Good review but I would give it 5* not 4* and I take issue with the 2 'mistakes'.

1. 'Twelve Months and a Day' - The point of the film (and by implication the score) is the (partly) tragic note of the ending. In this respect the music complements it prefectly. Although the extract is too long and the orchestration of the number 'They Can't take that away from me' conveys the point much better I still think the 12th track is not a mistake (though interestingly it is the only piece of original music I've excluded from compilation cassettes I've made of LLL).

2. Use of Actors - Like Moulin Rouge I think having actors rather than musicians makes the soundtrack better. Remember that musical stars (by and large) tend to try - rather unsucessfully - to imitate the bombastic style of classical singers. Usually this simply produces a bland - and rather poor imitation of them. In contrast using actors produces a much more naturalistic attempt at the numbers and adds some warmth, especially in the final musical number (the highlight of the adapted musical numbers).

John