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Time - Man of the Year
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1992-09-10
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REVIEWS, Page 101Short Takes
MUSIC
Thunder at the Top of the Charts
"Do you wanna get rocked?" shouts DEF LEPPARD on its new
album, Adrenalize (Mercury). The answer, judging by the way the
record has beaten Springsteen to the top spot on the pop charts,
is a thunderous yes. The British band offers its trademark
formula: a sonic avalanche of crunching power chords, rock-solid
rhythms and surprisingly tuneful vocals. The lyrics remain
gleefully sophomoric. On Make Love Like a Man, singer Joe
Elliott pleads, "Don't call me gigolo./ Don't call me Casanova./
Just call me on the phone, and baby c'mon over." The Leps may
not change the world, but when it comes to crafting unabashed
anthems to sex, girls and love, they are deffer than ever.
TELEVISION
Heart Tuggers
In most respects, Dateline NBC, the network's new
prime-time magazine show, is typical of the booming genre. Two
well-manicured hosts (Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips) introduce
three stories a week, from investigative pieces to heart-tugging
features. For shameless emotional manipulation, however, the
show may set new standards. A report last week on a Pennsylvania
company accused of selling machine tools to Iraq was loaded,
irrelevantly, with grieving parents of dead U.S. soldiers. A
story on forecasting failures at the National Weather Service
tried to clinch its case by coaxing tears from a woman whose
husband had been killed by a freak storm. Ratings so far are
promising, alas.
CINEMA
Cheerful Shuffle
A Murdered courier, his body discovered on the rim of a
New Mexico canyon; an attache case stuffed with the usual large
sum of money; any number of strange disappearances: WHITE SANDS
bedazzles mainly by the speed and dexterity with which it
shuffles and deals its assorted plot elements. Eventually,
corrupt FBI men, a guy who claims to be CIA (Mickey Rourke in
a role small enough so he doesn't wear out his welcome), some
crooked arms dealers and a sexy mystery woman (Mary Elizabeth
Mastrantonio) all cherchez le loot. Director Roger Donaldson
puts a curiously cheerful spin on paranoia, and Willem Dafoe,
as a deputy sheriff, provides a knowing parody of Charlton
Heston doing jut-jawed heroics.
THEATER
Fine Players, Flawed Play
What a dream cast: Roger Rees in his first New York
theater role since he won the Tony for Nicholas Nickleby, as a
British aristocrat turned Southern California hustler; TV stars
Nancy Marchand of Lou Grant, double-cast as his London mother
and his Los Angeles boss, and Jean Smart of Designing Women, as
both of his abused wives. What a pity that promising playwright
Jon Robin Baitz, 30, who in THE END OF THE DAY parallels Old
World and New World corruption from charity medical wards to
drug dealing to corporate raiding, can't stitch together a
coherent narrative. His common but fatal mistakes: portraying
all capitalists as repugnantly the same without making any of
them believable, and sniffishly equating evil with mere bad
taste.
BOOKS
Parents at Bat
For nine years CBS Commentator Bill Geist has coached
Little League baseball in Ridgewood, N.J. His rueful LITTLE
LEAGUE CONFIDENTIAL (Macmillan; $17) does an expert job of
creating humor out of the chaos of managing squads of unfocused
kids, like the girl who hesitates to field wearing her press-on
nails. But most of the laughs come from the author's withering
observations of parents and fellow coaches. They all suffer from
Little League Syndrome, which causes "dyspepsia and distemper."
And very antisocial behavior. At one point a mother snarls: "I
pity your children." A coach whom Geist calls Dick Knavery plots
to illegally garner top players. And Geist is hardly immune: in
the big game he persuades Ms. Press-On Nails to go to the toilet
so his star can bat. His team wins.