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- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 1
-
-
- MUSIC
-
- BRANFORD MARSALIS: TRIO JEEPY (Columbia). Some nice moments
- (The Nearness of You, Gutbucket Steepy), but let's face it:
- slick imitations of Bird, Coltrane and Ben Webster do not a jazz
- genius make. Forget the liner-note hype, Jeepy, and come back
- when you've paid some dues.
-
- THE GODFATHERS: MORE SONGS ABOUT LOVE & HATE (Epic). High
- spirits mix it up with mean spirits and bring forth a hot
- record with a shot of bile.
-
- N.W.A.: STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (Priority). Rap that's
- angry, scary and tougher than the hard L.A. streets it comes
- from. Lots of beat, lots of truth and no pity to spare.
-
- MAHLER: SYMPHONIE NO. 1 (Deutsche Grammophon). The young
- Lenny reintroduced Mahler; maestro Bernstein now leads the
- Concertgebou Orchestra in a re-examination of the composer's
- kaleidoscopic genius.
-
- MOVIES
-
- WIRED. The saddest thing about John Belushi's death might
- be this requiem -- the movie Hollywood tried to stop. Next time,
- guys, try harder.
-
- COOKIE. English teenager Emily Lloyd brings an acute ear
- and a fetching presence to her role as a Brooklyn punkster in
- this comedy about a Mafia don (Peter Falk) with a score to
- settle and a wayward daughter to raise.
-
- DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES. Three children in a Liverpool
- family literally sing their way through two decades of air
- raids, poverty and a father's sere brutality. Prepare to be
- thrilled, perplexed, horrified, haunted.
-
- THEATER
-
- THE LADY IN QUESTION. Just what is the alleged pleasure of
- a drag show? If the leading "lady" is unconvincing, it's gross.
- If he's too convincing, there's no coy guessing game. And if
- he's just campy enough, the joke is over in five minutes. Alas,
- this off-Broadway farce (about Hitler and the Holocaust, yet!)
- lasts two hours.
-
- LOVE LETTERS. On a bare stage, an actor and an actress read
- aloud, capturing in two hours the rich decades of two lives. A
- cast that changes every week (scheduled: Colleen Dewhurst, Jason
- Robards and Kate Nelligan) graces A.R. Gurney's wry off-Broadway
- play.
-
- SWEENEY TODD. Stephen Sondheim's unlikeliest musical, a
- sympathetic look at a murderous barber and at the woman who
- recycles his victims as meat pies, returns to Broadway in a
- shrewdly staged and highly tuneful chamber version.
-
- THE GEOGRAPHY OF LUCK. The drifters, gamblers and hopeless
- hustlers in Marlane Meyer's desert panorama mingle the doomed
- banality of Sam Shepard characters with the quixotic blessings
- found in William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life. At the Los
- Angeles Theater Center.
-
- MADAME SHERRY. Connecticut's revival-oriented Goodspeed
- Opera House unearths another musical charmer about love, money
- and mistaken identity.
-
- ART
-
- ARNULF RAINER, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. A
- retrospective of the work since 1950 of a leading Viennese
- avant-gardist, including "overpaintings" of photographs, death
- masks and a series of variations on the crucifixion. Through
- Oct. 15.
-
- FIFTEEN YEARS OF COLLECTING, Whitney Museum of American
- Art, New York City. The Whitney claims the world's most
- comprehensive gathering of 20th century American art; this
- potpourri of works acquired since 1972 amply reflects its
- riches. Through Oct. 15.
-
- ROBERT MOSKOWITZ, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington. Long in the
- shadow of contemporaries like Jasper Johns, this 54-year-old
- American, whose canvases feature the interplay of recognizable
- images and abstraction, gets his first museum retrospective.
- Through Sept. 17.
-
- BOOKS
-
- A NATURAL CURIOSITY by Margaret Drabble (Viking; $19.95).
- In a sequel to The Radiant Way (1987), the author offers a
- Victorian-style novel about some decidedly contemporary English
- women and men.
-
- HARP by John Gregory Dunne (Simon & Schuster; $18.95).
- Novelist Dunne (True Confessions) fesses up that his own barbed
- style and snappish instincts have roots in an immigrant Irish
- heritage in which he learned that writing well is the best
- revenge.
-
- NICE WORK by David Lodge (Viking; $18.95). A funny, adroit
- novel about an executive in one of Britain's rust-belt
- factories and the feminist lecturer who does field research on
- his old-fashioned methods.
-
- TELEVISION
-
- INTIFADA: THE PALESTINIANS AND ISRAEL (PBS, Sept. 6, 9 p.m.
- on most stations). The documentary Days of Rage, Jo
- Franklin-Trout's sympathetic look at the Palestinian uprising,
- has stirred gales of protest. PBS viewers can see it, with a
- discussion led by Hodding Carter.
-
- ON THE TELEVISION (Nick at Nite, debuting Sept. 9, 11 p.m.
- EDT). Nick at Nite, the home of campy old TV shows like Donna
- Reed and Mister Ed, tries its first original series, a
- half-hour satirical look at -- what else? -- campy old TV shows.
-
- MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL (ABC, Sept. 11, 8 p.m. EDT). They
- never quite recovered from the loss of Howard and Dandy Don, but
- ABC's gridiron clashes are about to celebrate their 20th year
- on the air. A TV anniversary, of course, means a special, which
- precedes tonight's season opener between the New York Giants and
- Washington Redskins.
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-