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- <text id=89TT2564>
- <title>
- Oct. 02, 1989: Critics' Voices
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Oct. 02, 1989 A Day In The Life Of China
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 13
- </hdr><body>
- <p>BOOKS
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> BIG SUGAR by Alec Wilkinson (Knopf; $18.95). Every winter,
- roughly 10,000 West Indian men go to harvest sugarcane by hand
- in South Florida. The author decided to see how these migrants
- earn their pay and came back with a story more bitter than
- sweet.
- </p>
- <p> WARTIME by Paul Fussell (Oxford University; $19.95).
- Humankind, wrote T.S. Eliot, cannot bear very much reality. In
- this richly detailed historical study of American and British
- behavior during World War II, Fussell argues that the horror was
- of such magnitude that participants -- civilians as much as
- soldiers -- survived it only by reliance on euphemism and
- illusions: our lads were all brave heroes, for example, while
- theirs were sadistic thugs. Fussell has a sharp eye for the
- bawdry and the Catch-22 absurdities of combat. But hard to find
- in his barrages of withering contempt is much sense that this
- war, for all the bumbling incompetence of its captains,
- nonetheless had a just cause.
- </p>
- <p>MUSIC
- </p>
- <p> PETE TOWNSHEND: IRONMAN (Atlantic). A fabulistic -- if not
- fully fabulous -- rock musical based on an allegory by the poet
- Ted Hughes. The album may lack Tommy's delirium, but at its
- erratic best, it has more soul.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> HECTOR BERLIOZ: SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE (Angel/EMI). Lean,
- brisk and idiomatic: Roger Norrington leads the London Classical
- Players in Berlioz's Manichaean, virtuoso ear grabber.
- </p>
- <p> CLINT BLACK: KILLIN' TIME (RCA). Real nice, unassuming,
- go-to-meeting country music by a new Nashville hotshot. Black
- sounds like Randy Travis with a few more years of book learning
- and a cozy way with a melody.
- </p>
- <p>ART
- </p>
- <p> 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-March 4.
- </p>
- <p> PICASSO AND BRAQUE: PIONEERING CUBISM, Museum of Modern
- Art, New York City. The title tells all: two giants, and the
- origins of a style that shook -- and shaped -- the rest of the
- century. Through Jan. 16.
- </p>
- <p>MOVIES
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> A DRY WHITE SEASON. A polite white liberal turns radical
- after confronting the brutality of South African racism. Drama
- that couples the pulse of popular fiction with a jolt of moral
- outrage.
- </p>
- <p>TELEVISION
- </p>
- <p> SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (NBC, Oct. 1, 9 p.m. EDT). Elizabeth
- Taylor stars as a fading movie star (no comments, please) who
- falls for a shady drifter (Mark Harmon) in Tennessee Williams'
- play.
- </p>
- <p> TRAVELS (PBS, debuting Oct. 2, 8 p.m. on most stations).
- Worn out from the Days of Rage ruckus, PBS returns to more
- placid pleasures. This twelve-part series will follow different
- travelers on unusual journeys around the globe.
- </p>
- <p> ART OF THE WESTERN WORLD (PBS, debuting Oct. 2, 9 p.m. on
- most stations). British historian Michael Wood is host for this
- coffee-table survey of the great works, with a stress on their
- cultural and historical context.
- </p>
- <p>THEATER
- </p>
- <p> LULU. Justine Bateman (airhead Mallory on TV's Family Ties)
- shifts gears to play, competently if without much shading or
- subtlety, the ultimate femme fatale in Frank Wedekind's
- expressionist classic, deftly adapted by Roger Downey, at
- California's Berkeley Rep.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> LOVE LETTERS. Colleen Dewhurst and Josef Sommer are this
- week's stars in the rotating off-Broadway cast of A.R. Gurney's
- deft, disarming tale of a half-century relationship lived out
- largely via pen and paper.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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