Critics' Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers. Compiled by Andrea Sachs

MOVIES

MILLER'S CROSSING and GOODFELLAS. A pair of aces about the Mob. The first film, from Joel and Ethan Coen, has gangsters of the '20s spitting out aphorisms and wrestling with ethics. The second, Martin Scorsese's bullet train of a cautionary comedy, shows the Mafia in its rapacious decline. Both make offers no moviegoer should refuse.

HARDWARE. A junk sculpture turns into a ravening home wrecker in this spiky Brit sci-fi parable. First-time filmmaker Richard Stanley has an eye for the macabre and a mind full of undigested ideas. Oh, well, next time . . . This time he has made an arresting exercise in horror on the cheap.

TEXASVILLE. The sequel to The Last Picture Show, with the same cast (including Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd) and the same director (Peter Bogdanovich). That old Texas movie house should have stayed closed.

MUSIC

GEORGE MICHAEL: LISTEN WITHOUT PREJUDICE, VOL. 1 (Columbia). Michael's previous album, Faith, was a monster hit, and the biz expects this new record to push him into rock's commercial pantheon. Maybe. It's a schizy piece of work: part bombast, part hypercharged pop. Pop prevails, but it's a struggle.

SITTING PRETTY (New World Records). Conductor John McGlinn deserves some kind of sainthood for resurrecting this 1924 Jerome Kern delight. Amid its jolly ebullience, moments of gentler lyricism look ahead to such works as Show Boat and Roberta. Perfectly cast and impossible to resist.

ROY HARGROVE: DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH (Novus). Watch out, Wynton! This 20-year- old trumpet phenomenon from Waco, Texas, is nipping at your heels with a horn full of soul and fire. A well-crafted album, featuring penetrating solo work from alto-saxman Antonio Hart and three strong compositions by pianist Geoffrey Keezer.

TELEVISION

MAJOR LEAGUE PLAYOFFS

(CBS, starting Oct. 4, 8 p.m. EDT). For baseball fans, it's all CBS from now on. Jack Buck and Dick Stockton will handle the play-by-play for the network's first postseason coverage in 40 years.

RACE TO SAVE THE PLANET

(PBS, Oct. 7-11, 9 p.m. on most stations). Everything you wanted to know about the environment but were afraid to find out, in 10 hours with Meryl Streep as host. (The series is being repeated in weekly hour-long segments on Thursday evenings.)

WHEN YOU REMEMBER ME

(ABC, Oct. 7, 9 p.m. EDT). A youngster with muscular dystrophy battles against "inhumane" treatment in nursing homes. Fred Savage (The Wonder Years) stars in this junior-varsity version of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

THEATER

MICHAEL FEINSTEIN. Songs from Broadway musicals may never again top the pop charts, but no other artist around understands better why they used to. Articulate in what he says and emotionally evocative in what he sings, Feinstein returns to Broadway for a four-week solo engagement.

CLASSICS IN CONTEXT.

Among the most novel programs by any U.S. regional troupe is the annual mini- festival in which Actors Theater of Louisville focuses on some slice of the (typically European) past. This year's theme, Italian traditions in tragedy and comedy, embraces not only plays but also opera, ballet, symphony concerts, art exhibits and more. Through Oct. 29.

ART

RECKONING WITH WINSLOW HOMER: HIS LATE PAINTINGS AND THEIR INFLUENCE, Cleveland Museum of Art. Often considered an isolated original, Homer is here seen as a figure of continuity. Fifteen of his views of the Maine coast are hung alongside 44 works by painters on whom he left his mark -- among them John Sloan, Edward Hopper and John Marin. Through Nov. 18.

KAZIMIR MALEVICH, 1878-1935, National Gallery of Art, Washington. The biggest U.S. retrospective yet of a brilliant, protean member of the Russian avant- garde, too long shrouded in Soviet ideological disfavor. Through Nov. 4.

ET CETERA

THE CLASSICAL DANCE COMPANY OF CAMBODIA.

The ancient arts of Cambodian dance and music, all but annihilated by the Khmer Rouge, are preserved in these graceful, vivid performances. At New York City's Joyce Theater, Oct. 9-14.

TEXAS STATE FAIR, Dallas. Grab your 10-gallon hat for the largest (1989 attendance: 3.5 million) and splashiest state fair in the U.S. Texas-scale events include laser shows, pig races, college football in the Cotton Bowl and the entire touring company of the musical Cats. Through Oct. 21.

TREASURES OF ETON COLLEGE LIBRARY: 550 YEARS OF COLLECTING, the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City. For the first time in the U.S., books, manuscripts, drawings and objects from the famous college (prep school, to Americans) that has been molding the English elite since 1440. Among the choice displays: the holograph of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), by onetime Eton schoolboy Thomas Gray. Through Nov. 25.

LIST-O-MANIA

THE LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN BOOK OF TOP TEN LISTS (Pocket Books; $8.95). Ever since they were introduced in 1985, Letterman's nightly Top 10 lists have been his show's most reliable laugh getters, a shrewd mix of topical satire and frat-house nuttiness. Recycled in book form, they are just as funny to read. Here again are Jim Bakker's Top 10 Pickup Lines ("Pray here often?"; "Your eyes are the same color as my leisure suit"), Princess Diana's Top 10 Complaints about Prince Charles (always calls Pizza Hut before we've decided on topping we want; that phony British accent), and the Top 10 Least Popular Attractions at Disney World (Oprah Mountain; Peter Pan's All- Male Cinema; Muggyland). For connoisseurs, there's the very first list (Top 10 Words That Almost Rhyme with Peas); for doubters, a list on the back cover explaining the Top 10 Reasons to Buy This Book (No. 5: you're mentioned on page 43). Maybe not the funniest book ever written, but certainly in the Top 10.