Critics Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers. Compiled by Andrea Sachs

MOVIES

DICK TRACY. Lovely to look at (seven gorgeously orchestrated colors), delightful to hear (three terrific Stephen Sondheim songs), a pleasure to sit through. Warren Beatty's take on the tec is funny but not facetious, and Madonna sizzles as a vamp chanteuse. Pssst! -- this girl could be big in movies.

TOTAL RECALL. Someone has stolen Arnold Schwarzenegger's mind! No great loss: Arnold still has his body, which muscles its way through two planets and a death toll in the hundreds to deliver high-tech, high-octane entertainment. In every sense, the movie is bloody sensational.

ANOTHER 48 HRS. You know a movie is in trouble when always rumpled Nick Nolte looks to be in better shape than once sleek Eddie Murphy. A pity: the great black hope of the '80s seems to have phoned in his performance from a stretch limo on its way to ex-stardom.

BOOKS

THE BURDEN OF PROOF by Scott Turow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $22.95). The summer's hottest read by the Chicago attorney and best-selling author brings back Presumed Innocent defense lawyer Alejandro Stern, now faced with the mystery of his wife's suicide, a commodities-market scandal and the realization that justice is never blind when it gets too close to home.

WILDLIFE by Richard Ford (Atlantic Monthly Press; $18.95). A novel about a 16- year-old boy's coming of age in Montana during the 1960s, a time of oil boom and family disintegration, but also a time to begin understanding the world of grownups by observing their passions -- and mistakes.

THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL by Kingsley Amis (Summit; $18.95). Britain's sharpest satirist has not lost his edge in this social comedy about a retired librarian who is busier than ever coping with modern inconveniences.

THEATER

FURTHER MO'. In this sprightly off-Broadway sequel to One Mo' Time, written and directed by Vernel Bagneris, long-legged, loose-jointed Papa Du (Bagneris) leads his squabbling trio of red-hot mamas through a re-creation of black vaudeville in the 1920s. Sandra Reaves-Phillips is a standout as Big Bertha, and the five-piece band, led by clarinetist Orange Kellin, delivers up a joyous mix of blues and ragtime that leaves the audience shouting for mo'.

THE CEMETERY CLUB. This Broadway comedy about three Jewish widows who meet every month to visit their husbands' graves is sentimental and sometimes dumb, but also sweet, funny and superbly played by Eileen Heckart as a would-be vamp and Elizabeth Franz as a proper lady seeking a new life.

COBB. Playwright Lee Blessing (A Walk in the Woods) joins forces with director Lloyd Richards (Fences) for a complex, intriguing look into the mystique of that nonpareil player and apparent racist, Ty Cobb, at San Diego's Old Globe Theater.

MUSIC

SOCIAL DISTORTION: SOCIAL DISTORTION (Epic). Had it with those dance divas? Try a dose of this. Real chainsaw-massacre modernist punk, laid on heavy but built for speed. Let It Be Me is guaranteed to produce feedback in your gold fillings.

WYNTON MARSALIS: THE RESOLUTION OF ROMANCE (Columbia). How long can Wynton Marsalis keep getting better? His latest trip to the studio, this time accompanied by his father Ellis on piano, has produced what may be Wynton's best recording to date. His breathy lyricism on such standards as Where or When, The Very Thought of You, and I Cover the Waterfront will surprise those who dismiss the young man from New Orleans as a dazzling but cold technician.

TELEVISION

DAYTIME EMMY AWARDS

(ABC, June 28, 3 p.m. EDT). Another chapter in that never ending soap opera: Will Susan (eleventh-nomination) Lucci finally win an award?

PRESTON STURGES: THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN DREAMER (PBS, July 2, 9 p.m. on most stations). Hollywood's brilliant burnout, who created a string of comedy classics in the 1940s, then faded into oblivion, is profiled in the first American Masters segment of the summer. If only for the wonderful clips, a don't-miss.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT REVUE (A&E, Fridays, 8 p.m. EDT, with weekend repeats). A weekly magazine with a fresh approach and guests you're unlikely to see anywhere else. Host Eric Burns, low key and ingratiating, presides over a classy potpourri of cultural news and features.

EVENTS

JVC JAZZ FESTIVAL. The son of the famed Newport Festival returns to New York City with more than 100 jazz greats and future greats, including Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Roberta Flack, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck and Wynton Marsalis. Through June 30.

1990 GOODWILL ARTS FESTIVAL. Just as Ted Turner's Goodwill Games will bring international athletic stars to the Seattle area, this festival will gather there some of the world's most talented performing-arts groups, including the Bolshoi Ballet, Cirque du Soleil and the Grand Kabuki Theater of Japan. Through Sept. 30.

CLASSICS

BEETHOVEN: 9 SYMPHONIES (BMG/RCA). This five-disc set (also available on cassette) spearheads the first installment of BMG's ambitious "Toscanini Collection." It is an invaluable introduction to Arturo Toscanini, who was revered for most of this century as an emblem of musical perfection but is now sometimes assailed for shunning the works of modern composers. Here conducting the fine NBC Symphony Orchestra (1939-52), the maestro remains unsurpassed for precision and clarity -- even at breakneck tempos. His structural grasp of entire works is astonishing: parts build with inevitable force to form coherent, if sometimes debatable, interpretations. The digital remastering is admirable, though limited dynamic range and parched sound can yield lusterless strings and tinny horns. The informed listener will find this offering indispensable, but those beginning a music library should try the safer Herbert von Karajan or Roger Norrington sets.