Critics' Voices

By Compiled by Andrea Sachs

HOME ENTERTAINMENT

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Can David Lean's 1962 epic possibly be adapted for the tube? Yes! The videotape (RCA/Columbia) looks smashing, and the laser disc (Criterion), with its superior sound and visual resolution, even better. Both offer the fully restored film that was successfully rereleased in February, and both preserve its wide-screen format.

BATMAN. The summer's blockbuster comes to video stores this week. Finally, the handful of people who still haven't seen Batman will be able to explain its appeal to the even tinier (but discerning) group who find the film slow, murky, uninvolving and -- except for its visual grandeur, which may be lost on the small screen -- witless.

MOVIES

HENRY V. Kenneth Branagh, 28, is the Olivier wanna-be of the '80s. In this version, keenly faithful to the famous 1944 film, the actor-director stakes his boldest claim yet to Lord Larry's title. The elite cast -- a veritable Burke's Peerage of British acting -- makes it a royal, enjoyable feast.

IMMEDIATE FAMILY. Glenn Close and James Woods desperately want a child; Mary Stuart Masterson is about to have one. Director Jonathan Kaplan's comedy-drama finds sympathetic laughter in everyone's burdens and opportunities. The tears come later.

MUSIC

TRACY CHAPMAN: CROSSROADS (Elektra). The follow-up to her smash debut album in 1988 is . . . well, just like the first. Chapman's voice stays strong, her music soft, her message angry and often oppressively earnest. Straightforward and worthy but generally without excitement.

CHET BAKER: MY FAVOURITE SONGS (Enja). The haunting picture on the cover says it all: a face ravaged by drugs but eyes still full of dreams and yearning. This was the trumpeter's last concert, taped just two weeks before he fell to his death from an Amsterdam hotel window at age 58. But forget the quirky timing: Baker's full-throated horn never sounded better, and his poignant vocal on My Funny Valentine is an unforgettable paean to lost youth.

FESTIVALS

PASADENA DOO DAH PARADE. It all started as a spoof of the Rose Parade, but this zany California happening has taken on a life of its own. This year look for 125 offbeat groups, including the Synchronized Briefcase Drill Team and Snotty Scotty and the Hankies. Nov. 26; noon to 2 p.m.

ART

THE INTIMATE WORLD OF ALEXANDER CALDER, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York City. A delightful demonstration that for family and friends, the sculptor could make practically anything out of anything. Through March 11.

FRANCIS BACON, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington. Haunting emblems of the Age of Anxiety in the eminent British painter's distorted, isolated figures. Through Jan. 7.

BOOKS

THE STORYTELLER by Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $17.95). A Peruvian narrator remembers a college classmate and ponders the possibility that his old friend has become a bard to an endangered Amazonian tribe. This ruminative novel about storytelling and its place in society shows a world- class author in splendid form.

THE READER'S CATALOG published by Jason Epstein (distributed by Random House; $24.95). A mail-order catalog of 40,000 distinguished titles, organized in 208 categories, for readers who hunger for the quality and variety unavailable in today's mass-market bookstores. Hallelujah!

THEATER

THE SECRET RAPTURE. There's no tragic flaw in the central character of David Hare's crisply phrased and staged Broadway drama -- she's just a victim of Thatcher-era British greed, selfishness and lack of principle. Thus there's no real tension or interest in this diatribe, which judges everyone's morality by his or her politics.

MYSTERY OF THE ROSE BOUQUET. Jane Alexander and Anne Bancroft play a nurse and a patient in a taut psychological study by Manuel Puig, author of The Kiss of the Spider Woman, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

THE WIDOW'S BLIND DATE. Christine Estabrook sizzles in the title role of Israel Horovitz's off-Broadway stunner about the aftermath of a rape.

TELEVISION

A TALE OF TWO CITIES (PBS, debuting Nov. 19, 9 p.m. on most stations). Masterpiece Theater puts a fresh coat of paint on the Dickens classic about the French Revolution.

JUDITH KRANTZ'S TILL WE MEET AGAIN (CBS, Nov. 19, 21). CBS's junk-food fix for the November sweeps chronicles the romantic entanglements of three women during 40 years, spanning World Wars I and II.