Critics' Choice

ART

EDGAR DEGAS, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. If there must be blockbuster shows, this is the kind to have -- huge (more than 300 works), thought provoking and beautiful. Its like will not be seen again in our lifetime. Through Jan. 8.

POUSSIN: THE EARLY YEARS IN ROME, Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth. The first major show in North America devoted to the 17th century master who was the father of classical French painting. Through Nov. 27.

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI 1901-1966, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington. The paintings, drawings and familiar elongated sculptures of the great Swiss-born modernist. Through Nov. 13.

PAUL GAUGUIN, Art Institute of Chicago. Two major attractions in one: a revelatory retrospective that shows Gauguin whole for the first time, housed in the top floor of the institute's new Rice Building. Through Dec. 11.

BOOKS

A BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan (Random House; $24.95). In a riveting portrait, John Paul Vann, a major architect of U.S. policy in Viet Nam, emerges as a man who embodied the contradictions of his ill-fated mission: a courageous do-gooder with a dark streak of amorality.

BERNARD SHAW: THE SEARCH FOR LOVE by Michael Holroyd (Random House; $24.95). The first of a projected three-volume life takes its brilliant, cantankerous + subject to age 42, through journalism -- and love affairs -- to playwriting and toward his towering reputation.

THE MAGIC LANTERN by Ingmar Bergman (Viking; $19.95). Like a box full of old slides -- or a Bergman movie -- the Swedish director's searching memoirs are alive with frozen moments, many of them cruelly revealing.

TELEVISION

LIP SERVICE (HBO, Oct. 20, 23, 26, 29). A TV station tries to boost its ratings by teaming a veteran newscaster (Paul Dooley) with a shallow young co- host (Griffin Dunne). Familiar TV satire given some trenchant new twists by playwright Howard Korder.

JACK THE RIPPER (CBS, Oct. 21 and 23, 9 p.m. EDT). Michael Caine is a Scotland Yard detective tracking down the granddaddy of all serial killers in this two- parter.

DAVID (ABC, Oct. 25, 9 p.m. EDT). Bernadette Peters, starring in her first TV movie, plays a single mother whose six-year-old son is burned nearly to death by his father. Based, as usual, on a true story.

THEATER

PAUL ROBESON. The script is uncritical idolatry, but Avery Brooks (Spenser: For Hire) gives this one-man Broadway show a dignity, emotional force and singing voice as awesome as the American original he recreates.

A SHAYNA MAIDEL. Gordana Rashovich has resumed a stunning performance in this off-Broadway story of a family divided by Hitler's Holocaust.

RUMORS. After a meditative family trilogy, box-office champ Neil Simon returns to riotous farce in his 23rd play, at San Diego's Old Globe on its way to Broadway.

MUSIC

BIZET: SYMPHONY IN C MAJOR; "L'ARLESIENNE" SUITE (Erato). Grace, style, panache and a certain je ne sais quoi: Bizet had it all. Just what the doctor ordered when you're sick of the three German Bs.

KEITH RICHARDS: TALK IS CHEAP (Virgin). From the shaking dance-club tune Big Enough to the sinuous Locked Away, Keith Richards' first solo album is a gas. Surprise: the hardest rolling Stone is a take-charge songwriter. Who needs Mick?

DAVID LINDLEY & EL RAYO-X: VERY GREASY (Elektra/

Asylum). Good-time music to dance to, or goof to, much of it with a Caribbean inflection. Produced by Linda Ronstadt, with minimal sheen and plenty of humor.

MOVIES

ANOTHER WOMAN. Woody Allen goes serious again, but brilliantly this time. Gena Rowlands plays a New Yorker who has reached that point in life when what is past hope is past regret, but not past consolation.

BIRD. Clint Eastwood's passionate biography of jazz great Charlie Parker hits the high notes, and finds new blue ones, in the story of a genius who could resist everything but temptation.

PUNCHLINE. An inspired Tom Hanks, our reigning master of desperate expediency, steals the show from a coolly expert Sally Field in writer-director David Seltzer's foray into the world of stand-up, knockdown comedy.

TRACK 29. It's mother love with the proper stranger in this surreal treat from director Nicolas Roeg. Theresa Russell is the troubled mom, Gary Oldman the man who may be her son.