Critics' Choice

MOVIES

THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM. Snaky vampires! Sexy virgins! Fluorescent caskets! Ken Russell's campfire tale may be more camp than fire, but it shows this unabashed mannerist going for baroque in fine form.

SALAAM BOMBAY! An Indian Oliver Twist learns the ways of slum-life survival in Mira Nair's poignant documentary fable.

THINGS CHANGE. Don Ameche is an aging artisan mistaken for a Mafia boss, and Joe Mantegna the gangland gofer who helps an old man come alive. David Mamet directed and co-wrote this beguiling men's club anecdote.

ANOTHER WOMAN. Woody Allen goes serious again, but brilliantly this time. Gena Rowlands plays a New Yorker at the point in life when what's past hope is past regret, but not past consolation.

MUSIC

FRANK ZAPPA: GUITAR (Rykodisc). The thinking man's mother of invention in a double album of riffs that are sure to rile. In-A-Gadda-Stravinsky, anyone?

RAGGED BUT RIGHT: GREAT COUNTRY STRING BANDS OF THE 1930s (RCA). Before the rhinestones, country music sounded like this: all heart and no slickum. Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers; Wade Mainer . . . the sounds are as good as the names.

TOM WAITS: BIG TIME (Island). The raucous and funny low-life reveries of rock's only postmodern beatnik.

BRITTEN: PAUL BUNYAN (Virgin). Sir Benjamin's tuneful first opera was conceived in 1939 as a Broadway show with a libretto by W.H. Auden. It never played the Great White Way, but it comes to life under Philip Brunelle's baton.

ART

JASPER JOHNS: WORK SINCE 1974, Philadelphia Museum of Art. The show that won the grand prize at last summer's Venice Biennale and cemented Johns' status as America's deepest living painter. Through Jan. 8.

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM 1915-1925, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A survey of war-weary "second generation" expressionists, forging an avant-garde in search of a new art and a better society. Through Dec. 31.

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. Through Jan. 8.

THEATER

DINNER AT EIGHT. It's raining stocks and bonds outside, but the portents of Depression don't penetrate the penthouses in Kaufman and Ferber's glittering 1932 melodrama at New Haven's Long Wharf Theater.

THE COCKTAIL HOUR. Nancy Marchand is at her tragicomic best off-Broadway as a Wasp matriarch in an elegant comedy by A.R. Gurney, author of The Dining Room.

RECKLESS. Writer Craig Lucas and director Norman Rene (Three Postcards) take a hilarious and moving off-Broadway journey through one woman's bad dream, fantasy or, maybe, truly terrible life.

BOOKS

ANYTHING FOR BILLY by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). The author of The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment offers a horse-opera bouffe about Billy the Kid, showing how a Charles Manson in cowboy boots became a national legend.

THE FIRST SALUTE by Barbara W. Tuchman (Knopf; $22.95). The distinguished and eminently readable historian (The Guns of August) sets the American Revolution / against the struggles of 18th century Europe for colonies and commerce. Among her heroes: the hardy Dutch, who were first to recognize the birthright of the new American nation.

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

TELEVISION

BABY BOOM (NBC, Nov. 2, 9:30 p.m. EST). Two TV moms from the '50s, Jane Wyatt of Father Knows Best and Barbara Billingsley of Leave It to Beaver, offer advice to a yuppie mom of the '80s (Kate Jackson) in the first weekly segment of this stylish sitcom based on the movie.

TALES FROM THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS (PBS, debuting Nov. 4, 9 p.m. on most stations). This fine anthology series returns with three more stories set in Tinseltown. Up first: a silent-film star (Rosemary Harris) writes racy memoirs with the aid of her sister (Lynn Redgrave) in P.G. Wodehouse's The Old Reliable.

ELECTION NIGHT (ABC, CBS and NBC, 7 p.m. EST). The exit polls may end the suspense early, but that won't stop Peter, Dan and Tom from trying to keep us up till the wee hours. CNN, meanwhile, promises nonstop coverage from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m.