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- CRITICS' CHOICE, Page 15
-
-
- MUSIC
-
- SAM KINISON: HAVE YOU SEEN ME LATELY? (Warner Bros.).
- Abusive, scurrilous and hilarious: post-punk comedy meets
- primal-scream therapy. Offensive? You betcha. But there are
- wonderful bits about sexism and heartbreak, as well as the best
- riffs on organized religion since Lenny Bruce.
-
- 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.
-
- ANTONIN DVORAK: AMERICAN SUITE, SYMPHONY NO. 9 (Virgin
- Classics). Libor Pesek conducts the Royal Liverpool
- Philharmonic Orchestra in exuberant renditions of these powerful
- works, whose brooding, Slavic soul belies their New World theme.
-
- ART
-
- THOMAS HART BENTON: AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL, Nelson-Atkins
- Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. He said he wished his work could
- be exhibited in saloons, but the colorful, cantankerous Benton
- (1889-1975) is being honored in his centennial year not only
- with a biography and a PBS special but also with this
- full-dress retrospective in his native state. Featured: the
- stylized murals of American history and daily life for which he
- was best known. Through June 18.
-
- WHISTLER AND HIS CIRCLE, Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul.
- Etchings, lithographs and paintings representing Whistler's
- high achievements in those media as well as his influence on
- other late-19th century artists, chiefly such Americans as
- Joseph Pennell, Charles Keene and John Marin. Through June 25.
-
- NELL BLAINE: RECENT OILS AND WORKS ON PAPER, Fischbach
- Gallery, New York City. Forty-eight works by a premier U.S.
- artist whose spontaneous brushstrokes and brilliant colors
- enrobe nature in a tender intimacy. Through April 26.
-
- TELEVISON
-
- THE FORGOTTEN (USA, April 26, 9 p.m.). Six Viet Nam POWs,
- released 17 years after the war's end, discover that sinister
- Government forces were behind their capture. Steve Railsback,
- Stacy Keach and Keith Carradine co-star in this thriller, the
- USA cable network's first venture into made-for-TV moviedom.
-
- THE KOPPEL REPORT: D.C. -- DIVIDED CITY (ABC, April 27, 10
- p.m. EDT). The much-publicized plague of drug-related violence
- in the nation's capital is examined by Ted Koppel, first in a
- prime-time special, then in a live discussion that will take
- over the Nightline time period.
-
- GUTS AND GLORY: THE RISE AND FALL OF OLIVER NORTH (CBS,
- April 30, May 2, 9 p.m. EDT). Following his real-life trial,
- the embattled lieutenant colonel (David Keith) gets his day in
- TV court, courtesy of a two-part docudrama.
-
- MOVIES
-
- HEATHERS. There's a disturbing mortality rate among
- Westerburg High's snooty elite. A rash of suicides? Or is
- someone killing the prom queens of Ohio? Daniel Waters' witty
- script touches two stark teen issues: the need to be accepted
- and the urge to end it all.
-
- 84 CHARLIE MOPIC. In the jungles of Viet Nam, a lost patrol
- finds enemies on both sides of combat. But the main character
- of Patrick Duncan's war movie is a documentary-film camera.
- Through its unblinking eye, a familiar horror story gains raw
- immediacy.
-
- BOOKS
-
- CITIZENS: A CHRONICLE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Simon
- Schama (Knopf; $29.95). Exactly 200 years after the bloody
- facts, a Harvard historian offers a fascinating, often
- surprising account of what went right -- and wrong -- during one
- of the world's most celebrated social convulsions.
-
- 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.
-
- THEATER
-
- AMULETS AGAINST THE DRAGON FORCES. Paul Zindel's
- off-Broadway play about a self-destructive alcoholic and a
- neurotic but winsome adolescent is superbly acted, and its
- melodramatic excess sings like pure truth.
-
- THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING. Esther Rolle (Good Times) and
- Amelia Campbell glow as nanny and budding adolescent in this
- moving off-Broadway revival of Carson McCullers' coming-of-age
- story of the pre-civil rights South.
-
- PEER GYNT. Hartford Stage Company captures both the epic
- sweep and the proto-Freudian core of Ibsen's poem of
- self-discovery in a sequential pair of full-length productions.
-
- GHETTO. Joshua Sobol's Nazi-era tragicomedy, seen across
- the U.S. in an Israeli production, makes its English-language
- debut on Broadway with the same vibrant staging.
-
-