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- <text id=91TT1277>
- <title>
- June 10, 1991: Critics' Voices
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- June 10, 1991 Evil
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 10
- </hdr><body>
- <p> TELEVISION
- </p>
- <p> DARROW (PBS, June 7, 9 p.m. on most stations). Kevin
- Spacey gets the juicy role of the legendary defense attorney.
- Great subject and a spirited presentation, but too many
- Hollywood-bio cliches mar this American Playhouse movie.
- </p>
- <p> I, CLAUDIUS (PBS, debuting June 9, 9 p.m. on most
- stations). Sex, corruption, double dealing and all those other
- fun things that made Rome the place to be a couple of thousand
- years ago. Derek Jacobi stars in this much lauded Masterpiece
- Theatre series, returning for a summer-long run.
- </p>
- <p> TWIN PEAKS (ABC, June 10, 9 p.m. EDT). The TV world has
- passed him by, but Agent Cooper still has a few mysteries left
- to solve. The two-hour season (and probably all-time) finale may
- clear up one or two of them.
- </p>
- <p> BOOKS
- </p>
- <p> A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR by Mark Helprin (Harcourt Brace
- Jovanovich; $24.95). In this big (792 pages) rumbustious novel,
- an aging Italian professor recounts his adventures during World
- War I. Once the long narrative gathers force, the tale moves
- with riotous energy and sustained brilliance.
- </p>
- <p> THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN by Paul Johnson (HarperCollins;
- $35). A quirky pop history--starting with the Battle of New
- Orleans and ending with the death of the first railway-accident
- victim--of 15 years that shaped the modern world. British
- author Johnson (Modern Times, Intellectuals) finds room for
- everything, from the decline of snuff taking among women to
- artists' yearnings to produce ever bigger paintings.
- </p>
- <p> COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT by Clark Clifford with Richard
- Holbrooke (Random House; $25). Washington's nonpareil insider
- looks back on his years--usually in an unofficial capacity--within the penumbra of power. The behind-the-scenes anecdotes
- are fascinating and irresistible.
- </p>
- <p> MOVIES
- </p>
- <p> FX2: THE DEADLY ART OF ILLUSION. Truth in advertising,
- guys! The Deadly Art of Incoherence would be a much more
- accurate subtitle for this sequel, which gets about halfway to
- agreeability and then falls back in confusion. Man cannot live--or even stay fully awake--on special effects alone.
- </p>
- <p> THEATER
- </p>
- <p> THE OLD BOY. Sometimes A.R. Gurney (The Dining Room, Love
- Letters) is a wry Wasp elegist. In this powerful, superbly
- played off-Broadway drama, he depicts a ruling elite suppressing
- a gay teenager of the 1950s.
- </p>
- <p> FROM THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA. Launched in Chicago, a
- prizewinner in Washington and now at Hartford Stage Company,
- this gutsy story of black women in the South seemingly speaks
- to everybody.
- </p>
- <p> THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES. John Mahoney is perfectly cast as
- the working-class-hero father in this family play, which was
- written just before the Generation Gap got its name and is now
- handsomely revived off-Broadway.
- </p>
- <p> MUSIC
- </p>
- <p> ELVIS COSTELLO: MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE (Warner Bros.). Brother
- Costello again, in a nerve-wrenching excursion through the inner
- sanctums of his troubled spirit. Songs like How to Be Dumb are
- akin to bamboo slivers under fingernails, but Costello's humor--in full bloom here--gives them both buoyancy and added
- punch.
- </p>
- <p> THE KENTUCKY HEADHUNTERS: ELECTRIC BARNYARD (Mercury).
- These five fellas are good-time boys for damned sure, with a
- unique combination of respect and irreverence for the byways of
- country music. Any bunch that records The Ballad of Davy
- Crockett and brings it off with a straight face and a steady
- beat deserves a hunk of respect, and maybe a side order of awe.
- </p>
- <p> ROY HARGROVE: PUBLIC EYE (Novus). At 21, trumpeter
- Hargrove plays with the confidence and maturity of jazzmen twice
- his age. With his sharp attack and liquid tone, he brings both
- fire and lyricism to a repertoire that is always anchored in
- melody. Alto-sax man Antonio Hart adds a riveting counterpoint
- to this tight, driving quartet.
- </p>
- <p> TOBIAS PICKER: THE ENCANTADAS (Virgin Classics). Inspired
- by Herman Melville's eerie prose poems The Encantadas, Picker
- uses traditional and 20th century musical vocabularies to
- create a hauntingly sinister and beautiful evocation of the
- "evilly enchanted" Galapagos, performed by Christoph Eschenbach
- and the Houston Symphony with narration by Sir John Gielgud.
- </p>
- <p> ETCETERA
- </p>
- <p> WORKING PEOPLE OF RICHMOND: LIFE AND LABOR IN AN
- INDUSTRIAL CITY, 1865-1920: The Valentine Museum, Richmond. The
- show explores the changes and impact of industrialization
- through audiovisual displays, working machinery and hands-on
- activities like stemming tobacco. June 7 through Dec. 9.
- </p>
- <p> THE YOSEMITE: PHOTOGRAPHS OF GALEN ROWELL. The 100th
- anniversary of the founding of California's Yosemite National
- Park is marked by an exhibition of 36 color photographs, with
- text by Rowell and conservationist John Muir. At the
- Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Washington,
- through June 16.
- </p>
- <p> DESIGN
- </p>
- <p> ARATA ISOZAKI 1960/1990 ARCHITECTURE: Museum of
- Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. What more fitting location for
- the first major retrospective of Japan's greatest postwar
- architect than the building that was his premier American
- commission? This is not just another bland collection of an
- architect's renderings, but an in-depth overview of the life and
- career of one of the world's most exciting and original
- designers. The event coincides with Isozaki's 60th birthday,
- which the Japanese consider a benchmark age at which an
- individual has gained sufficient wisdom to make important
- contributions. But as the show makes clear, Isozaki has long
- since left his mark on the world. The multimedia exhibit spans
- 30 years of his work, from his youthful visionary proposals for
- Tokyo in the 1960s to his current urban projects around the
- world. The exhibit includes a full-scale reconstruction of a tea
- house, 35 scale models, 200 original drawings and three
- high-definition TV programs. Through June 30.
- </p>
- <p>BY TIME'S REVIEWERS. Compiled by Andrea Sachs.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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