Critics' Choice

MOVIES

HEATHERS. There's a disturbing mortality rate among Westerburg High's snooty elite. A rash of suicides? Or is someone killing the prom queens of Ohio? Daniel Waters' witty script touches two stark teen issues: the need to be accepted and the urge to end it all.

84 CHARLIE MOPIC. In the jungles of Viet Nam, a lost patrol finds enemies on both sides of combat. But the main character of Patrick Duncan's war movie is a documentary-film camera. Through its unblinking eye, a familiar horror story gains raw immediacy.

THEATER

GHETTO. Joshua Sobol's Nazi-era tragicomedy, seen across the U.S. in an Israeli production, makes its English-language debut on Broadway, with the same vibrant staging.

JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE. Director Claude Purdy's backyard realism suits August Wilson's lyric text, at the Los Angeles Theater Center.

MEMBER OF THE WEDDING. Esther Rolle (Good Times) and newcomer Amelia Campbell glow as nanny and budding adolescent in this deeply moving off-Broadway revival of Carson McCullers' coming-of-age story of the pre-civil rights South.

ART

THOMAS HART BENTON: AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. He said he wished his work could be exhibited in saloons, but the colorful, cantankerous Benton (1889-1975) is being honored in his centennial year not only with a biography and a PBS special but also with this full-dress retrospective in his native state. Featured: the stylized murals of American history and daily life for which he was best known. Through June 18.

WHISTLER AND HIS CIRCLE, Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul. Etchings, lithographs and paintings representing Whistler's high achievements in those media, as well as his influence on other late-19th century artists, chiefly such Americans as Joseph Pennell, Charles Keene and John Marin. Through June 25.

NELL BLAINE: RECENT OILS AND WORKS ON PAPER, Fischbach Gallery, New York City. Forty-eight works by a premier American artist whose spontaneous brushstrokes and brilliant colors enrobe nature in a tender intimacy. Through April 26.

LIKE A ONE-EYED CAT:PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEE FRIEDLANDER 1956-1987, Seattle Art Museum. Surprising perspectives on everyday images -- street scenes, jazz musicians, empty motel rooms, public monuments -- by a modern American master. Through May 7.

MUSIC

SAM KINISON: HAVE YOU SEEN ME LATELY? (Warner Bros.). Abusive, scurrilous and hilarious: postpunk comedy meets primal-scream therapy. Offensive? You betcha. But there are wonderful bits about sexism and heartbreak, as well as the best riffs on organized religion since Lenny Bruce.

ROSANNE CASH: HITS 1979-1989 (Columbia). She's got a half-past-4-in-the- morning voice and a knowing way with a song that can make any listener wish the night would go on forever.

ANTONIN DVORAK: AMERICAN SUITE, SYMPHONY NO. 9 (Virgin Classics). Libor Pesek conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in exuberant renditions of these powerful works, whose brooding Slavic soul belies their New World theme.

TELEVISION

UNFINISHED STORIES (various cable and PBS stations, April 23, 5 p.m. EDT). The work of artists and performers who have died of AIDS will be celebrated in this 13-hour telethon, produced jointly by the Bravo cable network and several PBS stations. Tommy Tune, Christopher Reeve and Cheryl Tiegs are among the hosts.

MURDERERS AMONG US: THE SIMON WIESENTHAL STORY (HBO, April 23, 8 p.m. EDT). The famed Nazi hunter is portrayed by Ben Kingsley in a properly reverent TV- movie bio.

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE (TNT, April 24, 8 p.m. EDT). Farrah Fawcett plays the globe-trotting LIFE photographer in a made-for-Turner movie that dwells equally on her career and her long-term relationship with writer Erskine Caldwell (Frederic Forrest).

BOOKS

CITIZENS, A CHRONICLE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Simon Schama (Knopf; $29.95). Exactly 200 years after the bloody facts, a Harvard historian offers a fascinating, often surprising account of what went right -- and wrong -- during one of the world's most celebrated social convulsions.

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving (Morrow; $19.95). In this inventive, indignant novel, a boisterous cast and a spirited story line propel a sawed- off Christly caricature through two decades of U.S. foreign policy debacles.

THE JOY LUCK CLUB by Amy Tan (Putnam; $18.95). A bright, sharp-flavored first novel on the subject of growing up ethnic in the U.S. The topic sounds familiar, but the Chinese spice added to this old recipe is invigorating and refreshingly true.