sisters which featured Rachel Griffiths, Calista Flockhart, Balthazar Getty, Dave Annable, and Luke Grimes as his siblings, Rob Lowe as his brother-in-law, and Luke Macfarlane as his boyfriend and eventual husband.

Brothers & Sisters, which ran on ABC from 2006-2011 remains an engrossing time killer, particularly for Sally Field’s Emmy-winning performance. One of the series’ main attractions was its provocative use of guest stars, three of whom were also guest stars on the next series I was drawn to. They were Tom Skerritt, who played Fields’ husband who dies in the first episode, Treat Williams, who plays her first date after his death, and Beau Bridges, who plays her long lost first love. The series in which all three turned up again was White Collar.

I had heard of White Collar, which was a breakout series for star Matt Bomer, but I had never watched it when it ran on the USA Network from 2009-2014. The mostly tongue-in-cheek series set in New York is about a conman played by Bomer who is tethered to an FBI agent played by Tom DeKay. Bomer’s unconventional landlady is played by the legendary Diahann Carroll with whom Bomer gets to occasionally sing during the series.

Skerritt’s guest-starring role is almost as brief as his guest-starring role in Brothers & Sisters. He plays DeKay’s lawyer father-in-law in one episode. Williams and Bridges have larger roles. Bridges is a particularly nasty FBI higher-up in several episodes and Williams plays someone from Bomer’s past in multiple episodes.

The series’ finale is generally regarded as one of the best in TV history. There have been talks of reviving the series ever since it went off the air, but it’s difficult to imagine that really happening. The very busy Bomer says he would be happy to make a one-off film or even do a miniseries, but he wouldn’t want to commit to another six years. Willie Garson, who played his fellow conman and sidekick, has since died, as have Carroll and Williams. Bomer, DeKay, and Tiffini Thiessen, who played DeKay’s wife, would presumably have to carry the bulk of any revival, though that would certainly be welcome.

Next up was Suits, which ran on the USA Network from 2011-2019.

The premise of Suits, which was also set in New York, was like that of White Collar with Patrick J. Adams as a conman posing as a lawyer tethered to a real lawyer played by Gabriel Macht. The title of the show refers both to lawsuits and the lead actors’ attire. “Suits” had been the nickname given the FBI agents in White Collar by Garson’s character.

One of the most binged shows on Netflix this year, the main attraction for the series’ belated success was the involvement of co-star Meghan Markle, now married to Prince Harry.

Markle was third billed in the series as a paralegal and aspiring lawyer, the love interest of Adams’ character. The central cast also included Rick Hoffman as Macht and Adams’ nemesis, Sarah Rafferty as Macht’s admin assistant, and Gina Torres as the head of the firm.

Adams’ character was the show’s focus every bit as Bomer’s had been the focus of White Collar. When Markle departed, mandated by the British Royal Family at the end of season 7, Adams also decided to leave to pursue his stage career. It ended with Adams and Markle moving to Seattle. Without him, the series lost its purpose and dragged on miserably for two more seasons, the highlight of the last one being Adams’ return in several episodes. Unlike White Collar, which ended on a high note, Suits ends with Adams inviting Macht and Rafferty to join him in Seattle.

With time out for the most recent seasons of Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Law & Order: Organized Crime, it was the very busy Gina Torres that drew me to my next binge.

Torres was given a 2019 spin-off series called Pearson, named after her Suits character. The series, which also featured her Suits co-star D.B. Woodside, was a huge flop. She quickly rebounded with the popular Fox series, 9-1-1: Lone Star (2000-present) in its second season, replacing Liv Tyler as the captain of the paramedics opposite Rob Lowe.

9-1-1: Lone Star provides Lowe with his best role in years as a decorated New York City fire captain, the lone survivor of his company on 9/11/2001. In the opener, he is offered a job leading an Austin, Texas fire company which has just lost all its members except one in a horrific fire. He declines, but when his firefighter son (breakout star Ronen Rubinstein) suffers an opioid overdose after his boyfriend dumps him, he reconsiders. The two move to Austin where Lowe rebuilds the company, taking back the company’s lone survivor, a Texas redneck (Jim Parrack) who is married to a Black 9-1-1 dispatcher (Sierra McClain), hiring a hijab-wearing Muslin woman (Natacha Karam), a trans man (Brian Michael Smith), and a short, dyslexic Mexican American (Julian Works). His son, who is also in the company, finds romance with a Mexican American policeman (Rafael Silva). Liv Tyler as the company’s captain of paramedics leaves at the end of season one, making way for Torres who plays an old friend of Parrack and McClain who are the godparents of her twin daughters.

The storyline, edited by John Owen Lowe (Lowe’s son), provides numerous episodes in which the various supporting characters are given center stage.

Happy viewing.