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SONG CYCLE: VAN DYKE PARKS (Warner Bros.). Van Dyke Parks sings a surrealist's dream in a voice so innocent as to draw any listener into his experience. He has experimented with the usual recording technique by taping voice upon melody upon stereophonic sound effects, then mirroring it back at varying speeds until it becomes a collage of sound light-years away from a "live" performance. What does it matter if the lyrics are opaque at times? The effect is all shimmering beauty.
CINEMA
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. By reverse alchemy, Carson McCullers' novel is turned into dross, but two outstanding performances almost redeem the project: Alan Arkin as a poignant deaf-mute, and Cicely Tyson as the embodiment of the slogan "Black is Beautiful."
ISABEL. French Canadian Actress Genevieve Bujold and her writer-director husband Paul Almond click with their first professional collaboration, creating a shocker that manages to be simultaneously heartwarming and spine-chilling.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Director Stanley Kubrick dazzles the eye and bends the mind in this space-age parable of the secret of life.
INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. In this transposition of John Osborne's bitterly impassioned play, Nicol Williamson sears the screen as a London solicitor who awakes one morning to the frightening realization that he has grown middle-aged and that his life is meaningless.
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Revenge is sweet, bitter, salty and sour in François Truffaut's poetic evocation of an idée fixe. Jeanne Moreau is the woman with the idée, and the men who killed her husband are the ones who get fixed in a series of alternately comic and eerie murders.
ROSEMARY'S BABY. In this chilling adaptation of Ira Levin's bestselling thriller of witchery at work in a Manhattan apartment building, Mia Farrow, as the beleaguered wife, gives a memorable portrayal of innocence and vulnerability.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE SPLENDID PAUPER, by Allen Andrews. The biography of Moreton Frewen, Winston Churchill's froward uncle and a born loser who went from one financial debacle to another with style, imagination and diligence.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY, by Will and Ariel Durant. At a time when nostalgia and/or despair is intellectually fashionable, the Durants argue that the best is probably yet to come, in a witty and perceptive program note to their monumental 10-volume Story of Civilization.
HAROLD NICOLSON: THE LATER YEARS, 1945-1962, VOL. III OF DIARIES AND LETTERS, edited by Nigel Nicolson. This third and final installment of Author-Politician Nicolson's sprightly and candid reminiscences clinches his position as the brightest British diarist since Pepys.
THE FRENCH, by François Nourissier; THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE, by J.J. Servan-Schreiber. France's cultural achievements and sophisticated tastes, say these two candid Frenchmen, mask crumbling institutions and outdated attitudes that must be changed if the country is to avert disaster.
THE BURNING GLASS, by S. N. Behrman. Set in Salzburg, New York and Hollywood during the '30s, the celebrated playwright's first novel tells of the shifting fortunes of a group of intellectuals and socialites who make very agreeable company.