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<text id=91TT2677>
<title>
Dec. 02, 1991: Critics' Voices
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
Dec. 02, 1991 Pearl Harbor:Day of Infamy
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
CRITICS' VOICES, Page 14
</hdr><body>
<p> MOVIES
</p>
<p> BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. One day your kids will be taking
their kids to this sumptuous Disney cartoon. Adults will be
touched too, by a parable about the tyranny of convention and
the liberation of love. It's also about magic mirrors, singing
candlesticks and the art of drawing pictures that move people.
A fairy tale for all ages.
</p>
<p> PROSPERO'S BOOKS. Shakespeare illustrated by Peter
Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover). Not the
British director's best film but certainly his most: two
chockablock hours of Sir John Gielgud intoning The Tempest while
surrounded by naked babes and boys. It's as if God lived in the
Playboy Mansion. The true version of this coffee-table film is
the accompanying book: script, photos and drawings.
</p>
<p> MALA NOCHE. Come to the wild side of...well, Portland,
Ore., for a drugged-out slice of lice in artfully grungy black
and white. The first feature by Gus Van Sant, who was later
beloved by critics for Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private
Idaho, this 1988 homo-erratic melodrama remains his boldest and
best.
</p>
<p> BOOKS
</p>
<p> THE RUNAWAY SOUL by Harold Brodkey (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux; $30). Perhaps the most anticipated first novel in
history, the volatile short-story writer's magnum opus--nearly
30 years in the making--is at times precious, incoherent and
self-indulgent.
</p>
<p> A THOUSAND ACRES by Jane Smiley (Knopf; $23). Based on a
family feud over inherited farmland in Iowa, this modern-day
King Lear has an exhilarating sense of place and a sheer
Americanness that give it its own soul and roots.
</p>
<p> TELEVISION
</p>
<p> MTV 10 (ABC, Nov. 27, 9 p.m. EST). Michael Jackson,
Madonna and a few other stars you may have heard of join in the
music channel's 10th anniversary celebration.
</p>
<p> E.T., THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (CBS, Nov. 28, 8 p.m. EST).
The most popular movie of all time makes its television debut--on Thanksgiving night, when many families are otherwise
occupied. Looks like it will be pumpkin pie in front of the tube
this year.
</p>
<p> GARRISON KEILLOR'S HOME (PBS, Nov. 29, 9 p.m. on most
stations). Lake Wobegon's favorite son brings his folksy radio
humor to TV in the first of three specials. Along with a Keillor
monologue on the death of Buddy Holly, Bobby McFerrin offers a
nifty a cappella version of The Wizard of Oz.
</p>
<p> MUSIC
</p>
<p> PHIL SPECTOR: BACK TO MONO (1958-1969) (Phil Spector
Records Inc./Abkco). The Wagner of rock, celebrating his own
Wall of Sound glory, in a four-CD box featuring 60 of his
biggest hits and wildest productions. This is rock at its
grandest and giddiest. Spanning nearly a quarter-century,
classics like Be My Baby and Then He Kissed Me are three-minute
operas of teen passion, which have endured because of the
grandeur and unapologetic delirium of the Spector style. His
production techniques are elaborate and near legendary, but even
if they could be duplicated, it wouldn't be the same. The Wall
of Sound may have been created in the studio, but it's truly the
fragile insulation around Spector's wild heart.
</p>
<p> MAJEK FASHEK: SPIRIT OF LOVE (Interscope). Well, as Bob
Marley used to sing, "one love, one heart." Here's a wonderful,
soulful singer from Nigeria who's a master of those gentle
African rhythms from which Paul Simon drew such inspiration.
Fashek sounds distinctly Jamaican into the bargain--not unlike
Marley, in fact--and writes funky tunes with a spry political
spirit and a winning sense of humor.
</p>
<p> O MISTRESS MINE (Dorian Recordings). These 27 English lute
songs, many composed by John Dowland (1563-1626), possess a
timeless charm and pith that are captured with effortless grace
by the remarkable lutenist Ronn McFarlane and Frederick Urrey's
sweet tenor.
</p>
<p> THEATER
</p>
<p> PERICLES. Last year film star Campbell Scott (Longtime
Companion, Dying Young) was an extraordinary Hamlet at San
Diego's Old Globe, proving himself a fit heir to his parents,
George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst. Now he is at New York
City's Public Theater, portraying another Shakespearean royal
in a psychologically rich but chaotic narrative, perhaps the
Bard's weakest.
</p>
<p> NIGHT DANCE. Novelist Reynolds Price (Kate Vaiden) proved
himself a splendid playwright in New Music, a trilogy about the
tarnishing and disillusionment of a golden boy. Staged at the
Cleveland Play House in 1989, it deserved a wider life. Now at
least the poignant middle play is being mounted off-Broadway.
</p>
<p> THE POINT. Harry Nilsson's 1971 animated video fantasy
about prejudice has been imaginatively adapted for a small stage
in Los Angeles. The show, equally suitable for children and
parents, blends broad acting, balloon characters, Bunraku-style
puppetry, fog effects, strobe lighting and choreography by
former Martha Graham troupe member Janet Eilber.
</p>
<p> MY YIDDISHE MOMA
</p>
<p> They were made in Poland, Austria, the Soviet Union and
even rural New Jersey, but they spoke a common language to a
most uncommon people. They were YIDDISH FILMS--affectionate,
often artless, now priceless curios of the '20s and '30s. In
musicals (like Molly Picon's charming Yiddle with His Fiddle)
and melodramas (Maurice Schwartz's powerful Uncle Moses), they
traced the wanderings of Jews from the village shtetl to the
urban ghetto and beyond. During World War II, the genre nearly
vanished, along with many of those who produced and patronized
it. As director Joseph Green says in the new documentary The
Yiddish Cinema, "Six million of my best customers perished."
Never again. Thanks to restoration magic performed by the
National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, this
movie heritage is being celebrated in a 38-feature retrospective
at New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), through Jan. 14,
and in an invaluable critical history, J. Hoberman's Bridge of
Light (Schocken Books; $40). Go. Read. Enjoy. It couldn't hurt.
</p>
<p>BY TIME'S REVIEWERS. Compiled by Linda Williams.
</p>
</body></article>
</text>