Short Takes

CINEMA

Avalanche Is Better Than None

SAY THIS FOR ALIVE, DIRECTOR FRANK Marshall's version of the Piers Paul Read best seller about a 1972 Andes plane crash that forced its surviving passengers to cannibalism: early on, the movie has a great avalanche. After that, it's all downhill. The acting (Ethan Hawke and Vincent Spano are the stars) starts at a pitch of whiny hysteria and rarely lets up. The dialogue, by ace playwright John Patrick Shanley, sounds as if poorly translated from the Spanish: "What have we done that God now asks us to eat the bodies of our own dead friends?" Dissing aside, that makes for a poignant ethical dilemma and a telling religious metaphor. But Alive strands its theme of haunted heroism -- what's inside a man that compels him to survive -- in a snowbank of failed ambitions.

THEATER

Great White Spoof

ELEVEN YEARS AFTER TURNING OUT HIS first, delicious spoof of big-time musicals, Gerard Alessandrini is still skewering away -- wicked as ever. His 12th and latest off-Broadway review, FORBIDDEN BROADWAY 1993, is as up to date as Kansas City and as funny as anything that happened on the way to the forum. New shows (the flop Anna Karenina, Patti LuPone in the not-even-yet-produced Sunset Boulevard) are raked over the coals; old chestnuts (a frenzied Les Miz, a nontraditional Miss Saigon) are freshly roasted. The song titles alone delight (to the tune of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, a mock Mandy Patinkin sings Somewhat Overindulgent; the stars of the Gershwins' Crazy for You croon Replaceable You); the four protean performers are the tops.

BOOKS

Country Spirals

A HOMEGROWN COUNTRY STORYTELLER commences with Cousin Sarah's cork leg, then ramifies: she had a great-uncle whose daughter ran off with a trombone player, who had a half-sister who . . . T.R. Pearson's skilled and artful variant moves in great, loopy spirals of anecdote, so that every now and then the apparently aimless stagger of narration swirls briefly to within sight of the original, stated objective. In the case of CRY ME A RIVER (Henry Holt; $22), this is the murder of a cop in a Southern town, told bemusedly by one of his colleagues. This sixth novel by the author of A Short History of a Small Place assays out at about one-fifth exasperation and four-fifths eye-rolling, down- home comedy.

DANCE

Down, Dirty and Delightful

ITS CREATORS HAVE DESCRIBED JAZZ, which premiered at the NEW YORK CITY BALLET last week, as "about America," with musical references to black history, Indian tribes and such. Don't worry about the politics: there isn't any. This six-part dance suite is set to a yawping, march-based score by Wynton Marsalis and played by the trumpeter and his band. The choreography, by City Ballet's artistic director, Peter Martins, is pure syncopated glitz -- down, dirty and eye dazzling. It's an occasion for some of the company's stars -- led by Yvonne Borree, as perky as a coffeemaker -- to slink and stretch, vamp and vogue, wiggle their butts and show off. You'd think Bob Fosse's Broadway rather than George Balanchine's Lincoln Center was their spiritual home. Catch Jazz if you can: flash trash doesn't come better.

TELEVISION

Using Their Heads

WHAT'S THIS? A TV SHOW FOR TEENS starring teens that assumes kids have brains? A show convinced that Marky Mark fans think about more things than dating and dancing? Must be public TV -- and it is. CLUB CONNECT, a four-year-old series produced by Detroit's WTVS, is going national this month on PBS. The half-hour comedy-info-musical show entertains while it enlightens on such topics as getting a job, avoiding AIDS and cleaning up the planet. With quick-cut graphics and a hip-hopping sound track, Club Connect has MTV style and better- than-MTV substance.