Movie
The
Devil's Advocate
(Warner Bros.). Critics can't decide whether this
fable by An Officer and a Gentleman director Taylor Hackford is good
kitschy fun or a "never-never land of movie awfulness" (David Denby, New
York ). Praise goes to Al Pacino's frenetic performance as the devil--a
Manhattan lawyer--who wants to corrupt his naive junior partner, played by
Keanu Reeves. "[T]he best theater you'll see on screen this year," says
Newsday 's Jack Mathews. Others call the film's moralizing overwrought,
its plot absurd, and Reeves' performance typically bad. (See the film's
official
site.)
Death
James
Michener (1907-1997). The popular historical novelist doesn't get the usual
posthumous reputation-inflation. Some critics continue to deride his mammoth
tomes as hopelessly pedestrian, with "the formulaic plots and the formulaic
prose and the formulaic leap to the top of the best-seller list" (the New
York Times ). Most critics grudgingly praise Michener's prolificacy, breezy
prose, and extensive research, while gleefully bashing the snobbery of his
highbrow bashers. (The hagiographic www.jamesmichener.com provides a bibliography and
biography.)
Book
Jackie Robinson: A
Biography
, by Arnold Rampersad (Knopf). Despite the familiarity of the
path-breaking ballplayer's story, critics mostly like the new biography. They
deem its tone appropriately "admiring but not worshipful" (Richard Bernstein,
the New York Times ). And they praise its focus on Robinson's stubbornly
independent political activism. (He campaigned for both the NAACP and Richard
Nixon.) Its edge over other Robinson biographies: His wife gave the author, a
Princeton professor, unprecedented access to his correspondence.
Theater
Side
Show
(Richard Rodgers Theatre, New York City). Mixed reviews for a
musical about the tragic lives of a pair of Siamese twins. "One is astonished
to see something so bold, offbeat, and unsettling is on Broadway," says USA
Today 's David Patrick Stearns. Critics are especially fascinated with the
show's frank treatment of the twins' sex lives. They say wrenching portrayals
by Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley set "a new standard for crackerjack Broadway
teamwork" (Ben Brantley, the New York Times ). Others call the score, by
Dreamgirls writer Henry Krieger, un-catchy and uneven.
Architecture
New
Jersey Performing Arts Center (Newark, N.J.). The centerpiece of a new plan
for the decrepit city's renewal wins more praise for its intentions than for
its design. Critics complain that Los Angeles architect Barton Myers'
postmodern building, consisting of concert halls and theaters, looks like a
"cineplex" (Mark Swed, the Los Angeles Times ), with interiors that verge
on kitsch (examples of overkill: steel rods poking out of ceilings; floors
inlaid with colored stones). But complaints are downplayed because "the
building's heart is in the right place" (Herbert Muschamp, the New York
Times ).
Fashion
Wearable Computers (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab).
MIT computer nerds collaborate with Paris, Milan, and New York fashion schools
on a line of clothes with embedded computers. The duds get heavier or lighter
depending on climate, and they automatically play music in response to the
wearer's moods. "The results looked like Versace melded with Blade
Runner ," says Newsweek 's Steven Levy. Criticisms of the line: The
computers do nothing useful, and the futuristic designs are not anything
"people might actually want to wear" ( Business Week ).
Music
Psyché
, by Cesar Franck (New York Philharmonic). Critics scratch
their heads at the New York Philharmonic's penchant for reviving obscure works
by lesser-known composers. This one--an 1888 symphony by a French Romantic
composer--is called an "interesting failure" (Bernard Holland, the New York
Times ). Its overwrought, "meandering" score (Martin Bernheimer,
Newsday ) is accompanied by a highly praised and newly commissioned
narration of the Psyché myth by playwright John Guare ( Six Degrees of
Separation ).
Snap
Judgments
The
Weekly Standard 's Christopher Caldwell bashes the New York Times Book
Review . Its critics are mostly second-rate novelists who write turgid prose
and "rave about demonstrably bad books." ... The New York Times '
Janet Maslin calls Gummo , a movie about self-destructive teens, "the
worst film of the year."
Update
The
New York Times ' Michael Kimmelman says that Frank Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, "hogs the spotlight. ... [I]t is more
compelling than much of the art inside."
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns
Oct.
15:
Movie -- Seven Years
in Tibet ;
Movie -- Boogie
Nights ;
Fashion --Versace,
Spring/Summer '98 Collections;
Product --Internet
Explorer 4.0;
Award --Nobel Prize for
Literature, Dario Fo;
Book -- How the Mind Works , by Steven Pinker.
Oct.
8:
Movie -- U-Turn ;
Movie -- Washington
Square ;
Movie -- Soul
Food ;
Architecture --Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain);
Book -- Toward the
End of Time , by John Updike;
Death --Roy Lichtenstein.
Oct.
1:
Movie -- The
Edge ;
Movie -- The
Peacemaker ;
Book -- Big Trouble:
A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of
America , by J. Anthony Lukas;
Book -- Timequake , by Kurt Vonnegut;
Music -- Time Out of
Mind , by Bob Dylan, and Bridges to Babylon , by the Rolling
Stones;
Television -- ER :
"Ambush" (NBC);
Art --"Sensations: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection"
(Royal Academy of Art, London).
Sept.
24:
Book -- The
Royals , by Kitty Kelley;
Book -- Underworld , by Don DeLillo;
Book -- Great
Apes , by Will Self;
Art --"Robert
Rauschenberg: A Retrospective" (Guggenheim Museums and Ace Gallery, New
York);
Movie -- A Thousand
Acres ;
Movie -- The Ice
Storm ;
Television -- Veronica's Closet (NBC).
--Compiled by Franklin Foer and the editors of Slate .
