Get out the popcorn. It's November.

Today, I thought we'd pay tribute to Paris, and remind ourselves of the ways in which art is a weapon against insanity. At least, that's how I see it.

Today's Short Subject: Mandy Patinkin is the star of today's feature, so we'll let him sing this medley of two songs about teaching tolerance. He does it well. The first song is from South Pacific, a song from World War II, and the second is from Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.

Today's Feature Film: I'm not a huge fan of Broadway musicals. I can count on the fingers of one hand the ones I really admire. Sunday in the Park with George is one of them. This version is the best: the original, starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, and with a supporting actor you may recognise. Yes, Commander Data is playing Fritz. Some kind soul has put the whole thing on Youtube, with Spanish subtitles. You can't turn them off, but everyone except Maria and Lanzababy can ignore them.

The musical – which, like all Sondheim musicals, is about an unusual subject¹   – tells the story of a painting. Not just any painting, but Un dimanche après-midi à l'Íle de la Grande Jatte, 1884. It's huge – 7x10 feet – and Georges Seurat spent two years working on it. The result? A pointillist depiction of ordinary people out on an island in the Seine, a green retreat in the heart of Paris.

The people who are destined to become part of this painting wander around the island and sing. We find out who they are. (Yes, of course Sondheim made them up. Seurat wasn't an anthropologist, he didn't leave any notes.) They flirt, play, argue. Seurat sketches and paints. Then, at the end of the first act, magic happens. The figures all come together in the famous painting as they sing, 'Sunday… by the blue purple yellow red water…' They freeze.

The second act starts a hundred years later, and the painting's in the attic of a museum. The figures in the painting are complaining. 'It's hot up here, it's hot and it's monotonous…' The musical goes on from there, and when it's finished, you know something about art that you didn't know before. At least, I didn't.

I hope you enjoy this one. It's funny, and the music's a cut above the usual indulgent Broadway caterwauling.