Critics' Voices

MUSIC

BOB DYLAN: UNDER THE RED SKY (Columbia). "God knows the secrets of your heart," Dylan sings on this enigmatic new bit of introspection and social speculation. "He'll tell 'em to you when you sleep." Well, he's not talking much here, and Bob hangs back a bit too. Odd, edgy and, for all the slick session talent on parade (George Harrison, Elton John), somehow unfinished.

THE KENTUCKY HEADHUNTERS: PICKIN' ON NASHVILLE (Mercury/PolyGram). Quirky, impolite country music by a new band that respects tradition but takes its own route back to the roots. Classics by the likes of Bill Monroe and Don Gibson are burnished with a hard-driving, honky-tonk brio that suits the Headhunters' original material just fine too.

KIRSTEN FLAGSTAD. LAURITZ MELCHIOR. (RCA Victor Vocal Series). These companion albums feature two legendary singers with the temperaments and voices to sing Wagner as he might have imagined it in his inner ear. The love duet from Tristan und Isolde (from the Melchior recording) is pure rapture.

BLUES YOU CAN USE

Just when you thought your blues collection was complete, Columbia Records reaches back into its well-stocked vaults and brings forth a treasury of historic sides that helped lay the groundwork for modern rock, soul and rhythm and blues. The first eight releases in the ambitious ROOTS 'N BLUES series feature the work of such greats as Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Bill Broonzy and Willie Dixon. But the most eagerly awaited offering is the boxed, two-volume (CD or cassette) set containing all 41 known takes by the legendary Robert Johnson, whose brooding, anguished voice and ringing guitar made him a cult figure for a generation of young rockers. As guitarist Eric Clapton puts it in a copiously annotated accompanying booklet: "I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones is more succinct: "You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it."

THEATER

HAMLET. What do you do if your parents are George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst? If you are Campbell Scott, you go into the family business, appear on Broadway in Long Day's Journey into Night and on film in Longtime Companion, then scale the actor's Everest in this stirring production at San Diego's Old Globe Theater.

FUENTE OVEJUNA. The Spanish classic of a feudal village's revenge against a tyrannical overlord took London by storm last season in an electrifying new translation that makes its U.S. debut at California's Berkeley Rep.

TELEVISION

) COP ROCK (ABC, debuting Sept. 26, 10 p.m. EDT). The police action is rough and raw, like Hill Street Blues. But when a courtroom jury, asked for its verdict, breaks into song, we know we're not in Kansas anymore. Steven Bochco's musical cop show is the fall's most audacious newcomer.

TWIN PEAKS (ABC, Sept. 30, 9 p.m. EDT). It's back to the weird Northwest to find out whether Agent Cooper survived the gunshots and whether David Lynch's cult series survived the hype.

HEAT OF THE DAY (PBS, Sept. 30, 9 p.m. on most stations). For those who like their mysteries solved in one evening, Michael Gambon plays a suspicious stranger who latches on to a divorcee in World War II London, in this Masterpiece Theater drama scripted by Harold Pinter.

MOVIES

GOODFELLAS. The fellas -- Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci -- are anything but good in Martin Scorsese's homicidally funny portrait of a Mafia family. They kill, maim and rob; they rat on their friends or slit their throats. This vast fresco of criminal amorality is also a how-to book for making it big and gaudy in New York City.

LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST. Greek director Theo Angelopoulos makes majestic visions out of spare images. In this metaphysical road movie, two children hike across Greece to find their absent father. A poignant but never sentimental view of childhood from a master of minimalism.

WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART. In his portrayal of a director very like John Huston, Clint Eastwood subverts two rogue images: his own and that of a lovable auteur. He looks into the heart of maleness and finds equal parts arrogance and bluff.

BOOKS

JAZZ SINGING: AMERICA'S GREAT VOICES FROM BESSIE SMITH TO BEBOP AND BEYOND by Will Friedwald (Scribners; $29.95). A hip, informative look at the men and women who turned singing and swinging into synonyms.

NOW YOU KNOW by Kitty Dukakis with Jane Scovell (Simon & Schuster; $19.95). What starts out as another sad story of anxiety and alcohol abuse by the wife of a public official eventually turns into a moving saga of courage as the author struggles to come back from a defeat far more humiliating than her husband's wipeout at the polls.

ART

INFORMATION ART: DIAGRAMMING MICROCHIPS, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. The millions of electronic elements in thumbnail-size microchips are so intricate that they must be plotted by computer on "road maps" 100 to 200 times the size of the chips. Put 31 of these plots on the walls of a museum and -- Eureka! -- you have an exhibition of colorful, exquisitely crafted designs that hold their own with many abstract paintings. Through Oct. 30.

THE QUEST FOR SELF-EXPRESSION: PAINTING IN MOSCOW AND LENINGRAD 1965-1990, Columbus Museum of Art. What 43 Soviet artists have been up to since the post- Stalin "thaw." Through Nov. 25.