Critics' Choice

ART

L'ART DE VIVRE: DECORATIVE ARTS AND DESIGN IN FRANCE, 1789-1989, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York City. Jewelry commissioned by Napoleon, cutlery from Maxim's, art nouveau furniture and haute couture gowns are among 500 objects displayed in glittering tribute to France's bicentennial. Through July 16.

AMERICAN PAINTINGS FROM THE MANOOGIAN COLLECTION, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Never publicly exhibited before, this notable collection of 19th century works ranges from Hudson River landscapes to frontier genre scenes, from Sargents to Raphaelle Peales. Through Sept. 4.

MUSIC

DION: YO FRANKIE! (Arista). The Wanderer is his own bad self, back with a fine album full of romantic street toughness and hard-edged nostalgia. This Rock-' n'-Roll Hall of Famer has still got one of the greatest voices that ever wopped a do.

BILLIE HOLIDAY: THE QUINTESSENTIAL BILLIE HOLIDAY, VOL. 5 (Columbia Jazz Masterpieces). Working with legendary producer John Hammond and pianist Teddy Wilson, Billie turned out some of her greatest hits in these 1937-38 sessions: He's Funny That Way, My Man, Nice Work If You Can Get It. All that and more on this outstanding digital reissue.

SCHUBERT: IMPROMPTUS (EMI). Pianist Melvyn Tan combines remarkable technical precision with a romantic sensibility in his fresh interpretations of these Schubert perennials.

MOVIES

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. The adventure genre may be nearly exhausted, but producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg know how to make the thrills crack like Indy's bullwhip. Sean Connery and Harrison Ford find special star resonance in the bond between an aloof father and his heroic, hero-worshiping son.

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING. While plotting a sales campaign for a new pimple cream, a British ad exec develops a bizarre ailment: a boil on the neck that has a mouth of its own and talks back with a vengeance. With black humor and a weird, Kafkaesque sensibility, director Bruce Robinson delivers a biting satire of Thatcherite society.

EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY. Three fellows new in town meet the women of their fevered dreams. Except the guys are off a spaceship, and they've landed in the San Fernando Valley. Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum star in this fizzy, frizzy musical comedy.

THEATER

THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Grittier than the movie, as panoramic as Steinbeck's novel, this 35-actor adaptation by Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe lights up the La Jolla Playhouse stage on the way to a late June run at London's National Theater.

MIXED BLESSINGS. Luis Santeiro deftly adapts Moliere's Tartuffe into a loving lampoon of life among nouveau riche Cuban Americans in contemporary Miami, at that city's Coconut Grove Playhouse.

GRANDMA MOSES. Cloris Leachman portrays the centenarian farmwife and primitivist painter in a one-woman tour, this week in Los Angeles.

BOOKS

THE GOOD TIMES by Russell Baker (Morrow; $19.95). What propelled Baker from the childhood he so memorably described in Growing Up (1982) to his present distinction as a columnist for the New York Times? Here is the answer, in a winsome memoir of early newspapering days, including big-league stints in London and Washington.

THE RUSSIA HOUSE by John le Carre (Knopf; $19.95). A document discounting Soviet missile capabilities is smuggled to the West. Never mind glasnost, perestroika and the cold war thaw. Are these grubby notebooks full of facts and figures true? The quest for the answer produces the author's most hair- raising thriller since The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.

SUMMER OF '49 by David Halberstam (Morrow; $21.95). A quirky and informal account of the American League pennant race between the Red Sox and the Yankees deepens into a nostalgic memoir of a vanishing era, when people listened to the radio, traveled by train and went around the corner to see a movie.

TELEVISON

THE ASPERN PAPERS (PBS, June 9, 9 p.m. on most stations). First time on TV for Dominick Argento's opera based on the Henry James novella, in a production from the Dallas Opera.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (HBO, June 10, 9:30 p.m.). Those scary old E.C. comics inspired three horror tales, each directed by a Hollywood heavyweight: Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future), Walter Hill (48 Hrs.) and Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon).