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- <text id=91TT0637>
- <title>
- Mar. 25, 1991: Critics' Voices
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Mar. 25, 1991 Boris Yeltsin:Russia's Maverick
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 10
- </hdr><body>
- <p> ART
- </p>
- <p> JOHN RUSSELL POPE AND THE BUILDING OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY
- OF ART, National Gallery of Art, Washington. The repository of
- some of the nation's most cherished pieces of art is
- celebrating its 50th anniversary with an exhibit of 75 drawings
- and photographs that explore the creation of the West Building
- and the career of its architect. Through July 7.
- </p>
- <p> THE DRAWINGS OF ANTHONY VAN DYCK, Pierpont Morgan Library,
- New York City. For the 350th anniversary of the death of this
- Baroque master, the museum has amassed 90 drawings, ranging
- from Van Dyck's earliest sketches to studies for his glowing
- royal portraits. Through April 21.
- </p>
- <p> MOVIES
- </p>
- <p> JU DOU. The colors--bright, sensuous, all enveloping--tell the story of a young Chinese woman, her brutal husband and
- her timid lover. Fate enshrouds them, as it has Zhang Yimou's
- beautiful film: Ju Dou has never played publicly in China, and
- the authorities tried unsuccessfully to rescind its Oscar
- nomination as Best Foreign Film.
- </p>
- <p> THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. The lacerating suspense of Thomas
- Harris' novel is missing from this earnest adaptation, but if
- you haven't read the book about an FBI trainee tracking one
- serial killer with the help of another, you ought to see the
- movie. Main attraction: the intellectual tug-of-wills between
- Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.
- </p>
- <p> THEATER
- </p>
- <p> THE BIG LOVE. When Errol Flynn died in 1959, he was
- traveling with starlet Beverly Aadland, who had been his
- mistress since she was 15. This chillingly believable Broadway
- play has as its sole character Beverly's mother Florence
- (unforgettably played by Tracey Ullman), a ferocious stage mama
- who would stop at nothing.
- </p>
- <p> THE SPEED OF DARKNESS. Playwright Steve Tesich brings
- together two former Army buddies and trash-haulage partners in
- this haunting Broadway production, one (Stephen Lang) now
- scruffy and homeless, the other (Len Cariou) now South Dakota's
- man of the year. Ironically, the dropout is at peace; the man
- who suppressed his dark secrets to fit in exists on the knife
- edge of anger.
- </p>
- <p> TELEVISION
- </p>
- <p> AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE (PBS, March 20, 22). The anthology series
- opens its 10th season with a double dose of Broadway: Into the
- Woods, Stephen Sondheim's musical twist on Grimms' fairy tales,
- and The Grapes of Wrath, the Steppenwolf Theater's adaptation
- of Steinbeck's Depression novel.
- </p>
- <p> THE MAHABHARATA (PBS, March 25, 26, 27, 9 p.m. on most
- stations). Another stage event, Peter Brook's marathon version
- of the Hindu sacred epic, comes to TV in three two-hour
- segments.
- </p>
- <p> THE ACADEMY AWARDS (ABC, March 25, 9 p.m. EST). Hollywood's
- annual fete is still king of all the awards shows. And Kevin
- Costner is grooming himself for this year's crown.
- </p>
- <p> MUSIC
- </p>
- <p> GRAHAM PARKER: STRUCK BY LIGHTNING (RCA). Don't get in this
- man's way: "She's a living example," he sings, "of God's bad
- taste." And that's a love song; well, sort of. It's typical of
- the venom-tipped but still lyrical reflections stashed
- throughout the 15 tunes on this high-velocity workout by one
- of the orneriest but most beguiling rockers in the
- neighborhood.
- </p>
- <p> STRAUSS: DER ROSENKAV ALIER (London). In this historic 1954
- performance of an endlessly ravishing opera, a master conductor
- (Erich Kleiber), superb singers (Maria Reining, Sena Jurinac
- and Hilde Gueden) and an outstanding orchestra (the Vienna
- Philharmonic) blend color, vitality and balance with
- intelligence and resonant beauty.
- </p>
- <p> BOB WILBER/KENNY DAVERN: SUMMIT REUNION (Chiaroscuro).
- Rarely has a musical marriage been so harmonious. Wilber and
- Davern first teamed up back in the '70s in a highly touted jazz
- sextet called Soprano Summit. That group is no more, alas, but
- this studio rematch, featuring Wilber on soprano sax and Davern
- on clarinet, scales a new peak.
- </p>
- <p> ETCETERA
- </p>
- <p> AN IMPERIAL FASCINATION: PORCELAIN. More than 500 pieces of
- Imperial porcelain are on display--the largest number ever
- shown outside the Soviet Union. At New York City's A La Vieille
- Russie, through April 20.
- </p>
- <p> BLUE PLANET. Astronaut's-eye views of earth, filmed during
- five space-shuttle missions. From the wind-sculpted dunes of
- the Namib Desert to smogbound Los Angeles, the images
- underscore the urgency of saving the environment. Showing at
- more than two dozen science museums in the U.S. and Canada
- through the summer.
- </p>
- <p> BOOKS
- </p>
- <p> THE PROMISED LAND by Nicholas Lemann (Knopf; $24.95). The
- second great migration that shaped the U.S.: the movement of
- millions of blacks from the rural South to the cities of the
- North.
- </p>
- <p> NEW OXFORD ANNOTATED BIBLE edited by Bruce Metzger and
- Roland Murphy (Oxford; $37.95). Last year's gender-blended New
- Revised Standard Version with notes and articles making
- judicious use of higher criticism.
- </p>
- <p> MOZART MAVEN
- </p>
- <p> One of the great pleasures of this year's Mozart
- bicentennial will be Mitsuko Uchida's performances of the
- composer's 18 piano sonatas in a series of five recitals at New
- York City's Alice Tully Hall between now and April 21. She will
- also perform some of the sonatas in other cities, including
- Philadelphia, Toronto, Washington and Pittsburgh. Uchida, 42,
- plays her specialty with a remarkable combination of energy and
- tenderness, a considerable rhythmic freedom and a lovely tone.
- This spring Philips Classics is rereleasing her recordings of
- these sonatas, along with a splendid new recording of Mozart's
- piano concerti Nos. 15 and 16, accompanied by the English
- Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Jeffrey Tate. Born in Japan,
- trained in Vienna and now residing in London, Uchida has a
- repertoire that ranges from Chopin to Ravel, not to mention
- Bartok and Carter, but she calls Mozart's work a "kind of world
- in itself...so complete that you can forget about the rest.
- Then you come out, and you are blinded."
- </p>
- <p>By TIME'S REVIEWERS/Compiled by Andrea Sachs.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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