If a mockumentary about the citizens of Blaine, Mo., staging a musical to celebrate the town's 150th anniversary doesn't grab you, hold on. Actor-director-writer-composer Christopher Guest (guitarist Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap) loads an arsenal of laughs into a deceptively small package.

Wearing bangs and speaking in a lisp that barely skirts gay caricature, Guest plays Corky St. Clair, back in Blaine after a failed go at Broadway. He wins the job of directing Red, White and Blaine from music teacher Lloyd Miller (Bob Balaban). And no wonder: Corky's recent production of Backdraft onstage galvanized Blaine. He burned newspapers in the air vent, hitting audiences with hot ash so they could feel the fire.

Guest's wicked cohorts, many from SCTV, include Eugene Levy as a singing dentist, and Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard as travel agents with a yen for greasepaint. Parker Posey shines as a Dairy Queen doll who does a slutty version of Doris Day's "Teacher's Pet." The rest is too outrageously funny to give away. I lost it just watching Corky show off such memorabilia as My Dinner With Andre action figures and a Remains of the Day lunch box. Priceless.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."