One of my all time favorite ledes — journalese for the story's all-important first sentence, designed to draw you in to a story — was written by TV critic Tom Shales contrasting two television talkers: Tom Brokaw, who had become the top-rated news anchor, and Tom Snyder, who was then, in the late '70s, hosting "The Tomorrow Show," in which he chain-smoked and guffawed as he interviewed any news figure, celebrity or entertainer hungry enough to appear.

"It was the best of Toms, it was the worst of Toms," opined Shales, reflecting the general sentiment that the blow-dried, sideburned Snyder was a jerk.

But more than a few of us were hooked on Snyder, who so obviously wanted to be perceived as hip and who failed so spectacularly, but who was also willing to treat his guests like human beings as opposed to fawning over them and promoting whatever they were selling.

Snyder was often at his smarmy best when encountering the still-foreign phenomenon of punk rock, whose representatives appeared on "Tomorrow" primarily because no other show would book them. Evidence is provided in the two-disc "The Tomorrow Show: Punk and New Wave" (Shout! Factory), which collects Snyder interviews with, and performances by, John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon, the Ramones, the Jam, the Runaways, Elvis Costello and former Detroiters Iggy Pop and Patti Smith.

Most of the time, Snyder strikes a pose of bemusement when guests like Lydon and the Plasmatics — who blow up a car as their finale — are doing what they were supposed to, which is outrage and provoke. Other times he seems genuinely interested in exploring "this new thing," and the conversations with Iggy, Paul Weller and Costello are enjoyable and even oddly respectful.

Still, the reason to own this is the performances: The Ramones bulldozing through "I Wanna be Sedated," Iggy raging on about that "TV Eye," and Costello and the Attractions slinking through a terrific "Watch Your Step."

TILBROOK ON THE ROAD

The album that included "Watch Your Step" also featured a duet with a gifted "new waver," Squeeze singer and composer Glen Tilbrook. His touring is documented in "Glen Tilbrook: One for the Road" (Image), a fine look at life after semi-stardom, directed by Amy Pickard.

Pickard's film follows her favorite performer as he tours the United States in 2001 with his acoustic guitars in an RV. Between club and theater gigs, where he performs great Squeeze tunes such as "Tempted," "Black Coffee in Bed" and "Another Nail in My Heart" as if he had just composed them last week, along with new songs that he actually had, Tilbrook talks to Pickard about what compels him to do this when he could live off royalties.

Pickard comes across as someone you would actually enjoy following from town to town.

VELVET UNDERGROUND

That's not exactly the vibe we get from "Velvet Redux: Live MCMXCIII" (Rhino), the only visual record of the original Velvet Underground, which, according to rock lore, only sold a few hundred records in its brief lifetime but everybody who heard it decided to start a band.

For reasons that remain murky and contentious, Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and the late Moe Tucker, who may have been the last band anyone would have ever expected to mount a reunion tour, did it in 1993. The idea was to play a few warm-up gigs in Europe before making a triumphant return to a United States that never appreciated them when they were creating their anti-hippie art-noise in the late 1960s.

The three Paris concerts were recorded and filmed, and while the resulting CD was a disappointment, it takes on added significance in its visual incarnation.

The video shows the band at least attempting to connect and recover some semblance of whatever dark magic originally fueled and briefly sustained them. The program is composed of almost exactly what you might expect: "Femme Fatale," "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Heroin," along with a couple of obligations recorded after Cale had departed, including "Rock and Roll," and a solitary new song, "Coyote."

If it's not awe-inspiring, it is fan-essential. The Cale-Reed conflicts erupted again, and the tour never made it to the States. So this 90-minute set is in fact the last farewell.

RECENT FEATURES

"Flightplan" (Touchstone) squanders a promising Hitchcock-inspired idea — a newly widowed woman's daughter vanishes on a trans-Atlantic flight — and runs it aground in a logic-challenged drama by David Fincher.

Roman Polanski's adaptation of Dickens' classic "Oliver Twist" (Columbia-TriStar) is handsome and studious but emotionally lacking.

The remake of John Carpenter's ghost thriller "The Fog" (Sony Pictures) makes the ordinary original look good in comparison.

If you are not offended by rampant vulgarity, you can be fairly assured of being grossed out, and knocked out, by "The Aristocrats" (ThinkFilm), in which a wide assortment of comics put their spin on what has been called the filthiest joke ever conceived and told — interpreted dozens of ways, by everyone from George Carlin to Paul Reiser to Gilbert Gottfried and Sarah Silverman. Don't call me; I'm just the enabler.