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- <text id=89TT2891>
- <title>
- Nov. 06, 1989: Critics Voices
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Nov. 06, 1989 The Big Break
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CRITICS' VOICES, Page 3
- </hdr><body>
- <p>MOVIES
- </p>
- <p> THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS. A piano duo, stranded between
- anonymity and unemployment, needs a sexy vocalist to spruce up
- the act. Good career move; bad for the boys. Jeff and Beau
- Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer are better than fabulous in this
- wry, rare comedy of character.
- </p>
- <p> CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. In Woody Allen's acute meditation
- on the Greed decade, bad men are rewarded for their crimes and
- nice guys worry about committing misdemeanors. This is Allen in
- his funny-serious mood, farcical and dour by turns, a showman
- of gentle misanthropy.
- </p>
- <p> FIGHT FOR US. A saintly priest is gunned down and
- mutilated. A basketball team is massacred. A female rebel is
- raped by a vigilante commandant; when the commandant is killed,
- his lieutenant carves open the dead man's chest and eats his
- flesh. These horrifying events might seem the stuff of slasher
- movies, but according to Filipino director Lino Brocka, they are
- real. His film, based in part on testimony collected by Amnesty
- International, charges that human rights violations are more
- widespread under President Corazon Aquino than they were during
- the Marcos regime, which Brocka had long criticized. Fight for
- Us is a cry for justice, from a man out of breath, for a nation
- nearly eviscerated by fratricide.
- </p>
- <p>FESTIVALS
- </p>
- <p> WURSTFEST. You can link up with more than 100,000 sausage
- devotees at this Texas-size eaterama. For ten days, New
- Braunfels, Texas, rolls out the best of the wurst, as well as
- yodelers, dancers and polka players with down-home names like
- Oma and the Oom pahs. Nov. 3 through 12.
- </p>
- <p>THEATER
- </p>
- <p> BROTHERS AND SISTERS. The most acclaimed Soviet stage work
- since World War II, this two-part epic from Leningrad depicts
- Stalin's abuse of the rural millions. In Russian, with
- simultaneous translation through earphones, at San Diego's Old
- Globe.
- </p>
- <p> OH, KAY! Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House engagingly
- shifts vintage Gershwin to 1920s Harlem. Tony winner Ron
- Richardson (Big River) stars.
- </p>
- <p>TELEVISION
- </p>
- <p> CHICO MENDES: VOICE OF THE AMAZON (TBS, Nov. 1, 10:05 p.m.
- EST). This one-hour documentary focuses on the martyred
- Brazilian's efforts to save the Amazonian rain forest and
- includes the last television interview Mendes gave before his
- 1988 assassination.
- </p>
- <p> OUR TOWN (PBS, Nov. 3, 9 p.m. on most stations). Last
- season's acclaimed Broadway revival of the Thornton Wilder
- classic is presented on Great Performances.
- </p>
- <p> CROSS OF FIRE (NBC, Nov. 5 and 6, 9 p.m. EST). Romance,
- murder and revenge -- you'll get it all in this fact-based
- mini-series about the rise and fall of a Grand Dragon of the Ku
- Klux Klan in 1920s Indi anapolis. Starring John Heard (Beaches,
- Big) and Mel Harris (thirtysomething).
- </p>
- <p> MUSIC KATE BUSH: THE SENSUAL WORLD (Columbia). Well, it
- does have a lonely-hearts love song about a computer. Otherwise,
- the histrionics are so heavy and the passion so sham on this
- record that it would be wiser just to press DELETE.
- </p>
- <p> THE RCA VICTOR VOCAL SERIES. Maybe they weren't better in
- the old days, but these digitally remastered recordings make a
- strong case that the jet plane and overbooked schedules are
- enemies of vocal grace. The first issues in this new project
- include Marian Anderson, Leonard Warren, Rosa Ponselle, Tito
- Schipa and Jussi Bjoerling. The Warren disk is an oddity,
- recorded live on a 1958 tour of the Soviet Union, where the
- baritone's dark, sexy voice knocked'em dead. Ponselle's sublime
- vocal poise lights great Verdi arias and ditties like When I
- Have Sung My Songs to You, I'll Sing No More. Easily the most
- joyous singer is Schipa, with his diaphanous tenor tones and
- fluent ornamentation. There was a real nap on the operatic
- velvet back then!
- </p>
- <p>BOOKS
- </p>
- <p> THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf; $18.95).
- It is 1956, and an aging English butler looks back on his
- decades of service in a stately house. The meaning of his
- memories is not always clear to him, but it is to the reader,
- thanks to Japanese-born novelist Ishiguro's deadly, deadpan
- dissection of the British class system.
- </p>
- <p> THE WAY TO COOK by Julia Child (Knopf; $50). The first tome
- in nine years from the nation's queen of cuisine is, expectedly,
- an instructional masterpiece: precise directions, lavish
- illustrations, wise little tips on timing and the proper tools.
- The recipes are mostly Euroclassics with variations, many
- lightened for health-conscious American palates. A boon for
- beginners; a must for the more experienced.
- </p>
- <p> ROLLING STONE: THE PHOTOGRAPHS (Simon & Schuster; $50).
- Nixon's helicopter lifting off after his final farewell, John
- curling up naked against Yoko, Brando posing in a wheatfield in
- bonnet and dress. If these photos touch a nostalgic nerve,
- you'll also love the 147 others, culled from 22 years of Rolling
- Stone, where celebrity photojournalism and portraiture mix with
- fascinating results.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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