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- <text id=91TT1942>
- <title>
- Sep. 02, 1991: Critics' Voices
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Sep. 02, 1991 The Russian Revolution
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 10
- </hdr><body>
- <p> MOVIES
- </p>
- <p> DOC HOLLYWOOD. An impatient young doctor (Michael J. Fox)
- stumbles into a serenely integrated community in South Carolina--"Hee Haw hell," he calls it--and acquires a pig, a
- girlfriend and some scruples. It's a feature-length attack of
- the aw-shucks, but Fox, world's nicest star, makes it painless.
- </p>
- <p> TRUST. Typical Hal Hartley dialogue: "Will you trust me?"
- "If you trust me first." In this deadpan romance, the
- writer-director limns the palship of a pregnant high schooler
- (Adrienne Shelly) and a sociopath genius (Martin Donovan).
- Another fond sketch of losers from the down-scale version of
- Woody Allen.
- </p>
- <p> ANOTHER YOU. A congenital liar (Gene Wilder) and his con
- man friend (Richard Pryor) get involved in an elaborate
- insurance scam. This comedy is complicated too--but a big
- why-bother. By now these two gifted farceurs are doing it from
- memory, not from inspiration. The parts keep moving long after
- the machine is turned off.
- </p>
- <p> TELEVISION
- </p>
- <p> DREAM ON (HBO, Sunday nights). Book editor and divorced
- dad Martin Tupper (Brian Benben) is trying to make sense of the
- '90s. So why do scenes from '50s TV shows keep popping into his
- head? In its second season, this decidedly adult sitcom, which
- makes deft use of old black-and-white clips, is better than
- ever.
- </p>
- <p> WHO WILL TEACH FOR AMERICA? (PBS, Sept. 3, 9 p.m. on most
- stations). In late 1989 Wendy Kopp conceived a sort of domestic
- Peace Corps to bring the best young teaching minds to
- underserved inner-city and rural schools. This intimate,
- uplifting account of the program's first year is guaranteed to
- make you smile.
- </p>
- <p> MUSIC
- </p>
- <p> BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES, VOLS. 1-3 (Columbia). Since
- its release almost five months ago, this mind-snapping
- collection of rare, unreleased or alternate takes of 58 Dylan
- tunes has racked up sales over 300,000 and has inspired everyone
- from Paul McCartney to Frank Zappa to scour their vaults. This
- collection ($45.95 for the 3-CD set) stands apart, though: it
- is the audio notebooks of rock's greatest songwriter. Songs that
- Dylan leaves off a record would make history for anyone else.
- The last three tunes in Vol. 3, including the beautiful Series
- of Dreams, are the most recent and demonstrate beyond doubt that
- he's still the guy to beat.
- </p>
- <p> EMIL GILELS: PROKOFIEV & KABALEVSKI (harmonia mundi).
- Gilels was magisterial in both Prokofiev's brilliantly fertile
- Concerto No. 3 and his Second Sonata, but the exuberant,
- captivatingly melodic Piano Concerto No. 3, with composer Dmitri
- Kabalevski conducting, makes this reissue irresistible.
- </p>
- <p> GEORGE LEWIS WITH KID SHOTS/THE GEORGE LEWIS RAGTIME JAZZ
- BAND OF NEW ORLEANS (American Music, 1206 Decatur St., New
- Orleans, La. 70116). These two CDs bracket the first decade of
- the so-called New Orleans jazz revival, spearheaded by this
- lyrical and passionate clarinetist who inspired jazz
- traditionalists around the world. The first album is a
- remastering of the legendary 1944 sides recorded by jazz
- historian William Russell; the second is a previously unissued
- 1952 session. Both capture the power and drive of Lewis at his
- peak.
- </p>
- <p> THEATER
- </p>
- <p> PERCUSSION FOUR. Gwen Verdon restages a hit number from
- Dancin', the Broadway delight by her late husband Bob Fosse, for
- Chicago's esteemed Hubbard Street Dance Company this week at the
- Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill.
- </p>
- <p> THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival
- at Ashland and its sister stage in Portland form the largest
- U.S. regional theater. New artistic director Henry Woronicz
- plays Petruchio in The Shrew through September; he directs Jerry
- Sterner's Other People's Money, a satire of corporate raiders,
- through October; both at Ashland.
- </p>
- <p> BOOKS
- </p>
- <p> THREE BLIND MICE: HOW THE TV NETWORKS LOST THEIR WAY by
- Ken Auletta (Random House; $25). It's no secret that CBS, NBC
- and ABC began hitting the skids in the mid-1980s; this long
- book reports the high-level pratfalls in meticulous and
- sometimes gossipy detail.
- </p>
- <p> ETCETERA
- </p>
- <p> STANDING IN THE TEMPEST: PAINTERS OF THE HUNGARIAN
- AVANT-GARDE, 1908-1930, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
- City. More than 150 paintings, drawings and prints along with
- historical newsreels and political posters, many not previously
- seen in the U.S., explore the flowering of modern Hungarian
- culture in the years before and after the war that was supposed
- to have ended all wars. Through Sept. 8.
- </p>
- <p> THE MOST HAPPY FELLA. Frank Loesser's Napa Valley fable,
- done along operatic lines well before Andrew Lloyd Webber came
- along, has been a cult icon since its 1956 Broadway production.
- New York City Opera has a new staging. It stars Louis Quilico
- as the middle-aged lover of a pert mail-order bride.
- </p>
- <p> MYTHIC PRESENCE
- </p>
- <p> Marlon Brando's emergence in the early '50s registered a
- drastic change in the cultural weather. The masculine ideal
- reflected in the Hollywood mirror had been basically suave and
- gentlemanly. Brando, who grew up middle class, Midwestern and
- Wasp, radiated pure working-class alienation--an inarticulate
- promise of danger, sex and social abrasion. Which is why, as
- TIME film critic Richard Schickel tells us in BRANDO: A LIFE IN
- OUR TIMES (Atheneum; $21.95), he was a mythic presence for all
- the young urban professionals of the '50s. Rude but sensitive,
- rough but anguished, Brando was their version of pastoral--a
- noble-savage counterpoint to the corporate rat race. The myth
- got lost in the series of unsuccessful movies he made after his
- greatest, On the Waterfront. Schickel concentrates on how and
- why this happened to the celluloid Brando, leaving the real-life
- actor to rut, brood and grow fat in some other, more scandalous,
- less lucid book.
- </p>
- <p>By TIME'S REVIEWERS. Compiled by Andrea Sachs.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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