Full disclosure: Your reviewer felt fairly certain that "Lady Sings the Blues," Sidney J. Furie's romanticized 1972 biography of the brilliant and tragic jazz icon Billie Holiday, would fail to hold up.

So, too, perhaps, did Paramount, which elected to forgo the deluxe treatment a movie with five Academy Award nominations often receives in favor of a relatively bare-bones single-disc version with a minimum of extras — a couple of deleted scenes and a commentary by Berry Gordy and Furie.

It is, then, with relief that I report the remastered "Lady," based on Holiday's best-selling and sanitized-to-the-point-of-fiction autobiography (actually authored by ghostwriter William Dufty) remains a moving (if trite) story of triumph undone by personal demons. "Ray" and the upcoming Johnny Cash bio "Walk the Line" follow in its melodramatic footsteps.

What keeps this film on keel is the performance of Diana Ross as Holiday, one that in retrospect deserves the Oscar nomination and all the other accolades it was given while asking the question: So what happened? Ross can hardly be blamed for the fashion-biz follow-up "Mahogany" (1975), a silly movie all around.

And after being criticized as being too old to play Dorothy in 1978's "The Wiz," she gave up acting, save for roles in a couple of 1990s TV movies. But what she puts on screen in "Lady," which also has good roles for Billy Dee Williams as her lover and Richard Pryor as her truth-telling Piano Man, indicates she had a lot more to offer.

REVISITING WONKA

It took a few years for 1971's "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" to become everybody's favorite childhood film, and it may be that in a few more Tim Burton's recent nonmusical version of the same Roald Dahl story, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (Warner), will also have a cult.

But as good as this film and Johnny Depp's willfully weird performance as Mr. Wonka were, it's more a movie to admire than actually love.

Seeing it again on DVD allows us another opportunity to admire Freddie Highmore's big-hearted portrayal of Charlie Bucket, and marvel again at the imagination that has gone into every aspect of the production, especially the expansive factory itself; when Tim Burton creates a world, it stays built. There is also a two-disc "Special Deluxe Edition" whose extras, aside from a biographical feature on Dahl, are mostly kid's stuff.

A LITTLE EARLY BROSNAN

For the record: After Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan was easily the best James Bond (though I think Timothy Dalton — and whatever happened to him? — was underrated). Brosnan's name first came up as a potential Bond after he was introduced to U.S. audiences via "Remington Steele," the clever network series in which he played a sly, suave thief who is recruited by private investigator Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) to front her agency because prospective clients are wary of a woman running the show.

Though the show ran for four seasons (and was capped by a 1987 TV movie that sent the pair on their honeymoon), "Season Two" (Fox) was easily the best; one reason was that the great Doris Roberts joined the cast as a former IRS agent who joins the firm and becomes the unofficial referee in the Laura-Remington verbal sparring matches that are far more entertaining than whatever crime there is to be solved. The box contains all 22 episodes from 1983-84, all of which, fans will remember, contain a play on the word Steele in the title.

THE REAL 'LIVE 8'

One of the biggest broadcasting debacles of the year, MTV's botched airing of the Live 8 worldwide charity concerts, in which key performances were lost to commercials and host-chatter, is corrected with the four-disc DVD "Live 8" (Capitol).

Live Aid founder Bob Geldof, who was knighted for those legendary shows in 1985, returned to oversee all-star events held simultaneously in London, Philadelphia, Berlin, Toronto and Moscow, designed to promote debt and famine relief and featuring performances from The Who, Sting and, most surprising, a reunion of Pink Floyd with estranged guitarist-composer Roger Waters.

Their set is included here in its entirety, and the bonus features include a look at the band's rehearsals, which are actually less strained than the fine-sounding but somewhat uncomfortable-feeling onstage appearance.

The once-in-a-lifetime duets are the primary attraction: Paul McCartney and U2 opening the show with a storming "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with its "it was 20 years ago today" refrain; Coldplay and forgotten man (at least in America) Richard Ashcroft reviving his former band Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony"; Stevie Wonder raising the games of Rob Thomas on "Higher Ground" and Maroon 5's Adam Levine on "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours"; and Elton John attempting to help English pop's most infamous wreck, Pete Doherty, late of the Libertines, struggle through T. Rex's "Children of the Revolution."