Critics' Voices

By Compiled by Andrea Sachs

ART

CANALETTO, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. In Canaletto one sees Venice, and vice versa, since the artist's luminous, teeming canvases have for two centuries defined the city's great vistas and waterways in the public imagination. Through Jan. 21.

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, National Gallery of Art, Washington. The aptly named Church (1826-1900) created vast landscapes expressing the spiritual awe Americans once felt before their new continent as nature's cathedral, a vision of earthly paradise. Through Jan. 28.

TELEVISION

DINNER AT EIGHT (TNT, Dec. 11, 8 p.m. EST). Ted Turner isn't content with resurrecting old MGM classics on his newest cable channel; he is remaking them as well. Lauren Bacall, Ellen Greene and Harry Hamlin dine at the table where Marie Dressler, Jean Harlow and John Barrymore once sat.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (CBS, Dec. 12, 9 p.m. EST). This literate fantasy series about a sensitive monster living beneath the streets of New York City was scuttled by low ratings. But it is back with a twist: the eponymous beauty, played by Linda Hamilton, is kidnaped and killed. Anyone got a new title?

MOVIES

HARLEM NIGHTS. Making his directing debut, Eddie Murphy can't seem to decide whether to go for laughs or melodrama. His movie about the great Harlem nightclubs that flourished in the '30s generates a lot of foul-mouthed noise but only fitful, murky light.

THE LITTLE MERMAID. You could wish upon a star and not conjure up a more joyous animated movie than this graceful retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen tale. In 82 minutes, it reclaims the movie house as a dream palace and the big screen as a window into enchantment.

MUSIC

WARREN ZEVON: TRANSVERSE CITY (Virgin). The nastiest and least predictable of the California singer-songwriters opens hard with a dour, futuristic suite of three tunes inspired by cyberpunk sci-fi, then draws his usual fine satiric bead on a range of subjects from perestroika to malling.

THE GIPSY KINGS: MOSAIQUE (Elektra). Overbearing ethnic melodies from a group that had one of last year's fluke successes. If the Kings started toward your table in a restaurant, fiddling madly, you'd pay the maitre d' twice the price of this album to keep them away.

BOOKS

SPY LINE by Len Deighton (Knopf; $18.95). When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, it landed on Deighton, who was caught in mid-trilogy about a British agent in the divided city whose wife has left him to set up her own spy shop on the east side of the Wall. A competent thriller that seems just a little quaint.

TRUST by George V. Higgins (Henry Holt; $18.95). Another installment of petty schemers and low-life banter for Higgins fans, but other readers will feel it takes far too long for the protagonist, a crooked used-car salesman, to get his comeuppance.

THEATER

THE CIRCLE. Rex Harrison, 81, gives an elegantly understated turn in Somerset Maugham's beguiling Broadway comedy of marital scandal and autumnal passion. Stewart Granger and Glynis Johns co-star.

THE PIANO LESSON. August Wilson's Broadway-bound drama, at Washington's Kennedy Center, is the finest work yet from the foremost active American playwright, a heart-rending family debate over how to deal with the legacy of slavery.

ETC.

TONY WALTON: DESIGNING FOR STAGE AND SCREEN. Dozens of intricate models by designer Tony Walton are on view at New York City's American Museum of the Moving Image. Triple-threat Walton has an Oscar, two Tonys and an Emmy for his work in film, theater and television. Whether creating a gleaming silver-and- white Deco hotel room for Lend Me a Tenor or a ship caught in The Tempest's hurricane, Walton gives life to a world suggested by words. Through August 1990.

WINES

It's often the most overhyped oenological event of the year. In 1989, however, the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau -- the early fermented version of France's most popular red bistro wine -- is something to celebrate. Tart and short- lived in off-vintages, this year's Nouveau is fresh (as it should be), fruity (ditto) and surprisingly well rounded -- the best wine they have made, growers say, since 1985. Nouveau's good structure bodes well for the quality of the longer-lasting (five years or more), higher-priced Beaujolaises bearing such village names as Brouilly, Chenas, Julienas and Morgon, which will arrive in the U.S. in early March. Mommessin and Prosper Maufoux are reliable producers of Nouveau, but the IBM of the trade is Georges Duboeuf, whose assorted bottlings, most bearing his distinctive white, flower-bedecked label, sold 400,000 cases in the U.S. last year.