Around this time Ellington and Strayhorn began to work on film soundtrack scoring. The first of these was "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), a courtroom drama directed by Otto Preminger and featuring James Stewart, in which Ellington appeared fronting a roadhouse combo. This was followed by "Paris Blues" (1961), which featured Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as jazz musicians. In 2009 "Detroit Free Press" music critic Mark Stryker wrote that Ellington and Strayhorn's work in "Anatomy of a Murder", is "indispensable, . . . too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like "Such Sweet Thunder" and "The Far East Suite", but its most inspired moments are their equal."