CINEMA

Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man. There is nostalgically charming Americana in this reel-life pastiche fashioned from Hemingway's autobiographical Nick Adams stories. Paul Newman's portrayal of a punch-drunk old fighter is a memorable acting coup.

Strangers in the City is a brilliantly abrasive social shocker about a Puerto Rican family living in the rat-infested lower depths of Manhattan's Spanish Harlem. Rick Carrier's script, cast, and camera work have a harsh-grained honesty.

Bird Man of Alcatraz calmly examines the strange case of Robert F. Stroud, bird expert, murderer, and holder of the U.S. prison record (43 years) for solitary confinement. Burt Lancaster, as the bird man, and a superb cast make this one of the most powerful prison movies in years.

Ride the High Country and Lonely Are the Brave are off-the-beaten-trail westerns about uncommonly untamed men who refuse to traffic with, or truckle to, a mechanized civilization. The gallant losers include Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott (Country) and Kirk Douglas (Brave).

The Concrete Jungle. A saxophoney blues mocks and mourns the rise and fall of the criminal hero in this jagged, jazzy British crime thriller.

Boccaccio '70 is an erotic Italian film, though scarcely a linear descendant of Boccaccio, 1313-1375. Curvilinear stars Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider and Sophia Loren lose nothing in translation.

The Notorious Landlady is Kim Novak, and her tenant. Tack Lemmon, does not ask for anything more until Scotland Yard prods him into some horribly funny discoveries.

Lolita, as Sue Lyon impersonates her, could be 17, which is ancient for mymphets. As a result, James Mason's obsession with her seems like just one last pathetic middle-aged man's fling. Peter Sellers saves the scenes he steals.

TELEVISION Wed., Aug. 1

Howard K. Smith: News and Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).* A re-evaluation of the important developments of the week.

Focus on America (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Biography of the Hudson River, the life around it, and its importance to the life and economy of its valley.

Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A semidocumentary about the work of marriage counselors.

Thurs., Aug. 2

The Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). CBS is experimenting with a new technique in this program, one of a four-part series. The two men ramble around Mac-Leish's farm at Conway, Mass., and talk about anything that comes into their poetic brains--without the aid (or interference) of a network commentator.

Fri., Aug. 3

College All-Star Football Game (ABC, starting at 10 p.m.). The top college players of last season v. the professional champion Green Bay Packers in Chicago.

Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The top news story of the week.

Sat., Aug. 4

Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). The Day the Earth Stood Still, with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal.

Sun., Aug. 5

Issues and Answers (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.). Guest: Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges.

Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Bareback riding, broncobusting, calf roping, steer wrestling, etc., at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Amateur and professional sports-car racing as seen in various places, plus interviews with Amateur James Kimberly and Pro Stirling Moss (taped before he was injured). Repeat.

Mon., Aug. 6

Vincent Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Repeat of last fall's excellent program, assembled from photographs, sketches, paintings, films made in the Van Gogh country of Provence. Color.

THEATER

Boothbay Harbor, Me., Playhouse: Early lonesco: The Bald Soprano and The Lesson.

Cambridge, Mass., Loeb Drama Center: Captain Brassbound's Conversion, a lesser comedy by Bernard Shaw, sends one of his typical, indomitable heroines and a very domitable romantic rebel on a Shavian Road to Morocco.

Warwick, R.I., Musical Theater: Steve Lawrence as the soulless heel in Pal Joey.

New Brunswick, N.J., Children's Summer Theater: Incredibly, a dramatic version of The Canterbury Tales--for the kiddies.

New Hope, Pa., Bucks County Playhouse: A pre-Broadway tryout by John Fritz, When the Beer Goes National, with Paul McGrath and Frances Reid.

Devon, Pa., Valley Forge Music Fair: Comic Red Buttons falls into the familiar Tender Trap.

Washington, D.C., Carter-Barren Amphitheater: Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, with Ginger Rogers as the female sharpshooter.

Washington, D.C., Theater Lobby: In rotation and chiefly for antique fanciers: Eugene O'Neill's The Great God Brown, four one-acters by Tennessee Williams, Invitation to a March by Arthur Laurents, The Zoo Story by Edward Albee.

Highland Park, III., Tenthouse Theater: Ozzie and Harriet (Nelson) have escaped from TV into a sex farce, The Marriage-Go-Round.

Hillside, III., Melody Top: The permanently demented Phyllis Diller in Wonderful Town.

Canal Fulton, Ohio, Summer Arena: The deliciously rubber-faced Imogene Coca reposes Under the Sycamore Tree.

Bardstown, Ky., Dan Talbott Amphitheater: The Stephen Foster Story, by America's open-air bard, Paul Green.

Charlotte, N.C., Music Theater: Bye Bye, Birdie with Selma Diamond, a gag writer for Perry Como, widely known for the flavor of pastrami on wry she used to provide as a guest on the Paar show.

Beckley, W. Va., Grandview Amphitheater: Honey in the Rock, an alfresco Civil War drama by Kermit Hunter; a thousand thrills plus picnic facilities promised by the management.

Seattle, Wash., Old Seattle Theater: The Connection, Jack Gelber's jeremiad for junkies.

San Anselmo, Calif., Festival Theater: Christopher Fry's early, little known but charming play about pagan Britain, Thor, with Angels.

San Diego, Calif., Circle Arts Theater: Janet Blair in Bells Are Ringing, a musical dating from the days when telephone exchanges still had names.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Inheritors, by William Golding. A richly imagined novel, by the author of Lord of the Flies, about the dying out of Europe's last band of Neanderthals.

Rocking the Boat, by Gore Vidal. The playwright does not always give his best effort to these impudent essays on politics and literature, but his boat rocking, though not dangerously violent, is worth being on hand to see.

Letting Go, by Philip Roth. The author, lured by the sirens of meaninglessness, gives too much attention to a tedious hero who finds life empty. Still, Roth's eye for irony and ear for dialogue are among the best, and they make his long novel of the university young well worth reading.

The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing. Self-knowledge run fiercely to earth makes a rewarding literary chase in this well-written novel about a woman author, even though some of the ground--Communism, failed sex--is already thoroughly trampled.

Death of a Highbrow, by Frank Swinnerton. The fierce rivalry of two old men of letters ends in death for one, a bitter awakening for the other.

The Reivers, by William Faulkner. The last mellow work of the great Southern writer, culminating a 30-year love affair with Yoknapatawpha County.

Saint Francis, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The saint loves and suffers in an agonizingly human way in the most powerful account of his life ever written.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week) 2. Youngblood Hawke, Wouk (2) 3. Dearly Beloved, Lindbergh (3) 4. The Reivers, Faulkner (6) 5. Uhuru, Ruark (4) 6. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (8) 7. The Prize, Wallace (5) 8. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (9) 9. Another Country, Baldwin (10) 10. The Big Laugh, O'Hara (7)

NONFICTION

1. The Rothschilds, Morton (1) 2. My Life in Court, Nizer (2) 3. The Guns of August, Tuchman (4) 4. In the Clearing, Frost (3) 5. Calories Don't Count, Taller (5) 6. Six Crises, Nixon (8) 7. Conversations with Stalin, Djilas (6) 8. Sex and the Single Girl, Brown (7) 9. One Man's Freedom, Williams 10. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (9)

* All times E.D.T.

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