Short Takes

MAGAZINES

New Menu at Tina's Place

WE HAVE JUST HEARD FROM OUR OLD friend the Magazine Maven. "The NEW YORKER," he writes, "is the journalistic equivalent of a restaurant under new management. The new maitresse d' is Tina Brown, lately of Vanity Fair, where she offered a heady mix of roadhouse and haute cuisine. She has replaced Robert Gottlieb, whose fern-bar ambiance left customers hungry for less. Brown's detractors have been hoping for the souffles to fall and the drinks to be watered at Tina's Place, but her debut last week will disappoint them.

"True, there is James Wolcott's ghastly hype-hop prose: ' "Going to Extremes" . . . mentholates the senses like a Club Med ad.' Plus some slipshod editing: two Dan Quayle 'potatoe' jokes. But broken columns, boxed poems and spots of color and photographs enhance rather than vulgarize. Pieces are shorter than before but cut deeper -- especially 'News from Hell,' concerning the events in Sarajevo by new contributor Anna Husarska. Yet tradition has not been entirely scrapped: see Roger Angell's valedictory to Fay Vincent, recently decapitated commissioner of baseball. Miraculously, after a long arid spell the cartoons are funny again -- particularly those by Lee Lorenz, Danny Shanahan and Leo Cullum ('This is my husband, Greg, and Greg's jacket from a previous marriage').

"John Updike, who has served under three New Yorker managements, contributes 'Playing with Dynamite,' a poignant tale of aging in the '90s. Its last six words might describe the current situation at the New Yorker: '. . . between chaos and an airier pantheon.' It is too early for a prediction, but I'd bet pantheon."

MUSIC

The Royal Cello

THE GREAT CATALAN CELLIST PABLO CASALS is rightly credited with elevating the cello to its royal status as a solo instrument, so it is only fitting that Pearl records pays him homage by beginning its six-CD set, The Recorded Cello: The History of the Cello on Record, with his evocative 1915 performance of Schumann's Traumerei. Among the 74 other masters represented here are Enrico Mainardi, whose version of Dvorak's Concerto in B minor is stately and deeply hued; and Gregor Piatigorsky, playing variations on Paganini with heart- skipping joy. All the tracks demonstrate the delicate timbres and subtle nuances that make the cello one of the most majestic of all instruments.

BOOKS

Lifesaving Instruction

HERE IS THE UNLIKELIEST GOOD NOVEL of the year. The wambling hero of Walter Kirn's SHE NEEDED ME (Pocket Books; $20) is a pale young fellow named Weaver % Walquist, who, becalmed and lacking direction, joins the antiabortion protest squad of an evangelical church in St. Paul, Minnesota. He collides with a pregnant young woman named Kim during a protest at an abortion clinic, and at first is attracted to the idea of saving her fetus and her soul. Then, faintly -- a puff of wind ruffles the calm -- he is attracted to her. Kirn, author of a 1990 story collection, My Hard Bargain, plays fair with both the churchly and the wicked -- middling people in an everyday predicament. His story is shrewd and wryly amusing.

CINEMA

Heroic Deeds

IN THE NOT-SO-BRAVE NEW WORLD ACcording to HERO, it requires two men to equal one classic Frank Capra protagonist of the Deeds-Doe-Smith variety. There is small-time thief Bernie LaPlante (Dustin Hoffman), who unaccountably rescues victims of a plane crash. Then there is homeless John Bubber (Andy Garcia), who gets the credit for so doing and becomes a media dream. Geena Davis is the ambitious TV reporter caught in the contradictory flow of this dark, quirky, excellent comedy. Writer David Webb Peoples (Unforgiven) overturns the cliches of genre and character, and director Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette) ingeniously twists Capra-esque imagery to create an exhilarating meditation on gallantry as it is practiced and perceived today.