Critics’ Choice: Oct. 17, 1988

MOVIES

BIRD. Clint Eastwood’s passionate biography of jazz great Charlie Parker hits the high notes, and finds new blue ones, in the story of a genius who could resist everything but temptation.

PUNCHLINE. An inspired Tom Hanks, our reigning master of desperate expediency, steals the show from a coolly expert Sally Field in writer-director David ^ Seltzer’s foray into the world of stand-up, knock-down comedy.

TRACK 29. It’s mother love with the proper stranger in this surreal treat from director Nicolas Roeg. Theresa Russell is the troubled mom, Gary Oldman the man who may be her son.

DEAD RINGERS. David (The Fly) Cronenberg directs a spooky parable of split identity: twin gynecologists drive themselves to dementia and a symbiotic suicide-murder.

MUSIC

DAVID LINDLEY & EL RAYO-X: VERY GREASY (Elektra/Asylum). Good-time music to dance to, or goof to, much of it with a Caribbean inflection. Produced by Linda Ronstadt, with minimal sheen and plenty of humor.

THE LAST EMPEROR (Virgin). Ryuicihi Sakamoto, David Byrne and Cong Su collaborate on a big, bold score for a big, bold movie.

RAY CHARLES: JUST BETWEEN US (CBS). Sublime. When Charles sings Stranger in My Own Hometown, there doesn’t seem to be a lonely corner his voice can’t reach.

THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT (CBS). Oliver Sacks’ neurological case study of a failing mind and a stalwart heart comes to vibrant operatic life in Michael Nyman’s deft minimalist setting.

BOOKS

BERNARD SHAW: THE SEARCH FOR LOVE by Michael Holroyd (Random House; $24.95). The first of a projected three-volume life takes its brilliant, cantankerous subject to age 42, through journalism — and love affairs — to playwriting and toward his towering reputation.

THE LETTERS OF T.S. ELIOT 1898-1922 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $29.95). At last! The poet’s centenary marks the publication of the first volume of his correspondence.

THE MAGIC LANTERN by Ingmar Bergman (Viking; $19.95). Like a box full of old slides — or a Bergman movie — the Swedish director’s searching memoirs are alive with frozen moments, many of them cruelly revealing.

THEATER

PAUL ROBESON. The script is uncritical idolatry, but Avery Brooks (Spenser: For Hire) gives this one-man Broadway show a dignity, emotional force and singing voice as awesome as the American original.

A SHAYNA MAIDEL. Gordana Rashovich has resumed a stunning performance in this off-Broadway story of a family divided by Hitler’s Holocaust.

RUMORS. After a meditative family trilogy, box-office champ Neil Simon returns to riotous farce in his 23rd play, at San Diego’s Old Globe on its way to Broadway.

KINGFISH. Buck Henry is a prissy-elegant queen who tangles with a hustler in Marlane Meyer’s absurdist farce at the Los Angeles Theater Center.

ART

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI 1901-1966, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington. The paintings, drawings and familiar elongated sculptures of the great Swiss-born modernist. Through Nov. 13.

POUSSIN: THE EARLY YEARS IN ROME, Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth. The first major show in North America devoted to the 17th century master who was the father of classical French painting. Through Nov. 27.

PAUL GAUGUIN, Art Institute of Chicago. Two major attractions in one: a huge, revelatory retrospective that shows Gauguin whole for the first time, housed in the top floor of the institute’s new Rice Building. Through Dec. 11.

TELEVISION

THE MIND (PBS, debuting Oct. 12, 8 p.m. on most stations). Four years ago, PBS explored The Brain; this nine-part follow-up series probes deeper, into such topics as the psychology of depression, addiction and violence.

THE WORLD SERIES (NBC, starting Oct. 15, 8 p.m. EDT). The network of the Olympics comes home for America’s fall classic, and Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola dust off their baseball anecdotes.

A PERFECT SPY (PBS, debuting Oct. 16, 9 p.m. on most stations). John le Carre’s autobiographical spy novel, about an intelligence agent’s relationship with his con-man father, makes an offbeat, seven-part Masterpiece Theater entry.

ROSEANNE (ABC, debuting Oct. 18, 8:30 p.m. EDT). Is America ready for a whiny, overweight prime-time heroine? Comedian Roseanne Barr, who plays a blue-collar working mom in this new sitcom, aims to find out.