Critics' Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers. Compiled by Andrea Sachs

MOVIES

DEAD AGAIN. Kenneth Branagh, Shakespearean phenom of the London stage, hatched an improbable hit from this no-star film noir. Branagh has fun ransacking Hitchcock's skeleton closet, and his wife Emma Thompson is ravishing as the doomed heroine, but there's not much here to prop up a preposterous plot.

SEX, DRUGS, ROCK & ROLL. Eric Bogosian is the Swinburne of sleaze. The master monologuist finds fetid poetry in the butt ends of urban American lives: street people, soul-dead tough guys, ex-dopester rock stars. They crowd the stage in this one-man show, a 1990 off-Broadway hit artfully filmed by director John McNaughton.

EATING. Since its release in May, Henry Jaglom's "serious comedy about food" has earned a fervent cult audience. A melange of masochists, we'd say, since the mostly young, blond and svelte women in the cast mostly complain about how fat they are. Of time-capsule value only, to remind future generations of '90s America's obsession with appearance.

BOOKS

THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS by Richard Powers (Morrow; $25). This complex novel demands a lot from readers, but its payoff is immense: two love stories coiled intricately around a thrilling intellectual quest to find nothing less than the meaning of life.

SAINT MAYBE by Anne Tyler (Knopf; $22). In her 12th novel, Tyler turns her ) generous sympathies and formidable skills to an investigation of the sources and aftereffects -- both comic and profound -- of religious faith.

MUSIC

ROBBIE ROBERTSON: STORYVILLE (Geffen). "Catch a thrill," Robertson sings in Go Back to Your Woods, and there isn't a bigger or better thrill to be heard anywhere right now than this ravishing new collection of songs that capture the fragile magic of American mythology and transform it into an eldritch excursion through the collective rock unconscious. Whew! Oh, mustn't forget: it really jumps too.

WYNTON MARSALIS: SOUL GESTURES IN SOUTHERN BLUE (Columbia). This three-CD series, recorded in 1987 and 1988, is an ambitious exploration of the most basic jazz idiom: the blues. The 18 sides mark Marsalis' transition from aggressive post-'60s modernism to a more sensual, lyrical style that draws on the work of past masters while forging a personal -- and thoroughly contemporary -- sound.

FREDDIE HUBBARD: BOLIVIA (Musicmasters). Hubbard seasons his dazzling trumpet with some Latin American spice in one of the most listenable jazz albums of the year.

TELEVISION

IRAN: DAYS OF CRISIS (TNT, Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 8 p.m. EDT). The crisis before last -- or was it the one before that? An earnest but uninspired docudrama about the events that led up to and followed the Khomeini revolution and the taking of American hostages.

LBJ (PBS, Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 9 p.m. on most stations). Love him or hate him, Lyndon Johnson continues to fascinate biographers. This four-hour PBS documentary provides an evenhanded, engrossing recap of his life, career and contradictions.

PLAYED IN THE USA (Learning Channel, debuting Oct. 6, 10 p.m. EDT). Martin Sheen is host for a 13-week series of documentaries and short films, produced by Stevenson Palfi and Blaine Dunlap, celebrating American music, from the making of the cast album for Company to profiles of singer Eartha Kitt, jazz/ rock fiddler Papa John Creach and legendary bassist and composer Charles Mingus.

ART

THE ART OF BABAR, National Academy of Design, New York City. Nearly 150 drawings and watercolors from the adventures of everybody's favorite elephant king by his personal biographers, Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff, along with art workshops for children, readings and a lecture. Through Nov. 3.

BEFORE FREEDOM CAME: AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIFE IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH, 1790-1865, Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond. More than 300 paintings, textiles and musical instruments that explore the lives of slaves and free blacks from the 18th century to the end of the Civil War. Through Dec. 13.

ETCETERA

CITIZEN KANE (T.H.E.). Fifty years after Charles Foster Kane whispered "Rosebud" and died, Turner Home Entertainment is offering a newly restored version of the Orson Welles classic in four different commemorative gift packs, including a half-hour documentary, the original trailer and even a script.

THE CARNEGIE HALL MUSEUM. New York City's refurbished musical mecca celebrates its centennial with a new permanent exhibit of 200 items. Included are such memorabilia as Toscanini's baton, Benny Goodman's clarinet and a 1964 debut program autographed by the Beatles.

FORBIDDEN BROADWAY

Imagine a duet of dueling megastars: the chandelier from Phantom of the Opera and the helicopter from Miss Saigon. Or a dance number that redubs Tommy Tune's somber, doomy Grand Hotel as Grim Hotel. Or a patter song to the tune of Brush Up Your Shakespeare, in which I Hate Hamlet star Nicol Williamson celebrates the joys of humbling his co-stars. This sort of humor -- a cunning blend of insiderish wit and broad clowning -- has made Forbidden Broadway an institution. Since 1982 it has played off-Broadway, enjoying the goodwill and legal cooperation of the very creators it spoofs, and has spawned a national tour and satellite troupes from Los Angeles to London. In the new, eighth edition, everyone shines. Susanne Blakeslee zings Julie Andrews' singing on the Tony Awards in I Couldn't Hit That Note. Mary Denise Bentley skewers Tyne Daly's performance as Mama Rose in Gypsy. Herndon Lackey is a melodramatizing Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, and Jeff Lyons is Jackie Mason -- but more so.