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Time - Man of the Year
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1992-09-10
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REVIEWS, Page 71Short Takes
POP MUSIC
Singing the Same Old Song
Fans often protest when performers move away from the
sounds that made them popular. Well, TRACY CHAPMAN loyalists
can't make that complaint. Even though she invited hard rockers
like Vernon Reid, lead guitarist for Living Colour, to play on
her latest album, Matters of the Heart, Chapman has barely
moved an inch since her Grammy-winning debut four years ago.
There is some good work on this new album, including Bang Bang
Bang, a biting commentary on the causes of youth violence.
Chapman's rich contralto remains as hauntingly effective as
ever. But there is a relentless sameness about these songs.
Chapman continues to march to her own drummer, but by now that
ground is all too well trod.
CLASSICAL
Titanic Tenor
What a Career. Tenor PLACIDO DOMINGO has made 79 opera
recordings, and his repertory encompasses Verdi, Wagner, Mozart
and Puccini, as well as French and Spanish opera. Pavarotti may
rival him in vocal beauty, but no singer today is as versatile.
So when Deutsche Grammophon set out to recap his two decades
with the label, there was plenty to choose from. The first of
10 CDs of highlights to be released this year is Arias, Songs
& Tangos. It is a monument to his vigorous musicianship. Over
time Domingo's voice has become darker and richer, his style
more fluent and less mannered. The only regret: his masterly
Otello, recorded for RCA and EMI, cannot be included.
BOOKS
Soft-Boiler
Travel writers do your traveling for you, crime writers do
your murdering for you, and food writers eat lavishly at absurd
expense so that you need not bother. Such a deal -- but hark!
Novelist Haughton Murphy does all this and is funny in the
bargain. His hero is an elderly, retired lawyer named Reuben
Frost, who keeps getting into other people's trouble. In this
seventh outing in the series, A VERY VENETIAN MURDER (Simon &
Schuster; $19), Frost and his wife Cynthia are taking their ease
in Venice when someone murders an American dress designer. The
soft-boiled detective is 77, and when danger threatens, he takes
a nap. Or nibbles a nine-star lunch with Cynthia. But in the end
he nails the villain briskly, well in time for antipasto.
CINEMA
What Was Oscar Thinking of?
Italian soldiers, ordered to occupy a remote Greek island
during World War II, find that all its male residents of
fighting age have been interned elsewhere. They pass the war
eating, snoozing and making out with the local ladies. The
comedy in MEDITERRANEO is as languorous as the climate, and its
point -- that most of the world's troubles arise when people are
up and doing -- is agreeable if facile. The only stirring aspect
of this slack, predictable movie is the fact that it won this
year's foreign-film Oscar. There is something wrong with a
system that rewards a movie as negligible as this with anything
more than indifference -- especially in a year when Raise the
Red Lantern was a nominee and Europa, Europa did not achieve
even that status.
TELEVISION
Un-Animated
TV made cartoons out of the Jacksons and Hulk Hogan. Why
not try it in reverse, fleshing out a peerless kidvid cartoon
of the '60s? Here's why. A few years back, Dave Thomas and
Sally Kellerman starred as a live-action BORIS AND NATASHA, the
spy-in-the-face nemeses of Jay Ward's immortal Rocky and
Bullwinkle. Charles Martin Smith's film was never released, but
it is now being aired on Showtime. Because the small screen has
laxer standards for comedy (after all . . . Full House?), you
may briefly indulge the strenuously facetious antics, the
wisenheimer narration, the cameos by John Travolta and John
Candy. Soon, though, the adventure parody gets painful -- a kind
of Traitors of the Lost Aardvark. Hokey smoke, what's next? Ted
Danson as Clutch Cargo?