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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1993-04-08
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REVIEWS, Page 79SHORT TAKES
TELEVISION: Brooding in Gotham City
Batman is depressed. First he reads a headline in the
local paper: PENGUIN CONVICTION OVERTURNED. Then, while rounding
up some crooks, he nearly causes the death of Commissioner
Gordon. BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, which is joining Fox's
Sunday-night schedule after scoring big ratings in daytime, has
the same dark hues as the hit movies on which it is based, but
probably more entertainment bang for the buck. The animation
nicely reproduces the films' shadowy, expressionist look; the
action scenes really make sense; and the scripts aspire to more.
This brooding superhero even paraphrases Santayana: "A fanatic
is someone who redoubles his efforts while losing sight of his
goal." Holy egghead!
THEATER: A Favorite No More
In his most glorious comic acting on film, Peter O'Toole
played a washed-up swashbuckling movie star, raddled with
debauchery yet oddly innocent. The man journeyed hours to
glimpse an estranged daughter but did not dare speak to her and
dismissed his screen heroism as fakery until he thrillingly
discovered that it, like all art, came from deep within. The
barren Broadway musical of MY FAVORITE YEAR, which opened last
week, turns O'Toole's holy hellion into a soulless self-pitier
(a deft if charmless Tim Curry) and wrongly presumes that the
film's appeal was its setting amid a '50s TV variety show -- a
format joylessly re-created. For the movie's fans, this is a sad
waste; for others, a crashing bore.
BOOKS: Ordinary Wonders
Why do most dinner forks have four tines? How did the
zipper come about? Henry Petroski, the inquisitive engineering
professor from Duke who gave us a history of The Pencil (it's
more interesting than you would imagine), provides the answers
in a lively new treatise on design called THE EVOLUTION OF
USEFUL THINGS (Knopf; $24). In a lifetime, notes the author, the
average adult will encounter 20,000 or more everyday objects,
most of which are taken for granted. Petroski argues that form
follows failure rather than function, meaning that the
inadequacies of existing things have inspired inventors to see
if they could do better. The author's message: considering its
history, the humble paper clip is as much of an industrial
miracle as the atom smasher.
CINEMA: Tiny Tim Without Father Jim
"The Marleys were dead." Huh? Ebenezer Scrooge (a nicely
grave Michael Caine) has two dead partners -- played by Statler
and Waldorf, those sour kibitzers from the Muppet Show. Kermit
the Frog is Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy is Mrs. C., Gonzo is
Charles Dickens . . . so this must be THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS
CAROL, the first feature from Jim Henson Productions since the
founder's death. Director Brian Henson hasn't his dad's genius
for comic detail, and the film often sinks into the brown funk
of a wake for the passed master. But when Kermit (now voiced by
Steve Whitmire) says of his dead son, "I'm sure we shall never
forget Tiny Tim," the film pays touching tribute to Kermit's
creator and the blithe, antic puppet world he devised.
CINEMA: Orion's Hope
They ought to change the company's name to Phoenix. Orion
Pictures has risen from the ashes of its bankruptcy to release
a few good movies. The first is LOVE FIELD, a slim but affecting
drama named for the Dallas airport where John F. Kennedy's plane
landed on Nov. 22, 1963. Michelle Pfeiffer, glitzed up and
dumbed down, is a restless housewife who vows to attend the
President's funeral in Washington; Dennis Haysbert is the
mysterious black man she tries to befriend. Director Jonathan
Kaplan (The Accused, Heart Like a Wheel) has the gifts of
finding verve and ambiguity in TV-movie subjects and drawing
beautiful interpretations from his lead actresses. As with
Pfeiffer here. Her work is glamourless, subtle, heroic; her
performance is a righteous heartbreaker.