Short Takes

CINEMA

Terms of Adjustment

People who use other people don't always know that they're using them. So says Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan in his handsome, quirky comedy THE ADJUSTER. Noah Render (Elias Koteas) is one such user, an insurance claims adjuster whose sensitivity to his clients' suffering extends to having sex with nearly all of them, from frowsy couples to purring studs to a burnt-out stunner (the lustrous Jennifer Dale). It makes life tough for Noah's wife (Arsinee Khanjian), a film censor. Both have jobs appraising erotic desires and pathetic dreams; both have a ruthless talent for "sorting things out, deciding what has value and what doesn't." The Adjuster has value: it finds wit and melancholy in all these warty souls.

THEATER

Shopworn Horrors

Composer Alan Menken won four Oscars for the movies The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast with lyricist Howard Ashman. For the stage, they created Little Shop of Horrors. After Ashman died of AIDS in 1991, Menken tried various collaborators. WEIRD ROMANCE, which opened off-Broadway last week, shows how much he misses Ashman's storytelling. The two one-acts (book by Alan Brennert and lyrics by David Spencer) blend zippy tunes with cliche science fiction. A witty, upbeat song recalls how a boy fell in love with lab testing, and Ellen Greene sings gorgeous ballads. But what is this piffle about evil doctors and clones, cross-species romance and reincarnation by hologram?

POP MUSIC

Keen Quartet

Irish pop music is the art of the drone: the mournful monotone of Enya, U2 and Sinead O'Connor, singing elegies to the millennium. Now comes the Irish quartet CLANNAD (whose lead singer, Maire Brennan, is Enya's sister) and an album, Anam, that has all the right career moves: a duet with U2's Bono, a song from the hit movie Patriot Games. The group merits a listen. Brennan's soprano keenings, in English and Gaelic, are variously backed by cool, Sergio Mendes-style harmonies, a bluesy sax, and a guitar's banshee wailing. But in the tune Harry's Game, Clannad goes spare and liturgical, transmuting New Age tonal banality into ageless, ethereal beauty. If you ever ascend to heaven, this is the music you'll hear in the elevator.

BOOKS

Entertainment News

Let's cast FAME'S PERIL (pocket Books; $19). Harrison Ford could play ace reporter Jack Werts -- a man's man fed up with the Hollywood newsbeat and a dedicated chaser of bimbos. Ceci McCann, ambitious blond TV reporter, could be played by any number of ambitious blond starlets. And Robert Redford could play the star turned director whose son is kidnapped. In a slick comic-book thriller, TIME contributor Martha Smilgis works a writer's hustle (Is it a book, or is it a screenplay?) in the area she knows best, Hollywood and % entertainment news. And in the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille, who condemned sin by taking his audience through frame after lascivious frame, she shows just how filthy the road to filthy lucre can be.

TELEVISION

Yaaaaah!

He was just the best. Playing a public enemy, a song-and-dance man or Shakespeare's Bottom, he always found the perfectly audacious gesture. So Carl Lindahl's documentary JAMES CAGNEY: TOP OF THE WORLD (TNT, July 5), with Michael J. Fox as genial host, is most welcome, and not just for the clips and reminiscences it briskly purees. TNT made its rep airing Warners movies of the '30s -- revelations in their crisp city impudence -- starring Cagney and other brash eminences. Lately, though, the network has slighted them in favor of sports and newer, lesser films, which is like keeping the Cristal in the cellar while you serve your guests Gatorade. Happily, TNT will show 18 vintage Cagney films, including 11 from the '30s, in July. The tough guy -- and movie lovers -- deserve no less.