CINEMA

Son of Flubber. It's that man again--Neddie the Nut, that is. Remember him? In The Absent Minded Professor, the nuttiest science-fiction farce of recent years, Neddie (Fred MacMurray) invented "flubber"--lab gab for flying rubber. In Professor the professor put flubber in a flivver and flew. In this picture he turns flubber slubber into flubbergas and starts blowing flubbles. Infantile? Absolutely. But fun.

Term of Trial. Sir Laurence Olivier and Simone Signoret, cast as the Mr. and Mrs. Chips of a milltown slum, memorialize an appalling marriage with charm and admirable finesse.

Love and Larceny. Vittorio Gassman, cast as a con man, is wacky and wicked in an Italian comedy that is ditto.

A Child Is Waiting. There are 5,700,000 "mental defectives" in the U.S., and this picture forces U.S. moviegoers to look them and their problems in the face. The theme is not pleasant, but the script (Abby Mann), the direction (John Cassavetes), and the principal performances (Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Bruce Ritchey) are honest and moving.

Days of Wine and Roses. Drunks are bores, but Jack Lemmon, wry on the rocks, is one of the most entertaining fellows who ever said cheers when he meant booze, and this is the best picture about alcoholism since The Lost Weekend (1945).

The Bad Sleep Well. A thriller of considerable social significance in which Japan's Akira Kurosawa examines with ferocious irony and some exaggeration the motives and the operations of Big Business in Japan.

Night Is My Future. Sweden's Ingmar Bergman has long since fallen out of love with love, but in 1947, when he made this burningly romantic little picture, he could still tell a simple tale of man and maid, and tell it with all his art.

TELEVISION

Wednesday, February 20 CBS Reports (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* Part I of a two-part series on the Supreme Court, including readings by Carl Sandburg, Mark Van Doren, Archibald Mac-Leish and Fredric March from landmark decisions.

Thursday, February 21 Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in Japan (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). A repeat.

Premiere (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Ralph Bellamy, Bradford Dillman, Bettye Ackerman and George Voskovec are the guests in a drama called "Chain Reaction."

Friday, February 22

The World of Maurice Chevalier (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A first-rate reconstruction of the 60-year career of France's finest performer, including some wonderful old film clips of Folies Bergere Stars Mistinguette and Josephine Baker, plus bits from Chevalier's current U.S. tour.

The Jack Paar Program (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Now that Paar is rationed, he is concentrating his brew. Tonight's show features both Peter Ustinov and Shelley Berman.

Saturday, February 23 Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Charlton Heston as President Andy Jackson and Susan Hayward as his beloved wife Rachel in The President's Lady.

Sunday, February 24 The Problem of Water Is People (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). An NBC News Special on the nation's water problems. Guest star: the Colorado River.

Carol & Company (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Carol Burnett, who has escaped TV to go into the movies, returns for a special with Guest Robert Preston.

Monday, February 25 The Victor Borge Show (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). A special from Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall with French Mime Marceau and Pianist Leonid Hambro.

David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.). An interview with Astronaut John Glenn.

Tuesday, February 26 Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). American aid projects in India, with U.S. Ambassador to India Kenneth Galbraith.

THEATER

On Broadway

Natural Affection, by William Inge, is a sensual melodrama acted and directed with hypnotic and devastating force. The characters may not be the sort one would invite to dinner, but they involve the playgoer in their tawdry fates.

The Hollow Crown provides a right royal evening of dramatic readings by and about English royalty. A piano, harpsichord, and trio of balladeers lend period flavor to the pieces. Max Adrian has the most commanding stage presence among the readers, and Dorothy Tutin is lovely to look at.

An Evening with Maurice Chevalier. Close to 75, Chevalier has not stopped Father Time, but he certainly makes him blink. He is one of the last of the pure entertainers, aiming only to please, and he sings of his love affair with life.

The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, has all the style and elegance that one could possibly ask for in the restaging of this classic comedy. John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Geraldine McEwan and the rest of the cast are a school for splendor.

The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, by Tennessee Williams, asks playgoers to contemplate the state of their souls at the moment of impending death. In this resonantly religious allegory, Hermione Baddeley is incontestably magnificent, and Mildred Dunnock, Paul Roebling and Ann Williams are quite splendid.

Off Broadway

The Tiger and The Typists, by Murray Schisgal,. are both clever, two-character one-acters; the first concerns nonconformists who make strange bedfellows, the second a pair of office-worker mediocrities whose lives dim out like light bulbs. Each is performed with personable flair by the skilled husband-and-wife acting team of Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.

The Dumbwaiter and The Collection, by Harold Pinter. Britain's most provocative dramatist puts his characters in an enigmatic rat's maze where they twist, turn and stumble, seeking each other and the truth with terrifying results.

BOOKS

Best Reading

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. In the guise of a nasty little shocker about London teen-age terrorists in a hopped-up world this side of 1984, the author tells a morality tale about man's need for moral choice.

Crowds and Power, by Elias Canetti. Taking all human history as his province, the author gloomily but provocatively depicts man as a power-hungry animal who finds his fulfillment as part of a mob.

Crossroads of Power, by Sir Lewis Namier. The late great British historian, who loved tradition and loathed ideology, expounds his philosophy of history in these fond essays on 18th century English politics, written over the course of a lifetime.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. An ex-political prisoner, who spent eight years in Siberia, has soared to fame in Russia by writing a roughhewn novel about life in one of Stalin's concentration camps.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour--An Introduction, by J. D. Salinger. More installments in the life of the solemn little Glass menagerie may delight younger readers, but may prove a bit wearing for older ones.

The Centaur, by John Updike. An imaginative retelling of the Greek myth in modern dress turns the tragic centaur Chiron into a long-suffering high school science teacher.

The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela. The greatest novel ever written about the Mexican Revolution shows how idealism degenerates into savagery under the pressure of war.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler (2, last week) 2. Seven Days in May, Knebel and Bailey (1) 3. The Sand Pebbles, McKenna (3) 4. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour--An Introduction, Salinger 5. $100 Misunderstanding, Gover (5) 6. A Shade of Difference, Drury (4) 7. Genius, Dennis (7) 8. The Cape Cod Lighter, O'Hara (8) 9. The Moon-Spinners, Stewart (6) 10. Ship of Fools, Porter

NONFICTION 1. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (1) 2. Happiness Is a Warm Puppy, Schulz (3) 3. Silent Spring, Carson (2) 4. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (4) 5. The Points of My Compass, White (7) 6. Final Verdict, St. Johns (6) 7. My Life in Court, Nizer (5) 8. Letters from the Earth, Twain (10) 9. Renoir, My Father, Renoir (9) 10. The Pyramid Climbers, Packard (8)

*All times E.S.T.

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