TELEVISION
Friday, August 2
COLLEGE ALL-STAR FOOTBALL GAME (ABC, 9:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.).* Last year's College All-Stars v. pro football's World Champion Green Bay Packers. From Soldier Field, Chicago.
TOMORROW'S WORLD: FEEDING THE BILLIONS (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). An NBC News report on how scientists hope to answer the problem of increasing world food shortages. Newscaster Frank McGee examines such experimentation as the production of algae from industrial, domestic and agricultural waste as a source of cheap protein. Repeat.
Saturday, August 3
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). McGuire, Go Home (1966). During the British occupation of Cyprus in the 1950s, an American tourist (Susan Strasberg) visits the island and inadvertently witnesses an underground meeting, thereby arousing the suspicion of both the Cypriots and a British major (Dirk Bogarde). Repeat.
PRE-CONVENTION SPECIAL OF REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Warm-up session for the coming Republican convention activities featuring commentaries by William F. Buckley Jr., Gore Vidal, Howard K. Smith and Bill Lawrence.
Sunday, August 4
THE 215T CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "The Shape of Films to Come." A survey of new moviemaking techniques featuring Christopher Chapman's Academy Award-winning A Place to Stand and a selection of avant-garde films shown at Montreal's Expo 67. Repeat.
THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Ed's guests this week include Ray Charles, Bill Dana, Gordon MacRae and Carol Lawrence. Repeat.
Monday, August 5
The G.O.P. and its presidential hopefuls begin the week's political infighting and behind-the-scenes maneuvering at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, and all three commercial networks will be there to supply blow-by-blow accounts.
CBS News Anchorman Walter Cronkite and a team of 25 correspondents, including Eric Sevareid, Roger Mudd, Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace, will report on the opening session today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and on the evening sessions throughout the week from 7:30 p.m. to conclusion. NBC, with Anchormen Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and Floor Reporters Frank McGee, John Chancellor, Sander Vanocur and Edwin Newman, will cover opening-day sessions (9:30 a.m. to end of daytime action and 7:30 p.m. to conclusion) and portions of the week's activities live from Convention Hall. ABC will limit its coverage to a 90-minute summary (9:30-11 p.m.) of each day's events with behind-the-scenes sto ries and round-table discussions of the nomination process. William F. Buckley Jr., Gore Vidal, Howard K. Smith and Bill Lawrence report.
THEATER
On Broadway
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. If the Bard and Beckett had ever collaborated on a play about what went on behind the scenes at Elsinore, this wry, existential comedy might have been the result. John Wood and Brian Murray are marvelously adept as Tom Stoppard's confused duo.
PLAZA SUITE. Neil Simon comes to bat again with three short hits. George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton are either hilarious or sentimental as they portray middle-aged couples in sometimes awkward, always amusing predicaments.
THE PRICE. Among the dusty relics of the past in a family attic, Arthur Miller's characters, two brothers, find living memories and smoldering emotions.
Off Broadway
A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, one of Eugene O'Neill's last plays, laments a loveless trio. W. B. Brydon, Salome Jens and Mitchell Ryan give poignant portrayals of three emotional cripples hiding their numerous afflictions beneath much blather and rant. Theodore Mann directs a finely composed production at the Circle in the Square.
THE BOYS IN THE BAND. Playwright Mart Crowley's characters are first of all wonderfully human. Secondarily, they are homosexual. Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey and Cliff Gorman lead a sharply honed cast through dialogue of lacerating wit and excruciating humor.
JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS and meanwhile, in Manhattan, four performers render his songs with both passion and compassion.
THE NEGRO ENSEMBLE COMPANY alternates Peter Weiss's Song of the Lusitanian Bogey and Daddy Goodness, by Richard Wright and Louis Sapin, through Sept. 1.
YOUR OWN THING slides Shakespeare's Twelfth Night into the 20th century with multimedia effects, rock music and the unisex look of the with-it generation. Leland Palmer lends rag-doll insouciance to a perpetual-motion Viola.
SCUBA DUBA. Bruce Jay Friedman's tense comedy makes a mockery of the sacred cows and shibboleths of an illiberal liberal. Jerry Orbach is the manic hero run amuck on a Riviera holiday.
CINEMA
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has as its key character a shining oblong object symbolizing a great extraterrestrial intelligence that has overseen mankind since the Pliocene age. Though it fails as drama, Stanley Kubrick's venture succeeds as dazzling visual art.
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Juggling erotica and neurotica, Jeanne Moreau plays a wronged bride out to revenge her murdered husband. Director Francois Truffaut's homage to Hitchcock has all the ingredients for a tense film in the genre of suspense.
PETULIA. Set in San Francisco, Richard Lester's film covers the contemporary scene and dissects the way men and women treat each other through the cruel, comic story of the relationship, or lack of it, between a kook (Julie Christie) and a surgeon (George C. Scott) who care that they couldn't care less.
ROSEMARY'S BABY. Placing his horrific tale against a realistic Manhattan background, Director Roman Polanski succeeds in making witchery seem all too possible. Mia Farrow is wrenchingly right as a young innocent who has a devil of a pregnancy.
INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. With explosive passion, Nicol Williamson plays John Osborne's London solicitor who is resentful of being remade in the image of the 20th century computer.
RECORDS
Country
What passes for country music these days is so diffuse that it just about defies definition. These albums have little in common except that they were made by men with short haircuts, a sob in their throats, a taste for old-style ballads, and a refreshing lack of city-style sophistication.
JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON (Columbia). Ex-Con Cash recorded these songs at California's Folsom Prison, and the echo of prisoners' applause against concrete walls adds a bitter and powerful background. A guard's announcement that "88419 is wanted in Reception" serves as sharp counterpoint to such lyrics as "The newspapers called it a jailbreak plan,/ But I know it was suicide." Most chilling song: 25 Minutes to Go, a swinging minute-by-minute account of an execution by hanging. In its own way, a sad, brilliant album.
GLEN CAMPBELL: HEY, LITTLE ONE (Capitol). Campbell appears on the cover holding an immense guitar, but he sounds as if he were backed by a Wagnerian orchestra. His hoarse dark voice is suitable to such zingy sentiment as the popular Elusive Butterfly and the lushly poignant Woman, Woman. Campbell's inflection may be country, but his delivery is unquestionably urbane.
BOBBY GOLDSBORO: HONEY (United Artists). Goldsboro makes a full-time business of country corn, and he manages to harvest a goodly share of tear-jerking hits. His specialties are such songs as Honey, a pitiful plaint by a new widower whose wife went to the angels before her time, and With Pen in Hand (scribbled by Goldsboro himself), an equally lachrymose ballad about a husband whose wife is throwing him out of the house before he's ready to split. Goldsboro fans love such treacle; judging by his whine, so does he.
BUCK OWENS AND HIS BUCKAROOS: THE BEST OF, VOL. 2 (Starline/Capitol). This is one of the few examples of genuine bluegrass. Buck Owens figures that "all I gotta do is ac' naturally" to be the biggest star, and he's right. His flat, nasal shout relies for accompaniment on little more than electronic twangs and a passel of whooping colleagues, while he delivers the ordinary man's poetic visions: "When I first saw you, babe, you nearly made me wreck/My ole '49 Cadillac."
JIM REEVES: A TOUCH OF SADNESS (RCA Victor). His records still sell as if he had not died in a plane crash four years ago. And no wonder. Reeves had an infallible touch with old-style ballads, a combination of smooth virility and naivete that inspires a secret smile of empathy in most listeners. This disk is one more of his innumerable posthumous albums, but it includes hitherto unreleased recordings of such ballads as Lonesome Waltz and Your Wedding.
EDDY ARNOLD: THE ROMANTIC WORLD OF (RCA Victor). Arnold is one of the most successful slickers to tackle a country song. He is invariably sentimental, professional and clean, with a manly but moralizing voice. In this album, he sings more Muzak than bluegrass, including What Now My Love? and that sticky Honey again.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE SPLENDID PAUPER, by Allen Andrews. The zany life and beguiling times of Moreton Frewen, Winston Churchill's scapegrace uncle, who was born to lose with grace, charm and class.
THE SECOND REBELLION, by James McCague. A vivid account of the antidraft riots that destroyed whole sections of Manhattan during the Civil War.
ALDOUS HUXLEY, by John Atkins; THE HUXLEYS, by Ronald W. Clark. Cynic or mystic? Humanist or cold fish? Both books get close to the answers as they dissect the puzzling genius whose family contributed more than its share of intellectual heavyweights.
THE FRENCH, by Francois Nourissier; THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE, by J.J. Servan-Schreiber. Two perceptive and plain-spoken Frenchmen examine ailing France and the cantankerous French spirit and reach the same conclusion: unless attitudes change and institutions are revitalized, a debacle is certain.
THE UNIVERSAL BASEBALL ASSOCIATION, INC., J. HENRY WAUGH, PROP., by Robert Coover. A 56-year-old accountant who sees the cosmos as an intricate baseball game records the hits, runs and many, many errors in his tragicomic efforts to be God's scorekeeper.
DARK AS THE GRAVE WHEREIN MY FRIEND IS LAID, by Malcolm Lowry. Containing all the excitement of a metaphysical cliffhanger, these collected fragments of unfinished poems, stories and novels help to illuminate the dark journey of the late tormented writer.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Airport, Hailey (1 last week)
2. Couples, Updike (2)
3. Testimony of Two Men, Caldwell (3)
4. Topaz, Uris (6)
5. True Grit, Portis (5)
6. Myra Breckinridge, Vidal (4)
7. Heaven Help Us, Tarr (10)
8. Red Sky at Morning, Bradford
9. Vanished, Knebel (7)
10. The Queen's Confession, Holt (8)
NONFICTION
1. The Money Game, 'Adam Smith' (1)
2. Iberia, Michener (2)
3. Or I'll Dress You in Mourning, Collins and Lapierre (3)
4. The Naked Ape, Morris (6)
5. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (4)
6. The Right People, Birmingham (5)
7. The Rich and the Super-Rich, Lundberg (7)
8. The American Challenge, Servan-Schreiber
9. The Doctor's Quick Weight Loss Diet, Stillman and Baker (9)
10. The Center, Alsop
* All times E.D.T.
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