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- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 10BY TIME'S REVIEWERS/Compiled by Andrea Sachs
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- ART
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- ART OF THE YIXING POTTER, Indianapolis Museum of Art,
- Indianapolis. More than 100 16th through 20th century ceramic
- tea containers from the Yixing region of China are on display,
- many decorated with plant and animal designs and engraved
- poetry. Through June 30.
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- ETERNAL METAPHORS: NEW ART FROM ITALY, the High Museum at
- Georgia-Pacific Center, Atlanta. Paintings, sculptures and
- drawings with Mediterranean overtones by nine contemporary
- Italian artists. Through May 31.
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- MUSIC
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- THE BEST OF JULUKA (Rhythm Safari). An object lesson in
- the benefits of culture shock. Johnny Clegg, a white South
- African obsessed with Zulu culture, and Sipho Mchunu, a black
- man infatuated with the rhythm of rock, made seven raving,
- ravishing Juluka albums between 1979 and 1985. This selection
- of highlights from that time still has mule-kick energy, a proud
- social conscience and a sound that's fresher than the day after
- tomorrow.
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- FRANK MORGAN: A LOVESOME THING (Antilles). Ex-jailbird
- Morgan continues his comeback -- and feeds his legend -- with
- another dazzling performance on the alto sax. Up-and-coming
- trumpet phenomenon Roy Hargrove, 21, makes an impressive guest
- appearance.
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- SING A TO Z (A&M) The toe-tapping, finger-snapping
- alphabet soup on this album, served up by the Canadian
- children's trio Sharon, Lois & Bram, gets the two-year-olds and
- thirty-somethings in the house wriggling. When did frog sounds,
- xylophones, yodeling and zithers ever sound this good?
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- TELEVISION
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- DINOSAURS (ABC, debuting April 26, 8:30 p.m. EDT). Meet
- the Sinclairs, a blue-collar suburban family with a difference:
- they're domesticated dinosaurs. From an idea by the late Jim
- Henson, this live-action sitcom is set in the year 60,000,003
- B.C. Any resemblance to our own society is purely intentional.
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- SWITCHED AT BIRTH (NBC, April 28-29, 9 p.m. EDT). Based on
- the true story of two infant girls accidentally exchanged in a
- Florida hospital and raised for a decade by the wrong parents,
- this four-hour mini-series stars Brian Kerwin, Ed Asner and the
- underappreciated Bonnie Bedelia.
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- MOVIES
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- OSCAR. Sylvester Stallone, in his first intentional comedy
- since Rhinestone, shows a light step as a recovering gangster
- in John Landis' Prohibition-era farce. Doors slam, satchels are
- snatched, offspring spring up, puns run amuck. It's all
- inexcusable -- and irresistible.
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- CROSS MY HEART. A 12-year-old's mother has died, and his
- schoolmates conspire to keep the tragedy a secret. In this comic
- essay on the desperate ingenuity of youth, director Jacques
- Fansten nicely reworks a long-held credo of French filmmakers:
- that childhood is both charmed and cursed.
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- SUPERSTAR. Andy Warhol's nonlife and odd times get a
- spiffy collage treatment from documentarist Chuck Workman. News
- and film clips mix with reminiscences from Andy's cheerfully
- perplexed family back in Pittsburgh. A few Warhol Factory
- workers show up, wry and rueful, eager to prove they survived
- it all.
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- BOOKS
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- PRESIDENT REAGAN: THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME by Lou Cannon
- (Simon & Schuster; $24.95). This is not the Reagan book that
- everyone is talking about -- though, oddly enough, from the same
- publisher -- but it is essential reading, compiled by a veteran
- journalist and Ronnie watcher, for anyone interested in the star
- politics of the 1980s.
-
- DARK STAR by Alan Furst (Houghton Mifflin; $22.95). Plot
- is less important in this impressive spy novel than
- description, the re-creation of the nightmarish tensions that
- erupted during the 1930s between Soviet NKVD agents and Stalin's
- Georgian thugs.
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- THEATER
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- I HATE HAMLET. Nicol Williamson may really be John
- Barrymore's ghost -- he looks, sounds and swashbuckles like him
- as the bravura otherworldly mentor to a young TV star turned
- tragedian in this slight but fetching Broadway comedy.
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- ONLY THE TRUTH IS FUNNY. Jack Rollins and Charlie Joffe
- manage Woody Allen and David Letterman. Their new client, the
- first in more than a decade, is Rick Reynolds, whose lacerating
- autobiographical stand-up gets both laughs and tears
- off-Broadway.
-
- ANOTHER TIME. Albert Finney on Broadway would be event
- enough, but in Chicago? At the Steppenwolf troupe's new home,
- he repeats his London triumph in this play by Ronald Harwood
- (The Dresser) about a South African piano prodigy battling his
- heritage.
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- ETCETERA
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- RINGLING BROS. AND BARNUM & BAILEY CIRCUS. "The Greatest
- Show on Earth" lives up to its own grandiose billing in its
- 121st year. From the Crescendo of Cats to the fingernail-biting
- Globe of Death, a motorcycle thriller, this all-American
- tradition is sure to delight. In New York City through April 28,
- then on to Providence, New Haven and Hartford.
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- CAUGHT IN THE ACT
-
- There's a special flavor to music heard live in clubs:
- more relaxed than on records -- often fiercer too, with
- inhibiting mikes out of the performers' way. The first releases
- from Night Records, a new Virgin Records label specializing in
- live performances, catch four jazz stylists (Rahsaan Roland
- Kirk, Les McCann, Eddie Harris and Cannonball Adderley) in moods
- that seldom found their way onto more formal recordings. Kirk,
- best known for his atonal virtuosity in blowing three saxes at
- once, plays clarinet with a traditional New Orleans band in a
- sly, down-home version of The Black and Crazy Blues. And McCann,
- who prided himself on being as much an entertainer as a pianist,
- gabs, croons and narrates an off-the-wall encounter with Charlie
- Parker. Producer Joel Dorn has so far accumulated more than
- 200,000 hours of ad-lib material, including doo-wop, early rock
- and classics as well as jazz. The tapes were made mostly by
- amateurs; the sound, to judge by Night's initial CDs, is crisp
- and professional.
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