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Time - Man of the Year
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1992-10-19
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92 lines
REVIEWS, Page 81Short Takes
TELEVISION
Angst in the Parking Lot
You keep rooting for American Playhouse. The PBS series is
television's only regular outlet for serious, original works of
American drama. Too often, however, what you get is windy
trifles like Mrs. Cage. Adapted from a one-act play by Nancy
Barr, it stars Anne Bancroft as a housewife who, without
apparent reason, shoots a woman in a supermarket parking lot
following a violent robbery, then confesses the crime to a
police lieutenant, played by Hector Elizondo. The drama consists
almost entirely of a long, rambling, needlessly elusive dialogue
in which the woman's motive is gradually revealed. Suffice it
to say it has something to do with middle-aged married angst and
the theme song from Rawhide.
BOOKS
Predictable Jabs
Publishers sometimes rush a book into print to capitalize
on a commercially hot author. Sometimes the tactic backfires.
This is what happened to P.J. O'Rourke, whose last book,
Parliament of Whores, a sidesplitting broadside at Congress, was
a best seller last year. GIVE WAR A CHANCE (Atlantic Monthly
Press; $20.95), a compendium of columns and random thoughts, has
all the wise-guy wit we've come to expect from the fiercely
traditional Rolling Stone columnist, but it feels old.
O'Rourke's shots at American antiwar protesters, jabs at Arab
sheiks and some predictable jokes about poorly stocked shelves
in what was the Soviet Union give you the feeling you've read
it all before. You have.
MUSIC
Reopening a Horn of Plenty
For much of the past two decades, jazz singer SHIRLEY HORN
abandoned the recording studio in favor of domesticity. But
since signing with Verve in 1988, Horn, 58, has been making up
for lost time, collaborating with her favorite musicians and
recording her best work yet. Her latest release, Here's to Life,
fulfills a lifelong ambition to record with composer-arranger
Johnny Mandel. Elegantly orchestrated with strings and winds,
plus Horn's delicate piano, the album features ballads, like
the title track and Isn't It a Pity?, in which Horn's velvety
voice virtually coos in the listener's ear. On other tracks,
like the jaunty How Am I to Know?, a flirtatious Horn evokes
glamorous couples swirling in imaginary stardust ballrooms.
DANCE
Rudy's New Gig
The American Ballet Theater's production (Romeo and
Juliet) was lovely, the music (Prokofiev) splendid, and the
principal dancers (Laurent Hilaire and Sylvie Guillem)
enchanting. But the roiling applause at Manhattan's Metropolitan
Opera House went mainly to the man who was making his U.S. debut
in the orchestra pit, RUDOLF NUREYEV. Now 54, the century's most
celebrated male dancer has got a leg up on a new career as a
conductor. Admirers who feared that he could not achieve so
radical a transition without embarrassment may rest easy.
Nureyev, who started conducting both ballet and stage
performances with considerable success in Europe last year,
demonstrated that he has all the right musical moves.
CINEMA
Ward Games
Life in the paraplegic ward hasn't changed much since
Marlon Brando and friends first showed us around in The Men 42
years ago. The guys are still alternately bitter and brave, and
they ultimately learn to bond with one another. Sex remains for
them, of course, a scary and tragic issue. But if THE WATERDANCE
has nothing new to say about its subject, at least it speaks in
an engaging voice: soft, literate, modest. Probably because Neal
Jimenez, its writer (and co-director with Michael Steinberg), is
writing autobiographically, he is less concerned with
melodramatic invention than he is with anecdotal truthfulness.
The movie chooses irony over sentiment for its basic tonality,
and is the better for that uncommercial choice.