(3 of 4)
THE BEACH BOYS TODAY! (Capitol). Now that they have put aside their surfboards and hotrods, the big West Coast quintet has time to ponder life and love. They wonder, for example, what is going to "turn them on" when they "grow up to be a man." They beg in their choirboy voices, "Don't hurt my little sister. She digs you." They choke back the tears to admit they are "so young, can't marry no one."
THE MIRACLES: GREATEST HITS FROM THE BEGINNING (2 LPs; Tamla). The Detroit group revives some early-style rock 'n' roll that sounds surprisingly subtle, harmonious and low-keyed compared with most of its imitations. The chiffon voice is Claudette's and the lead singer of the male quartet is Bill ("Smokey") Robinson, who also wrote most of the songs (Got a Job, What's So Good About Goodbye).
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: DANCE PARTY (Gordy). Some higher-voltage Detroit music, with Martha agitating a party, giving directions for the jerk and raising the roof over Mobile Lil the Dancing Witch, Mickey's Monkey and Hitch Hike.
CINEMA
THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. While Stuart Whitman and James Fox fly to win the favor of winsome Sarah Miles, this disarming comedy assigns its zanier thrills, spills and laughter to Terry-Thomas, Gert Frobe and Alberto Sordi, all clowning in outrageous but flyable aircraft as competitors in a great London-Paris air race of 1910.
SYMPHONY FOR A MASSACRE. French Director Jacques Deray, smoothly working variations on the themes of The Asphalt Jungle and Rififi, follows five men through a suspenseful million-dollar caper that turns into a deadly game of dishonor among thieves.
LA TÍA TULA. In a first film of faultless artistry, Spanish Director Miguel Picazo studies a still beautiful spinster (Aurora Bautista) whose unyielding virtue conquers the passion she feels for her dead sister's husband.
MIRAGE. A plot that often seems trickier than a Chinese puzzle is pieced together entertainingly by a traumatized scientist (Gregory Peck) and a rather inept private eye (Walter Matthau) who keeps his wit about him.
CAT BALLOU. Lee Marvin is hilarious twice over as a pair of roguish gunslingers, one to help, one to hinder a way-out Western lass (Jane Fonda) who gives up school-teaching to become a desperado.
IL SUCCESSO. How to succeed, Italian-style, is the subject of a sometimes fierce, sometimes frolicsome satire about a rising young executive (Vittorio Gassman) and the loved ones he leaves behind.
THE YELLOW ROLLS-ROYCE. Among the luminous bodies who find love, then lose it, during three smooth but shallow intrigues staged in the back seat of a 1930 model Phantom II are Rex Harrison and Jeanne Moreau, Alain Delon and Shirley MacLaine, Omar Sharif and Ingrid Bergman.
THE PAWNBROKER. The nightmare world of Spanish Harlem awakens the humanity of a wretched old Jew whose past and present come stingingly to life in the performance of Rod Steiger.
BOOKS
Best Reading
