In the Mix

Sam Wood, my esteemed Inquirer colleague and the man I'm forever indebted to for turning me on to the Pet Shop Boys, has now actually made his recording debut, collaborating with none other than those very same Pets.

Wait... what's that you say? That Marlene Dietrich manque in the "I'm In Love With A German Film Star" video isn't the Inky's Sam Wood, but actually noted British photographer and film maker Sam Taylor-Wood? Ah, that explains it. She''s the Brit artist who's made high art out of David Beckham and relocated the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew in an east London pub in The Last Century, and has sung with the Pets on covers of Donna Summer and Serge Gainsbourg songs. She's also fond of using a cigarette motif in her short films, and that's her, in top hat and tails, burning one as the Pets' Neil Tennant sweetly sings in the video for "Film Star," which is a cover of a 1981 hit by Brit pop-band The Passions.

And speaking of, here's the Passions' original, with a Dietrich cameo at the end.