CINEMA

Cold Wind in August. Good hard-mouth dialogue and a superb performance by Lola Albright will persuade most viewers to ignore the flaws in this low-budget film about a stripper's love for a 17-year-old boy.

The Sand Castle. A gay and whimsical satire on sun worshipers and beach-bum muscle growers, centering on a little boy who builds a castle in the sand.

The Honeymoon Machine. This is the Hollywood machine in a rare moment of felicitous clank, turning out a slick, quick, funny comedy about sailors, girls, a roulette table and a computing machine. With Steve McQueen and Paula Prentiss.

Fate of a Man (in Russian). Sergei Bondarchuk, a top Soviet film maker, directs his own powerful performance in this freely sentimental story of a soldier who is reduced to flotsam by war, then made whole again by the love of an orphan.

Misty. Good fun for the slingshot set; the story of two children who plot to buy a wild pony.

The Parent Trap. Cute, 13-year-old identical twins (Hayley Mills, in both cases), who have been separated since birth, connive to rehitch their divorced parents, with results that are surprisingly entertaining.

Secrets of Women (in Swedish). Ingmar Bergman's first comedy, about the satisfied husbands of four dissatisfied wives.

TELEVISION

Thurs., Aug. 17

Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.).*John Barrymore doubling as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Fri., Aug. 18

Berlin: Act of War? (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). This CBS News special presents the background of the current Berlin crisis, including interviews with West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt and East Germany's Red Propaganda Chief Gerhart Eisler.

Person to Person (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Tonight the show visits the homes of Actor Roddy McDowall and Actress Julie Newmar.

Sat., Aug. 19

Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-7 p.m.). Playing for a $10,000 prize, Golfers Gary Player (Masters winner) and Arnold Palmer (British Open champion) swat it out in a match taped at St. Andrews, Scotland.

Sun., Aug. 20

Look Up and Live (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). A condensation of Henrik Ibsen's Brand.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Crisis at Munich retells the century's classic appeasement story. Repeat.

Tues., Aug. 22

Focus on America (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.).

A study of the special schools and special ized programs set up by New York City's school board.

Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Helen Hayes and Janice Rule star in Four Women in Black, a drama based on the true story of four nuns who survived an Apache attack and crossed the Mojave Desert to establish a hospital. Repeat.

THEATER

Straw Hat

Skowhegan, Me., Lakewood Theater: Martha Raye in Separate Rooms.

Kennebunkport, Me., Playhouse: The Marriage-Go-Round, with Our Miss (Eve) Arden.

Williamstown, Mass., Summer Theater: Toys in the Attic, with Anne Revere abandoning her Broadway role of the unworldly spinster Anna to attempt Irene Worth's cool, sophisticated Albertine.

Framingham, Mass., Carousel Theater: Hugh (Wyatt Earp) O'Brian rides again in Destry.

Stockbridge, Mass., Berkshire Playhouse: Gloria Grahame in Susannah and the Elders.

Warwick, R.I., Musical Theater: Broadway's 1944 blitzGrieg, Song of Norway.

Stratford, Conn., American Shakespeare Festival: As You Like It, Macbeth and Troilus and Cressida, the last in a pointless Civil War setting.

New York City, Central Park: Joseph Papp's excellent free Shakespeare Festival with A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Danville, Ky., Pioneer Theater: And All Men Kill, a new play by Albert Brenner.

Hillside, Ill., Melody Top Theater: Gordon and Sheila MacRae in Bloomer Girl.

Chicago, Drury Lane Theater: Thornton Wilder's Our Town, with Mr. & Mrs. Pat O'Brien.

Los Angeles, U.C.L.A. Theater: The West Coast premiere of Felicien Marceau's ironic comedy, The Egg.

Monterey, Calif., Wharf Theater and Opera House: Dame Judith Anderson in Woman Against the Gods.

Vancouver, B.C., Queen Elizabeth Theater: The International Festival presents the North American premiere of Giraudoux's Men, Women and Angels, with Uta Hagen.

Stratford, Ont., Stratford Festival: Love's Labour's Lost, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, The Pirates of Penzance and a new play, The Canvas Barricade, by Donald La-mount Jack.

Broadway

In midsummer Manhattan, when the humidity could float the Queen Mary up to the side entrance of the Waldorf, a Broadway production has to be exceedingly durable to survive, and, although the list of running plays has atrophied, summer visitors still have some good choices. Among the best from the past season, Jean Kerr's Mary, Mary continues with sellout houses, and Shelagh Delaney's raw and powerful A Taste of Honey is still on the boards, as are the musicals Camelot (Arthur and the Round Table), Carnival! (a Broadway version of the film Lili), and Irma La Douce (Parisian underworld). From the Pleistocene epoch: Fiorello!, a musical replanting of New York's Little Flower; The Sound of Music, the last and most sentimental work of Rodgers & Hammerstein; and, of course, My Fair Lady, by George Lerner and Bernard Loewe.

BOOKS

Best Reading The Way to Colonos, by Kay Cicellis. A young Greek writer has borrowed characters and situations loosely from Sophocles, and the result is a trio of remarkably good short stories, touched by tragedy.

The Judges of the Secret Court, by David Stacton. The author, a historical novelist (On a Balcony) of rare skill, writes a bitter account of the death of Assassin John Wilkes Booth and the trial and execution of the forlorn set of dupes and fools named as his fellow conspirators.

Household Ghosts, by James Kennaway. A sourly comic triangulation by a Scots author of the way men and women hurt each other; the wife is pretty, the husband admits that sex is not "my strong subject," and the other man is a brilliant, caddish scientist.

Jimmy Riddle, by Ian Brook. In a masterful spoof on the mess in Africa, chiefly at the expense of the retreating British Empire, the author proves himself a Tarzan of the japes.

The Making of the President 1960, by Theodore H. White. A superb job of reporting the last presidential campaign.

The Death of Tragedy, by George Steiner. Well equipped with caustic wit as well as learning, the author ably follows his subject from Aeschylus to Brecht.

The Spanish Civil War, by Hugh Thomas. The best account yet to appear of this sad and savage war, the truth of which, even more than the truth of most wars, has been buried by lies and lost allegiances.

The Faces of Justice, by Sybille Bedford. A sort of Baedeker of the European courtroom by a novelist (The Legacy) and writer of extraordinary insight, who shows how, in various countries, man treats man in the grip of the law.

Best Sellers ( SQRT previously included in TIME'S choice of Best Reading)

FICTION

1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (1)*

SQRT 2. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (2)

3. Mila 18, Uris (3)

4. The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck (4)

5. The Edge of Sadness, O'Connor (6)

6. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (7)

7. Tropic of Cancer, Miller (5)

8. Rembrandt, Schmitt (8)

9. A Shooting Star, Stegner

SQRT 10. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene

NONFICTION

SQRT 1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1)

2. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (2)

SQRT 3. The Making of the President 1960, White (3)

SQRT 4. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (5)

SQRT 5. The New English Bible (4)

SQRT 6. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, Kennan (7)

7. Inside Europe Today, Gunther (6)

8. Firsthand Report, Adams (9)

9. My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, Parks (8)

SQRT 10. The Spanish Civil War, Thomas

*Position on last week's list. *All times E.D.T.

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