Critics' Choice

TELEVISION

STAND AND DELIVER (PBS, March 15, 8 p.m. on most stations). Edward James Olmos is up for an Academy Award for his performance as a dedicated inner-city math teacher in this fact-based film, produced for American Playhouse and now having its TV debut.

THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE (ABC, March 19 and 20, 9 p.m. EST). Oprah Winfrey, in the days before Optifast, plays one of seven women enduring the trials of tenement life in this two-part TV movie. The talk-show superstar was also co- executive producer.

BERNSTEIN AT 70 (PBS, March 19, 9 p.m. on most stations). A musical tribute, held at Tanglewood last August, featuring Beverly Sills, Bobby McFerrin, Betty Comden and many other admirers from the music world.

MOVIES

THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. Lovers waltz in midair, a servant (Eric Idle) outruns a speeding bullet, and the King of the Moon (Robin Williams) literally loses his head in this wonder-filled fantasy from Terry Gilliam, late of Brazil.

NEW YORK STORIES. In this trio of vignettes, Francis Coppola belly flops with his tale of rich kids. Two out of three ain't bad: Martin Scorsese's sketch of a downtown painter and Woody Allen's comedy about the ultimate Jewish mother.

ART

ROBERT ADAMS: PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE AMERICAN WEST, Philadelphia Museum of Art. A tribute to the master photographer of an imperiled landscape, in which nature's beauty is elbowed aside by parking lots, trash and suburban sprawl. Through April 16.

BOOKS

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS by John Updike (Knopf; $18.95). A wry, haunting memoir by an author who decided while he was still a young man that the printed word would disguise his flaws, only to learn that success leaves one painfully exposed.

BILLY BATHGATE by E.L. Doctorow (Random House; $19.95). A fictional Bronx boy, circa 1935, is accepted into the inner councils of the infamous Dutch Schultz gang and survives murderous adventures to tell a chilling and incendiary tale.