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- CRITICS' CHOICE, Page 17
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- TELEVISION
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- SERENGETI DIARY (PBS, April 12, 8 p.m. on most stations).
- The ever popular National Geographic specials conclude their
- season with a look at the people and wildlife of this beautiful
- East African wilderness.
-
- AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (NBC, April 16-18, 9 p.m. EDT).
- Phileas Fogg, that globe-trotting Victorian gent, is back in a
- remake of the Oscar-winning 1956 film based on Jules Verne's
- novel. Pierce Brosnan, Lee Remick and Peter Ustinov head the
- proverbial all-star cast.
-
- A DEADLY SILENCE (ABC, April 16, 9 p.m. EDT). One of the
- most tragic consequences of child abuse is recounted in this
- docudrama about a Long Island, N.Y., teenager who hired a
- friend to kill the father who had molested her for years.
-
- MUSIC
-
- ROSANNE CASH: HITS 1979-1989 (Columbia). She's got a
- half-past-4-in-the-morning voice, and a knowing way with a song
- that can make any listener wish the night would go on forever.
-
- ELVIS COSTELLO: SPIKE (Warner Bros.). God's Comic, Stalin
- Malone, Miss Macbeth: even the titles sting. The songs are like
- an acid bath; no quarter given or expected.
-
- THE AMHERST SAXOPHONE QUARTET: BACH ON SAX (MCA Classics).
- Purists, beware! Your prejudice against unorthodox
- instrumentation could be shattered by this surprising set of
- Bach adaptations that has nothing gimmicky about it but the
- concept.
-
- ANDRES SEGOVIA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE SPANISH GUITAR (MCA
- Classics). The reviver and master of the instrument as you have
- never heard him before. Twenty-six digitally reissued
- performances, dating from 1952 to 1968, drawn from the works of
- ten Spanish composers.
-
- BOOKS
-
- A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving (Morrow; $19.95). In
- this inventive, indignant novel, a boisterous cast and a
- spirited story line propel a sawed-off Christly caricature
- through two decades of U.S. foreign policy debacles.
-
- THE JOY LUCK CLUB by Amy Tan (Putnam; $18.95). A bright,
- sharp-flavored first novel on the subject of growing up ethnic
- in the U.S. The topic sounds familiar, but the Chinese spice
- added to this old recipe is invigorating and refreshingly true.
-
- FIRE DOWN BELOW by William Golding (Farrar, Straus & Giroux;
- $17.95). The last leaf of a trilogy begun back in 1980. An
- arrogant, young 19th century Englishman survives seaborne
- hardships to arrive in Australia -- and at some condition of
- self-knowledge.
-
- THEATER
-
- THE WINTER'S TALE. Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Reeve, Alfre
- Woodard and Diane Venora top an impressive if imperfect
- off-Broadway version of Shakespeare's fable.
-
- JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE. Director Claude Purdy's backyard
- realism suits August Wilson's lyric text, at the Los Angeles
- Theater Center.
-
- ART
-
- NELL BLAINE: RECENT OILS AND WORKS ON PAPER, Fischbach
- Gallery, New York City. Forty-eight works by a premier American
- artist whose spontaneous brushstrokes and brilliant colors
- enrobe nature in a tender intimacy. Through April 26.
-
- LIKE A ONE-EYED CAT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEE FRIEDLANDER
- 1956-1987, Seattle Art Museum. Surprising perspectives on
- everyday images -- street scenes, jazz musicians, empty motel
- rooms, public monuments -- by a modern American master. Through
- May 7.
-
- TREASURES FROM THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, National Gallery of
- Art, Washington. Highlights of the collection built up by
- British connoisseurs over two centuries at Cambridge
- University's Fitzwilliam, including paintings by Titian, Rubens
- and Delacroix, manuscripts, ceramics, sculpture and decorative
- arts. Through June 18.
-
- GUIDO RENI, 1575-1642, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
- Underappreciated in the modern era, Reni is restored in this
- choice, 50-painting show to the high rank earlier centuries
- accorded him as luminous colorist and elegant classical stylist.
- Through May 14.
-
- MOVIES
-
- HIGH HOPES. A dotty old woman fights to keep her home amid
- the crush of gentrification. Working with a cast that has helped
- improvise its roles, British director Mike Leigh creates a group
- portrait of characters who live, breathe and squawk their
- wayward humanity on the margins of Thatcher's England.
-
- ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. Lovers waltz in midair, a
- servant outruns a bullet, and the King of the Moon (Robin
- Williams) loses his head in this wonder-filled fantasy from
- Terry Gilliam.
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