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- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 1
-
-
- FESTIVALS
-
- INTERNATIONAL BALLOON FESTIVAL. More hot air than any
- convention on earth. Hundreds of giant rainbow-hued balloons
- converge on Albuquerque (or just above it) for the largest
- annual ballooning extravaganza. Oct. 7 to 15.
-
- NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL. If the avant garde has any tradition,
- this is it. The Brooklyn Academy of Music's seventh annual
- festival of cutting-edge music and dance features performance
- artist Laurie Anderson's new solo piece, Empty Places, and a
- musical tribute to Andy Warhol by Velvet Underground veterans.
- Through Dec. 3.
-
- MOVIES
-
- QUEEN OF HEARTS. On a next-to-nothing budget, this
- criminally pleasurable panorama depicts a teeming gallery of
- Italians in postwar London. Funny, ambitious and a mite too
- long, Queen of Hearts laces pearls on a shoestring.
-
- IN COUNTRY. A Viet Nam vet (Bruce Willis) reconciles
- himself to his niece (radiant Emily Lloyd) and his country.
- Sounds like your basic TV movie, sunk by noble intentions. But
- here well meaning translates into well done.
-
- SEA OF LOVE. An infusion of wit and imagination raises this
- police film above the rank and file. One of New York's finest
- (Al Pacino) pursues a serial killer who is stalking womanizers;
- the likeliest suspect (Ellen Barkin) is also the best bet to
- comfort our hero.
-
- MUSIC
-
- MALCOLM MCLAREN AND THE BOOTZILLA ORCHESTRA: WALTZ DARLING
- (Epic). Berserk and beautiful: classical waltz music funked up
- for dancing by rock's baddest bad boy. McLaren is like a
- compact-disc version of Ken Russell -- funny, vulgar and
- endlessly inventive.
-
- PETE TOWNSHEND: IRONMAN (Atlantic). A fabulistic -- if not
- fully fabulous -- rock musical, based on an allegory by poet
- Ted Hughes. The album may lack Tommy's delirium, but at its
- erratic best it has more soul.
-
- MARIA MCKEE: MARIA MCKEE (Geffen). Love songs like crystal,
- done with some fancy collaborators (including Richard Thompson
- and Robbie Robertson) by a vocalist who can soar just fine on
- her own.
-
- THEATER
-
- LES MISERABLES. Tours often look tatty compared with the
- Broadway originals, but that's far from true of the glistening
- and passionate company now installed in Detroit. Notable among
- a solid cast are J. Mark McVey as Jean Valjean and the locally
- recruited children.
-
- LOVE LETTERS. Kate Nelligan and Treat Williams are this
- week's stars in the rotating off-Broadway cast of A.R. Gurney's
- disarming tale of a half-century relationship lived out largely
- via pen and paper.
-
- BOOKS
-
- POODLE SPRINGS by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker
- (Putnam; $18.95). After 30 years of big sleep in the Chandler
- literary estate, a barely started Philip Marlowe novel is
- successfully completed by one of the mystery master's best
- imitators.
-
- MILES: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe
- (Simon & Schuster; $21.95). An as-told-to memoir by a protean
- genius of modern jazz who played with Bird, Diz and countless
- other legends. With all the uglies -- drugs, booze, women
- betrayed -- writ large.
-
- BIG SUGAR by Alec Wilkinson (Knopf; $18.95). Every winter
- roughly 10,000 West Indian men come to harvest sugarcane by
- hand in South Florida. The author, a staff writer for the New
- Yorker, decided to see how these migrants earn their pay and
- came back with a story more bitter than sweet.
-
- ART
-
- FRANS HALS, National Gallery of Art, Washington. The great
- 17th century Dutch portraitist's bravura brushwork and piercing
- insight still bring figures to startling life. Incredibly, this
- is the first major show devoted to him outside the Netherlands.
- Through Dec. 31.
-
- MARIO MERZ, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City.
- Who needs paint? Clay, wax, broken glass, twigs and neon tubes
- are just as likely to be used by Merz, an exponent of Italy's
- Arte Povera movement. Through Nov. 26.
-
- MASTERWORKS OF LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY, Renwick Gallery of
- the National Museum of American Art, Washington. Some 65 of the
- renowned glassmaker's most vibrant lamps, vases and windows.
- The ultimate glass act! Sept. 29 to March 4.
-
- TELEVISION
-
- POSTSEASON BASEBALL. If Vin Scully and Tony Kubek get misty
- eyed in the late innings this week and next, don't be
- surprised. NBC's coverage of the 1989 play-offs marks the end
- of an era. TV's premier baseball network is being sent to the
- showers. Indeed, network baseball in general is getting a
- dunking. Next season CBS takes over major-league baseball's
- broadcast rights (currently divided between NBC and ABC) but
- will deliver only twelve games, plus the play-offs and the World
- Series. That means Saturday-afternoon-at-the-ball-park
- broadcasts (begun on NBC in 1957) will no longer be a weekly
- freebie. Those sports fans who do not have cable now have
- another reason to get wired: ESPN will be filling in the gaps
- with some 175 games next season.
-
-