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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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111389
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11138900.061
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1990-09-19
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CRITICS' VOICES, Page 27
THEATER
BESIDE HERSELF. If you were an off-Broadway producer who had
hired movie star William Hurt, would you cast him as a crude,
subliterate UPS deliveryman who has little to do, and less to say,
in a fantasy piece centered on a pathetic and prematurely old
widow? If so, you would disappoint audiences as keenly as New York
City's Circle Repertory is doing.
AUGUST SNOW. Novelist Reynolds Price proves a born playwright
in a poignant trilogy (the other plays: Night Dance, Better Days)
about thwarted hopes in a small North Carolina town; superbly
staged by the Cleveland Playhouse.
MASTERGATE. The President dozes away his afternoons. A paranoid
National Security Adviser travels by Stealth bomber. The true head
of Government is a secretive CIA director who also happens to be
dead. Larry Gelbart's fiercely funny Broadway satire lampoons
events that made the evening news the sharpest comedy on TV. Joseph
Daly is a dead-on George Bush, and the dialogue is an S.J.
Perelmanesque stream -- debased, obfuscatory and unconsciously
self-condemning. Samples: "I wonder if I might ask the Senator to
stop raking over dead horses"; "What did the President know, and
does he have any idea that he knew it?" The lesson of recent
scandals is both less and more alarming. If the bums are not thrown
out, it is because an overly forgiving, or morally inert, American
people allows them to stay.
MOVIES
MY LEFT FOOT. Christy Brown was a poor lad who battled cerebral
palsy to become a painter and author. Daniel Day-Lewis' triumph is
nearly as spectacular: to play Christy with a streak of fierce,
black-Irish humor -- and without a drop of TV-movie treacle.
THE BEAR. When it comes to technique, this wondrous movie is
to other nature films what Star Wars was to science fiction: a
redefinition of the state of the art. Even the most sophisticated
filmgoers will be enchanted by this ursine tale, told from a bear's
point of view.
MUSIC
DANIEL LANOIS: ACADIE (Opal/Warner Bros.). Record producers,
even those as skillful as Lanois (U2, Dylan), usually come up with
eccentric gewgaws when they perform on their own. But here is an
exception: Lanois' music is minimal, mystical, folklike but
decidedly unfolksy. No wonder he runs with the big boys.
MICHAEL BOLTON: SOUL PROVIDER (Columbia). Singer-songwriter
Bolton, a white rhythm-and-bluesman from New Haven, Conn., finally
hits his stride here. High point: Georgia on My Mind, on which his
uncanny four-octave range and gut-wrenching phrasing give Ray
Charles a serious run for the money.
MILES DAVIS: AURA (Columbia). Miles used to play jazz -- a
melody with a beat. Now he's into music whose electronically
enhanced formlessness resembles nothing so much as the sound track
of a space movie. That would be great if only we had the flick to
go along with it.
ART
FRANCIS BACON, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,
Washington. Haunting emblems of the Age of Anxiety in the eminent
British painter's distorted, isolated, sometimes silently screaming
figures. Through Jan. 7.
MAKING THEIR MARK: WOMEN ARTISTS MOVE INTO THE MAINSTREAM
1970-85, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. These
87 artists have made their mark, but doesn't categorizing them in
such a show only perpetuate their separateness? Through Dec. 31.
BOOKS
FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM by Umberto Eco (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich;
$22.95). Eco has woven together a novel that is even more intricate
and absorbing than his international best seller The Name of the
Rose. Beneath its endlessly diverting surface, this book
constitutes a litmus test for ways of looking at history and the
world.
THE TIMES ATLAS OF WORLD HISTORY (Hammond; $85). This classic
reference book, in its third edition, chronicles the history of
mankind through striking visuals and concise narratives. The new
version contains more than 600 handsome maps, as well as updated
sections on both antiquity and modern times. A must for history
buffs!
TELEVISION
MOYERS: THE PUBLIC MIND (PBS, debuting Nov. 8, 9 p.m. on most
stations). Public TV's resident big-think man is back with a
four-part series on the role of image in modern life, especially
as revealed through the media.
POLLY (NBC, Nov. 12, 7 p.m. EST). Will a batch of new songs and
The Cosby Show's Keshia Knight Pulliam be able to improve on the
old Disney film about an orphan with a cheery outlook? Don't be a
Pollyanna!
SMALL SACRIFICES (ABC, Nov. 12, 14, 9 p.m. EST). Farrah
Fawcett, whose Charlie's Angels days are an ever fading memory,
plays an Oregon mother accused of shooting her own children in
another ripped-from-the-headlines mini-series.