Critics' Choice

CINEMA

BULL DURHAM. A "natural" ballplayer (Tim Robbins) is a natural disaster to his coaches in the arts of baseball (Kevin Costner) and love (Susan Sarandon). But all are fun to watch: plenty of smart talk, laughs and warm sex.

RED HEAT. To a suspicious Chicago cop (Jim Belushi), Soviet Detective Arnold Schwarzenegger is glasnost with great pecs. But to international drug goons in this efficient thriller, he's still The Terminator.

BIG. A twelve-year-old makes a wish to be big -- and wakes up the next day as Tom Hanks in a delightful comedy-fantasy about youth and age, and the differences between them.

BOOKS

OSCAR AND LUCINDA by Peter Carey (Harper & Row; $18.95). An Australian novelist turns in a shimmering fantasy of gambling and glassmaking, held together by the struts of 19th century history and the mullions of painstaking detail.

CAPOTE: A BIOGRAPHY by Gerald Clarke (Simon & Schuster; $22.95). An engrossing, sympathetic account of the Tiny Terror of U.S. letters and of a life spent swimming in a sea of scandal.

MUSIC

BOB DYLAN: DOWN IN THE GROOVE (Columbia). Not a major statement from our most generative songwriter, but a raspy, relaxed session with four originals and some surprising remakes (Silvio, Death Is Not the End, Rank Strangers to Me).

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA; JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (MCA). The cat's meow: Paul Gemignani and the Royal Philharmonic Pops step lively through starlit arrangements of Andrew Lloyd Webber's megamusicals.

STRAVINSKY: PETRUSHKA; SYMPHONY IN THREE MOVEMENTS (EMI). Britain's Simon Rattle and his City of Birmingham Orchestra shake and roll in Stravinsky's great ballet score, then offer a poised, precise symphony.

TELEVISION

TRY TO REMEMBER (CBS, June 23, 8 p.m. EDT). Charles Kuralt pulls off the road temporarily to reminisce about one week in history -- Aug. 10-17, 1969 -- in the pilot for a prospective series.

HOTHOUSE (ABC, debuting June 30, 9 p.m. EDT). St. Elsewhere is gone, but the maladies linger on. A psychiatric clinic in the Boston suburbs is the setting for this dramatic series getting a seven-week trial run.

P.O.V. (PBS, debuting July 5, 9 p.m. on most stations). A ten-week series of documentaries, each reflecting its maker's individual point of view, premieres with a pair of short works: Acting Our Age, a profile of six elderly women, and American Tongues, a look at regional dialects.

THEATER

AH, WILDERNESS! Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst perform to Broadway perfection in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy and, in repertory, his tragic Long Day's Journey into Night, though they break scant interpretive ground.

SPOILS OF WAR. Kate Nelligan shows the dark side of an Auntie Mame-style mom in Michael Weller's off-Broadway memory play, through June 26.