MUSIC
BRANFORD MARSALIS: TRIO JEEPY (Columbia). Some nice moments (The Nearness of You, Gutbucket Steepy), but let's face it: slick imitations of Bird, Coltrane and Ben Webster do not a jazz genius make. Forget the liner-note hype, Jeepy, and come back when you've paid some dues.
THE GODFATHERS: MORE SONGS ABOUT LOVE & HATE (Epic). High spirits mix it up with mean spirits and bring forth a hot record with a shot of bile.
N.W.A.: STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (Priority). Rap that's angry, scary and tougher than the hard L.A. streets it comes from. Lots of beat, lots of truth and no pity to spare.
MAHLER: SYMPHONIE NO. 1 (Deutsche Grammophon). The young Lenny reintroduced Mahler; maestro Bernstein now leads the Concertgebou Orchestra in a re-examination of the composer's kaleidoscopic genius.
MOVIES
WIRED. The saddest thing about John Belushi's death might be this requiem -- the movie Hollywood tried to stop. Next time, guys, try harder.
COOKIE. English teenager Emily Lloyd brings an acute ear and a fetching presence to her role as a Brooklyn punkster in this comedy about a Mafia don (Peter Falk) with a score to settle and a wayward daughter to raise.
DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES. Three children in a Liverpool family literally sing their way through two decades of air raids, poverty and a father's sere brutality. Prepare to be thrilled, perplexed, horrified, haunted.
THEATER
THE LADY IN QUESTION. Just what is the alleged pleasure of a drag show? If the leading "lady" is unconvincing, it's gross. If he's too convincing, there's no coy guessing game. And if he's just campy enough, the joke is over in five minutes. Alas, this off-Broadway farce (about Hitler and the Holocaust, yet!) lasts two hours.
LOVE LETTERS. On a bare stage, an actor and an actress read aloud, capturing in two hours the rich decades of two lives. A cast that changes every week (scheduled: Colleen Dewhurst, Jason Robards and Kate Nelligan) graces A.R. Gurney's wry off-Broadway play.
SWEENEY TODD. Stephen Sondheim's unlikeliest musical, a sympathetic look at a murderous barber and at the woman who recycles his victims as meat pies, returns to Broadway in a shrewdly staged and highly tuneful chamber version.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF LUCK. The drifters, gamblers and hopeless hustlers in Marlane Meyer's desert panorama mingle the doomed banality of Sam Shepard characters with the quixotic blessings found in William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life. At the Los Angeles Theater Center.
MADAME SHERRY. Connecticut's revival-oriented Goodspeed Opera House unearths another musical charmer about love, money and mistaken identity.
ART
ARNULF RAINER, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. A retrospective of the work since 1950 of a leading Viennese avant-gardist, including "overpaintings" of photographs, death masks and a series of variations on the crucifixion. Through Oct. 15.
FIFTEEN YEARS OF COLLECTING, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. The Whitney claims the world's most comprehensive gathering of 20th century American art; this potpourri of works acquired since 1972 amply reflects its riches. Through Oct. 15.
ROBERT MOSKOWITZ, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington. Long in the shadow of contemporaries like Jasper Johns, this 54-year-old American, whose canvases feature the interplay of recognizable images and abstraction, gets his first museum retrospective. Through Sept. 17.
BOOKS
A NATURAL CURIOSITY by Margaret Drabble (Viking; $19.95). In a sequel to The Radiant Way (1987), the author offers a Victorian-style novel about some decidedly contemporary English women and men.
HARP by John Gregory Dunne (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). Novelist Dunne (True Confessions) fesses up that his own barbed style and snappish instincts have roots in an immigrant Irish heritage in which he learned that writing well is the best revenge.
NICE WORK by David Lodge (Viking; $18.95). A funny, adroit novel about an executive in one of Britain's rust-belt factories and the feminist lecturer who does field research on his old-fashioned methods.
TELEVISION
INTIFADA: THE PALESTINIANS AND ISRAEL (PBS, Sept. 6, 9 p.m. on most stations). The documentary Days of Rage, Jo Franklin-Trout's sympathetic look at the Palestinian uprising, has stirred gales of protest. PBS viewers can see it, with a discussion led by Hodding Carter.
ON THE TELEVISION (Nick at Nite, debuting Sept. 9, 11 p.m. EDT). Nick at Nite, the home of campy old TV shows like Donna Reed and Mister Ed, tries its first original series, a half-hour satirical look at -- what else? -- campy old TV shows.
MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL (ABC, Sept. 11, 8 p.m. EDT). They never quite recovered from the loss of Howard and Dandy Don, but ABC's gridiron clashes are about to celebrate their 20th year on the air. A TV anniversary, of course, means a special, which precedes tonight's season opener between the New York Giants and Washington Redskins.