Short Takes

TELEVISION

Brooding in Gotham City

BATMAN IS DEPRESSED. FIRST HE READS a headline in the local paper: PENGUIN CONVICTION OVERTURNED. Then, while rounding up some crooks, he nearly causes the death of Commissioner Gordon. BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, which is joining Fox's Sunday-night schedule after scoring big ratings in daytime, has the same dark hues as the hit movies on which it is based, but probably more entertainment bang for the buck. The animation nicely reproduces the films' shadowy, expressionist look; the action scenes really make sense; and the scripts aspire to more. This brooding superhero even paraphrases Santayana: "A fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts while losing sight of his goal." Holy egghead!

THEATER

A Favorite No More

IN HIS MOST GLORIOUS COMIC ACTING ON film, Peter O'Toole played a washed-up swashbuckling movie star, raddled with debauchery yet oddly innocent. The man journeyed hours to glimpse an estranged daughter but did not dare speak to her and dismissed his screen heroism as fakery until he thrillingly discovered that it, like all art, came from deep within. The barren Broadway musical of MY FAVORITE YEAR, which opened last week, turns O'Toole's holy hellion into a soulless self-pitier (a deft if charmless Tim Curry) and wrongly presumes that the film's appeal was its setting amid a '50s TV variety show -- a format joylessly re-created. For the movie's fans, this is a sad waste; for others, a crashing bore.

BOOKS

Ordinary Wonders

WHY DO MOST DINNER FORKS HAVE FOUR tines? How did the zipper come about? Henry Petroski, the inquisitive engineering professor from Duke who gave us a history of The Pencil (it's more interesting than you would imagine), provides the answers in a lively new treatise on design called THE EVOLUTION OF USEFUL THINGS (Knopf; $24). In a lifetime, notes the author, the average adult will encounter 20,000 or more everyday objects, most of which are taken for granted. Petroski argues that form follows failure rather than function, meaning that the inadequacies of existing things have inspired inventors to see if they could do better. The author's message: considering its history, the humble paper clip is as much of an industrial miracle as the atom smasher.

CINEMA

Tiny Tim Without Father Jim

"THE MARLEYS WERE DEAD." HUH? EBenezer Scrooge (a nicely grave Michael Caine) has two dead partners -- played by Statler and Waldorf, those sour kibitzers from the Muppet Show. Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy is Mrs. C., Gonzo is Charles Dickens . . . so this must be THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL, the first feature from Jim Henson Productions since the founder's death. Director Brian Henson hasn't his dad's genius for comic detail, and the film often sinks into the brown funk of a wake for the passed master. But when Kermit (now voiced by Steve Whitmire) says of his dead son, "I'm sure we shall never forget Tiny Tim," the film pays touching tribute to Kermit's creator and the blithe, antic puppet world he devised.

CINEMA

Orion's Hope

THEY OUGHT TO CHANGE THE COMPANY'S name to Phoenix. Orion Pictures has risen from the ashes of its bankruptcy to release a few good movies. The first is LOVE FIELD, a slim but affecting drama named for the Dallas airport where John F. Kennedy's plane landed on Nov. 22, 1963. Michelle Pfeiffer, glitzed up and dumbed down, is a restless housewife who vows to attend the President's funeral in Washington; Dennis Haysbert is the mysterious black man she tries to befriend. Director Jonathan Kaplan (The Accused, Heart Like a Wheel) has the gifts of finding verve and ambiguity in TV-movie subjects and drawing beautiful interpretations from his lead actresses. As with Pfeiffer here. Her work is glamourless, subtle, heroic; her performance is a righteous heartbreaker.