Critics' Choice

BOOKS

THE END OF TRAGEDY by Rachel Ingalls (Simon & Schuster; $16.95). Four novellas by an author who already commands a formidable cult following. This time out, as before, she rubs against the grain of tired old plots and creates electrifying, hair-raising results.

RICHARD BURTON: A LIFE by Melvyn Bragg (Little, Brown; $22.95). This meticulous biography includes generous quotations from the subject's letters and a 350,000-word private diary; the result is a portrait of a vivid actor who approached language with the same passion he lavished on Elizabeth Taylor.

THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie (Viking; $19.95). Charges of blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad have put Rushdie's book into international headlines. But the author's relentless artistry pervades this encyclopedic fiction about the explosive, often comic, meetings of East and West.

ART

ANDY WARHOL: A RETROSPECTIVE, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. The first comprehensive look since the artist's 1987 death at what made him the top of the pops. Through May 2.

THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY GREEK ART, the Art Institute of Chicago. Sixty-seven choice works from Greek museums trace the emerging lineaments of the classical style. Through May 7.

HISPANIC ART IN THE UNITED STATES: THIRTY CONTEMPORARY PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The artists grasp their ethnicity with color, vitality and fantasy, but this show is art, not sociology, and much of it is a revelation. Through April 16.

TELEVISION

PROMISES TO KEEP (PBS, March 1, 10 p.m. on most stations). Mitch Snyder, the Washington advocate for the homeless who was portrayed by Martin Sheen in a TV movie, is profiled again -- for real this time -- in an Oscar-nominated documentary.

DAY ONE (CBS, March 5, 8 p.m. EST). The development of the A-bomb, retold as a three-hour TV movie. Brian Dennehy stars as the general who headed the Manhattan Project; Michael Tucker (L.A. Law) plays a top scientist; and David Ogden Stiers handles the F.D.R. impression.

THE APPOINTMENTS OF DENNIS JENNINGS (HBO, starting March 6, 10 p.m. EST). Deadpan comic Steven Wright plays a paranoid writer trying to sort out his life in this short, also an Oscar nominee.

MOVIES

TRUE BELIEVER. The ambiguities are as unsettling as a crack-house mugger in this humdinger about a sleazy attorney who bends the system to wreak justice. But the real drama is in the demonic intensity and haunted eyes of James Woods, a criminally gifted actor who may be too edgy to become a Hollywood star in this era of the Really Cute Guy.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. David Lean's 1962 biopic, starring Peter O'Toole as adventurer T.E. Lawrence, was the first and finest epic of ideas. Now the film has been lovingly restored to 217 minutes, every one of them glorious.

THEATER

SHIRLEY VALENTINE. Pauline Collins (Upstairs, Downstairs) brings to Broadway the funny and poignant performance that won her London's version of the Tony as a discontented housewife breaking free.

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY. Not much is new in this off-Broadway tale of an old family company menaced by corporate raiders, but the acting is superb, especially by Mercedes Ruehl (Married to the Mob).

MACBETH. Joseph Ziegler and Nancy Palk play the murderous couple off-Broadway. He's intriguingly nervy, she's seductive and plain unforgettable.

MUSIC

LOU REED: NEW YORK (Sire). Savage lyricism in the sharpest Reed style, with a startling overlay of tough social commentary. A hard rocker musically and, lyrically, a real nail spitter.

MANDY PATINKIN: MANDY PATINKIN (CBS). The Broadway (Sunday in the Park with George) and movie (Alien Nation) actor lets fly with a fearlessly melodramatic song cycle chosen from sources as various as Stephen Sondheim and Al Jolson. Some are a bit florid, but the best tunes (like Anyone Can Whistle) have a delicacy that lingers.

BOB DYLAN AND THE GRATEFUL DEAD: DYLAN & THE DEAD (Columbia). Live recordings from the summer tour two years ago. Casual, lovely and intense, with a particularly astute reworking of Dylan's great tune I Want You.

MOZART AND SCHNABEL, VOLS. 1-4 (Arabesque). The great Artur Schnabel in memorable performances of Mozart piano concertos and solo music, recorded in London between 1934 and 1948.