Critics' Choice

MOVIES

EVERYBODY'S ALL-AMERICAN. A college star (Dennis Quaid) peaks early; his prom- queen wife (Jessica Lange) piques often; a star-struck bookworm (Timothy Hutton) peeks into their problems. Taylor Hackford's entertaining soap opera polishes the cliches until they shine like movie truths.

A CRY IN THE DARK. A mother's nightmare -- the loss of her baby -- is compounded when she is wrongly convicted of murdering the infant. Meryl Streep is awesomely austere as the second victim in this tough-minded drama, based on a 1980 case in Australia.

TELEVISION

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE (ABC, Nov. 13-23). Cast of thousands! Cost of millions! Makes Roots look like a sapling! The mammoth sequel to The Winds of War closes out its 18-hour fall campaign this week and sets the stage for a twelve-hour- plus conclusion next year.

MEXICO (PBS, debuting Nov. 16, 9 p.m. on most stations). From the Mexican Revolution to this year's presidential election in three one-hour documentaries.

ON TRIAL: LEE HARVEY OSWALD (syndicated, Nov. 22 and 23). This gripping -- and definitive -- television trial, originally produced for Showtime in 1986, makes its broadcast debut on the 25th anniversary of J.F.K.'s assassination.

THEATER

ITALIAN AMERICAN RECONCILIATION. In John Patrick Shanley's Little Italy, all the women are worldly wise, and all the men are moonstruck. John Turturro leads the cast of this chocolate-heart comedy at the Manhattan Theater Club.

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.

BOOKS

THE MARCOS DYNASTY by Sterling Seagrave (Harper & Row; $22.50). This merciless account of the Filipino dictator's rise and fall poses many intriguing questions and answers some of them. Why did Ferdinand purloin billions of dollars? What did Imelda want with all those shoes?

THE KING OF THE FIELDS by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Farrar Straus Giroux; $18.95). In his first novel in five years, the Nobel laureate, 84, portrays a remote tribe in a faraway past enduring the shocks of progress and civilization.

SELECTED LETTERS OF EUGENE O'NEILL (Yale University; $35). He was the first American dramatist to win international acclaim. His private correspondence records his slow disenchantment with the footlights.

MUSIC

BEETHOVEN: EARLY YEARS THROUGH THE EROICA (Smithsonian Collection of Recordings). Just what the world needs: more Beethoven. But wait. This collection of chamber and symphonic works is played with vim and vigor on original instruments: Beethoven like he oughta be.

ETTA JAMES: SEVEN YEAR ITCH (Island). Attention: danger of electric shock. High-voltage R. and B. from a woman who has so much funk, soul, sex and humor that on a tune like Jump Into My Fire you can hear the flames crackle.

HOLLY KNIGHT (Columbia). Big-time pop craftsmanship by a songwriter who is responsible for several hits (like Love Is a Battlefield) recorded by others.

SHOW BOAT (EMI). The classic Mississippi musical jes' keeps rollin' along, here with such stern-wheeling operatic voices as Frederica von Stade and Teresa Stratas. The first recording that is completely faithful to the original Kern-Hammerstein score reveals a raw, powerful, even angry work. And you thought it was "only make-believe"!

ART

THE PASTORAL LANDSCAPE, National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection, Washington. In this joint venture, the National offers "The Legacy of Venice," two centuries of painting from Giorgione (a progenitor of the pastoral genre) to Watteau, while the Phillips, in "The Modern Vision," carries the theme from Constable down to Matisse. Through Jan. 22.

DREAMINGS: THE ART OF ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA, Asia Society, New York City. Exponents of the oldest visual tradition on earth evoke their spirit ancestors in paintings and carvings of striking beauty. Through Dec. 31.

MONET IN LONDON, High Museum, Atlanta. To mark the museum's fifth anniversary, a show of 23 atmospheric views of Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges and the houses of Parliament, done by the impressionist between 1899 and 1904. Through Jan. 8.

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.