home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- CRITICS' CHOICE, Page 8
-
-
- ART
-
- HELEN FRANKENTHALER: A PAINTINGS RETROSPECTIVE, Museum of
- Modern Art, New York City. In the '50s Frankenthaler's lyrical
- washes of color had a decisive influence on abstract
- expressionism; today she ranks as America's best-known living
- woman artist. These 40 canvases from four decades show why.
- Through Aug. 20.
-
- L'ART DE VIVRE: DECORATIVE ARTS AND DESIGN IN FRANCE,
- 1789-1989, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York City. Jewelry
- commissioned by Napoleon, cutlery from Maxim's, art nouveau
- furniture and haute couture gowns are among 500 objects
- displayed in glittering tribute to France's bicentennial.
- Through July 16.
-
- MUSIC
-
- CLINT BLACK: KILLIN' TIME (RCA). Real nice, unassuming
- go-to-meeting country music by a new Nashville hotshot. Black
- sounds like Randy Travis with a few more years of book
- learning, and he's got a knack for cozy melodies too.
-
- SCHUBERT: IMPROMPTUS (EMI). Pianist Melvyn Tan combines
- remarkable technical precision with a romantic sensibility in
- his fresh interpretations of these Schubert perennials.
-
- 10,000 MANIACS: BLIND MAN'S ZOO (Elektra). Love songs like
- petitions, songs of conscience that come straight from the
- heart. This is a band with folkie inclinations and rock grit,
- and a graceful way with a cry of pain: Poison in the Well, an
- unfortunately timely tune about environmental pollution, ought
- to be piped in to the Exxon boardroom.
-
- MOVIES
-
- INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. The adventure genre may
- be nearly exhausted, but producer George Lucas and director
- Steven Spielberg know how to make the thrills crack like Indy's
- bullwhip. Sean Connery and Harrison Ford find special star
- resonance in the bond between an aloof father and his heroic,
- hero-worshiping son.
-
- DEAD POETS SOCIETY. Robin Williams is a Mr. Chips with a
- mission: to inspire his '50s prep school students with reckless
- passion. Like director Peter Weir, Williams is dead serious
- this time, donating his celebrity to an imperfect but valuable
- adolescent drama.
-
- SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS. Not much
- class but plenty of struggle at the Lipkin mansion, where
- everybody upstairs sleeps with everybody downstairs. The setting
- is swank, the appetites gross in director Paul Bartel's clever
- comedy of sexual manners.
-
- THEATER
-
- CYMBELINE. A mildly punkish off-Broadway version of
- Shakespeare's odd tragedy stars Oscar nominee Joan Cusack
- (Working Girl) as a wife wrongly accused of infidelity.
-
- THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Grittier than the movie, as panoramic
- as Steinbeck's novel, this 35-actor adaptation by Chicago's
- Steppenwolf troupe lights up California's La Jolla Playhouse
- stage on the way to a late-June run at London's National
- Theater.
-
- MIXED BLESSINGS. Luis Santeiro deftly adapts Moliere's
- Tartuffe into a loving lampoon of life among nouveau riche Cuban
- Americans in contemporary Miami, at that city's Coconut Grove
- Playhouse.
-
- BOOKS
-
- THE GOOD TIMES by Russell Baker (Morrow; $19.95). What
- propelled Baker from the childhood he so memorably described in
- Growing Up (1982) to his present distinction as a columnist for
- the New York Times? Here is the answer, in a winsome memoir of
- his early newspaper days, including big-league stints in London
- and Washington.
-
- THE RUSSIA HOUSE by John le Carre (Knopf; $19.95). A
- document discounting Soviet missile capabilities is smuggled to
- the West. Never mind glasnost, perestroika and the cold war
- thaw. Are these grubby notebooks full of facts and figures true?
- The quest for the answer produces the author's most hair-raising
- thriller since The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.
-
- SUMMER OF '49 by David Halberstam (Morrow; $21.95). A
- quirky and informal account of the American League pennant race
- between the Red Sox and the Yankees deepens into a nostalgic
- memoir of a vanishing era, when people listened to the radio,
- traveled by train and went around the corner to see a movie.
-
- TELEVISION
-
- COAST TO COAST (Showtime, June 17, 11 p.m. EDT). Singers
- Kenny Loggins and Linda Ronstadt, country stylist Lyle Lovett
- and jazz pianist Harry Connick Jr. provide eclectic sounds for
- a summer night in this edition of the occasional music series.
-
- FIRING LINE SPECIAL DEBATE (PBS, June 19, 9 p.m. on most
- stations). "Resolved: The Cold War Is Not Coming to an End."
- Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. is joined by former
- Secretary of State and NATO chief Alexander Haig in arguing the
- pro side. Former presidential contenders George McGovern and
- Gary Hart disagree.
-
-