Critics' Voices

MOVIES

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS. A piano duo, stranded between anonymity and unemployment, needs a sexy vocalist to spruce up the act. Good career move; bad for the boys. Jeff and Beau Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer are better than fabulous in this wry, rare comedy of character.

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. In Woody Allen's acute meditation on the Greed decade, bad men are rewarded for their crimes and nice guys worry about committing misdemeanors. This is Allen in his funny-serious mood, farcical and dour by turns, a showman of gentle misanthropy.

FIGHT FOR US. A saintly priest is gunned down and mutilated. A basketball team is massacred. A female rebel is raped by a vigilante commandant; when the commandant is killed, his lieutenant carves open the dead man's chest and eats his flesh. These horrifying events might seem the stuff of slasher movies, but according to Filipino director Lino Brocka, they are real. His film, based in part on testimony collected by Amnesty International, charges that human rights violations are more widespread under President Corazon Aquino than they were during the Marcos regime, which Brocka had long criticized. Fight for Us is a cry for justice, from a man out of breath, for a nation nearly eviscerated by fratricide.

FESTIVALS:

WURSTFEST. You can link up with more than 100,000 sausage devotees at this Texas-size eaterama. For ten days, New Braunfels, Texas, rolls out the best of the wurst, as well as yodelers, dancers and polka players with down-home names like Oma and the Oompahs. Nov. 3 through 12.

THEATER

BROTHERS AND SISTERS. The most acclaimed Soviet stage work since World War II, this two-part epic from Leningrad depicts Stalin's abuse of the rural millions. In Russian, with simultaneous translation through earphones, at San Diego's Old Globe.

OH, KAY! Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House engagingly shifts vintage Gershwin to 1920s Harlem. Tony winner Ron Richardson (Big River) stars.

TELEVISION

CHICO MENDES: VOICE OF THE AMAZON (TBS, Nov. 1, 10:05 p.m. EST). This one-hour documentary focuses on the martyred Brazilian's efforts to save the Amazonian rain forest and includes the last television interview Mendes gave before his 1988 assassination.

OUR TOWN (PBS, Nov. 3, 9 p.m. on most stations). Last season's acclaimed Broadway revival of the Thornton Wilder classic is presented on Great Performances.

CROSS OF FIRE (NBC, Nov. 5 and 6, 9 p.m. EST). Romance, murder and revenge -- you'll get it all in this fact-based mini-series about the rise and fall of a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Indianapolis. Starring John Heard (Beaches, Big) and Mel Harris (thirtysomething).

MUSIC

KATE BUSH: THE SENSUAL WORLD (Columbia). Well, it does have a lonely-hearts love song about a computer. Otherwise, the histrionics are so heavy and the passion so sham on this record that it would be wiser just to press DELETE.

THE RCA VICTOR VOCAL SERIES. Maybe they weren't better in the old days, but these digitally remastered recordings make a strong case that the jet plane and overbooked schedules are enemies of vocal grace. The first issues in this new project include Marian Anderson, Leonard Warren, Rosa Ponselle, Tito Schipa and Jussi Bjoerling. The Warren disk is an oddity, recorded live on a 1958 tour of the Soviet Union, where the baritone's dark, sexy voice knocked 'em dead. Ponselle's sublime vocal poise lights great Verdi arias and ditties like When I Have Sung My Songs to You, I'll Sing No More. Easily the most joyous singer is Schipa, with his diaphanous tenor tones and fluent ornamentation. There was a real nap on the operatic velvet back then!

BOOKS

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf; $18.95). It is 1956, and an aging English butler looks back on his decades of service in a stately house. The meaning of his memories is not always clear to him, but it is to the reader, thanks to Japanese-born novelist Ishiguro's deadly, deadpan dissection of the British class system.

THE WAY TO COOK by Julia Child (Knopf; $50). The first tome in nine years from the nation's queen of cuisine is, expectedly, an instructional masterpiece: precise directions, lavish illustrations, wise little tips on timing and the proper tools. The recipes are mostly Euroclassics with variations, many lightened for health-conscious American palates. A boon for beginners; a must for the more experienced.

ROLLING STONE: THE PHOTOGRAPHS (Simon & Schuster; $50). Nixon's helicopter lifting off after his final farewell, John curling up naked against Yoko, Brando posing in a wheatfield in bonnet and dress. If these photos touch a nostalgic nerve, you'll also love the 147 others, culled from 22 years of Rolling Stone, where celebrity photojournalism and portraiture mix with fascinating results.