Yojimbo. Japan's Akira Kurosawa, best known for Rashomon, is probably the sole unarguable genius of the cinema who is now at work, and in this bloody and hilarious parody of a Hollywood western he has produced a satire on his species and his century that can stand with the beastliest and best of Bertolt Brecht.
The Gift. A stylistic tour d'esprit that is the most original U.S. movie released so far in 1962. Subject: a creative crisis in the life of a middle-aged painter. Director: a 35-year-old commercial artist named Herbert Danska. Length: 40 minutes. Production cost: $3,123.17.
Guns of Darkness. Something of a sleeper: a routine south-of-the-border bit that develops into a philosophical thriller of remarkable moral insight.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes. Jean-Gabriel Albicocco's skillful but vicieuse version of a tale by Balzac.
The Best of Enemies. The funny story of a phony war in Ethiopia, starring David Niven and Alberto Sordi.
War Hunt. The unfunny story of a real war in Korea, starring John Saxon.
Money, Money, Money and how to make it--without getting caught. France's Jean Gabin makes a charming fiscalawag.
A Matter of WHO. Agent Terry-Thomas of the World Health Organization in a cloak-and-needle WHOdunit about viruses and villains.
Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man. A charming, romantic study of the youthful Hemingway, as he saw himself in the Nick Adams stories: a boy who couldn't go places until he had cut the apron strings.
Bird Man of Alcatraz. Burt Lancaster gives his finest performance as a murderer, condemned to a life behind bars, who finds peace in the study of birds.
Ride the High Country and Lonely Are the Brave are off-the-beaten-trail westerns about men who seek the brotherhood of man in the motherhood of nature.
The Concrete Jungle. A sophisticated British thriller in which some of the best lines are written for a saxophone.
The Notorious Landlady. A silly summer shocker with Kim and Lemmon.
Lolita. A baby-satyr (James Mason) and a pseudonymphet (Sue Lyon) are featured in this witless wonder that resembles no book of Nabokov.
TELEVISION
Wed., Sept. 26
The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.).* PREMIIERE of a new series about mountain folk alivin' in Los Angeles, yuk, yuk.
The Campaign and the Candidates (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). A look at the gubernatorial campaigns now going on in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Nebraska.
Thurs., Sept. 27 The Nurses (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). PREMIIERE of a new series about young women in white. This episode explores the drama of the maternity ward.
Fri., Sept. 28
Bell & Howell Close-Up (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). The first fall program in this excellent series, a study of the Russian educational system, was filmed in the Soviet Union,
I'm Dickens . . . He's Fenster (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new comedy series about two carpenters.
The Jack Paar Show (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Tune in to see if Jack is still there.
Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The top news story of the week.
Sat., Sept. 29
Football (CBS, starting at 4:30 p.m.). Notre Dame v. Oklahoma.
The Jackie Gleason Show: The American Scene Magazine (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). PREMIIERE of The Great One's new show--variety, comedy, music--marking the return of such characters as Reggie Van Gleason and the birth of some new ones.
Sun., Sept. 30
Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). Examples from the work of the late Belgian playwright Michel de Gheledrode.
Issues and Answers (ABC, 3-3:30 p.m.). The record of the 87th Congress is discussed by House Speaker McCormack and Senate Whip Humphrey.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). A look at Hungary as it is now, six years after the crushed revolution. Repeat.
Candid Camera (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). The program has commissioned William Saroyan to write a one-act play; then film crews have gone out, using the candid camera technique, to test the situation in real life.
Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). This episode documents the extraordinary work of Rescue Company One, a group of New York firemen who handle unusual blazes.
The Voice of Firestone (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Guests: Cesare Siepi, Rise Stevens, Mischa Elman, Sally Ann Howes.
Howard K. Smith, News and Comment (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Analysis of the week's key news developments.
Mon., Oct. 1
Stoney Burke (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). PREMIIERE of a new series about a bronco-busting champ.
David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Tonight's subject: "Highway Robbery," the alleged misuse of federal funds in the interstate-highway program.
The Tonight Show (NBC, 11:15-1 a.m.). Johnny Carson's first night in Jack Paar's size 17 quintuple A shoes.
Tues., Oct. 2
Combat (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). PREMIIERE of a new series about the U.S. infantry in Europe in World War II.
The Jack Benny Program (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Guest Frank Sinatra Jr., making his network TV debut.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Letters from the Earth, by Mark Twain. A long-suppressed assault on religion that demonstrates the author's humor at its savage, scatalogical best.
The Shattered Glass, by Jean Ariss. A flawed but beautifully rendered novel of love between two matrimonial losers who find the courage to love and lose again.
Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett. This latest-to-be-edited volume of Boswell's journal cannot deepen the portrait of Johnson, but Bozzy's entertaining chatter continues delightfully as he describes the doctor, a great bag of prejudice and conversation set atop a tiny horse, clambering over the wet Scottish islands.
The Death of the Adversary, by Hans Keilson. In this dark novel, the author, a German Jew, tries with some success to unthread the fabric of hate: Why did the Germans, Jew and Gentile, acquiesce so passively in Hitler's crime of Jewish extermination?
The Birds of Paradise, by Paul Scott. A novel of growing up in India, where life in the waning days of the British Empire was hypocritical, harsh, and always wonderfully mysterious.
The Blue Nile, by Alan Moorehead. The author supplies a skillfully written companion volume to his excellent popular history The White Nile, tracing the trading and war making along the Nile's shores from the 18th century to the present.
Big Mac, by Erih Kos. When a great whale is dragged into Belgrade, everyone pays obeisance to it in this hilarious spoof of conformity.
Unofficial History, by Field Marshal the Viscount Slim. A leathery British general gallantly pays tribute to the grit and gusto of friends and enemies alike in these stirring memoirs of this century's great wars.
The Inheritors, by William Golding. Neanderthals battle Homo sapiens and the future looks bleak indeed in this gripping novel about the beginning of mankind.
The Reivers, by William Faulkner. A last sunny romp through the usually tragic-dark acres of Yoknapatawpha County.
The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, by Richard O'Connor. A diverting chronicle of fabled New York Herald Owner James Gordon Bennett Jr., whose eccentric doings were calculated to raise both his paper's circulation and his own blood pressure, and did.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week)
2. Youngblood Hawke, Wouk (2)
3. Uhuru, Ruark (6)
4. The Reivers, Faulkner (7)
5. Dearly Beloved, Lindbergh (5)
6. The Prize, Wallace (3)
7. Another Country, Baldwin (4)
8. Hornblower and the Hotspur, Forester (8)
9. Portrait in Brownstone, Auchincloss
10. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (10)
NONFICTION
1. The Rothschilds, Morton (1)
2. My Life in Court, Nizer (2)
3. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (5)
4. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (3)
5. Sex and the Single Girl, Brown (4)
6. Who's in Charge Here?, Gardner (6)
7. The Guns of August, Tuchman
8. One Man's Freedom, Williams (9)
9. Men and Decisions, Strauss
10. Veeck--as in Wreck, Veeck (7)
*All times E.D.T.
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