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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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07318900.041
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1990-09-17
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CRITICS' CHOICE, Page 9
BOOKS
OIL NOTES by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence;
$16.95). There is no better conversation than good shop talk; here
a petroleum geologist ("I know how to find oil") tells many of the
tricks of his trade and proves, in the process, that he also knows
how to write.
POLAR STAR by Martin Cruz Smith (Random House; $19.95). In a
sequel to his best-selling detective novel Gorky Park, Smith sets
Moscow investigator Arkady Renko off on another bizarre case. The
setting this time is a fishing boat on the Bering Sea; one dead
body leads to others along an arc of increasing menace and
violence.
FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus
& Giroux; $22.95). Friedman won two Pulitzer Prizes during the
1980s while covering the Middle East for the New York Times. Now
based in Washington, he looks back on the harsh realities of a
region drenched in myths and bloodshed.
THEATER
SHOWING OFF. What ever happened to the witty little revue? It's
thriving off-Broadway in this four-person jape at assorted cultural
pretenses, including odious sing-alongs, the subject of the
sing-along finale.
BEN-HUR. Sci-fi writer Thomas Disch (The Brave Little Toaster)
vigorously adapts an epic of early Christian days, at Baltimore's
Peabody Conservatory.
ART
EDWARD HOPPER, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.
A major realist painter, Hopper (1882-1967) is also an enduringly
popular chronicler of New England lighthouses, late-night cafes and
other vignettes of the American scene. The Whitney's collection of
his work is unmatched, as this sampling confirms. Through Nov. 5.
ON THE ART OF FIXING A SHADOW: 150 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHY,
National Gallery, Washington. The history of photography as art,
assembled from public and private collections around the world.
More than 400 original pictures representing 200 photographers.
Among them: Louis Daguerre, Alfred Stieglitz, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Through July 30.
AGAINST NATURE: JAPANESE ART IN THE EIGHTIES, San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. Architect Arata Isozaki and fashion designer
Issey Miyake are famous abroad, but contemporary visual art from
Japan is still little known in the West. The first major U.S.
museum show from Japan in more than 20 years brings Americans a
survey of new work from the cultural center of East Asia. Through
Aug. 6.
MUSIC
ERROLL GARNER: DANCING ON THE CEILING (Emarcy). This second
volume of previously unreleased material shows off Garner's
angular, driving, two-fisted piano at its best. His dazzling
improvisations breathe new life into well-worn standards like It
Had to Be You and show why, twelve years after his death, this
legendary jazzman remains in a class of his own.
TIN MACHINE: TIN MACHINE (EMI). It's David Bowie, lying low
with a new band that he helped create and whose rough edges he
hones to a good cutting edge. Lots of fever-blister guitar work and
apocalyptic Bowie lyrics. Crack City ought to be a sci-fi
hallucination, but Bowie knows better: he makes it into an everyday
nightmare.
TELEVISION
YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW (NBC, debuting Aug. 2, 10 p.m.
EDT). Topical issues will be examined from a tripartite perspective
-- past, present and future -- in NBC's umpteenth try at a
prime-time magazine show. Maria Shriver and Mary Alice Williams are
among the on-camera crew.
PRIME TIME LIVE (ABC, beginning Aug. 3, 10 p.m. EDT). And
there's more, news junkies. In this ambitious new ABC offering,
Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson each week will face a studio
audience and the formidable task of putting a fresh spin on the
news.
DARK CIRCLE (PBS, Aug. 8, 10 p.m. on most stations). This
documentary on nuclear power was set to air on PBS in 1986 but was
scuttled because of its antinuclear bias. Now it turns up on
P.O.V., the special summer series.
MOVIES
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. . . it was loathe at first sight. But he
(Billy Crystal) learned to accept her (Meg Ryan) with almost no
romantic strings attached. The "almost" makes for a witty sexual
tension in Rob Reiner's comic valentine to love, friendship and
Woody Allen.
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE. This biopic stamps demon rocker Jerry Lee
Lewis as a feral innocent in a time warp, instead of a sexual
threat for Middle America. Dennis Quaid inhabits Jerry Lee with a
nicely calculating recklessness, and Winona Ryder is hypnotically
enigmatic as the singer's nymphet bride.