Fall Arts Preview 2004

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Like an impatient teacher itching to enlighten a classroom of sleepy students, fall is a season that snaps, "Pay attention!" Summer's over, school's in, and popular culture gets a little more serious. It's the antisilly season, when people want challenge as much as comfort. The seasonal adage may be "Fall back," but autumn is the time for great leaps forward. And late August is the time to hope for them.

After months of brainless Hollywood bombast, you can look not for bigger films but for smarter ones. The romance novels of summer are beach litter now; time to buckle down to nonfiction. TV may be ready to take off its dancing shoes and take on weighty subjects--like a Chris Rock sitcom that defuses racism by exploding it.

In these pages, TIME's critics report on the top autumn anticipations. And if some of the offerings seem too much like homework, play hooky. See a Broadway show with a favorite star tandem or a movie with a mute, heroic dog, or try a cool new video game. Then write an essay about it, class, and have it on our desk by Monday.

THEATER

BIGGEST BUZZ

Broadway's $20 Million Odd Couple

Everyone says it's the show you gotta see. But it won't be easy. Months before its Oct. 27 opening night, a revival of Neil Simon's 1965 comedy, The Odd Couple, this time with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, has amassed $20 million in ticket sales--the highest advance take ever for a Broadway nonmusical.

The two stars, who helped turn Mel Brooks' The Producers into the first smash theater hit of the millennium, are one of show biz's top money teams. In this tale of mismatched roommates, Lane will play Oscar, the slobby sportswriter, while Broderick tackles the fussbudget Felix. There have been rumors that they may occasionally switch roles.

The six-month run is virtually sold out, but booking agents may be persuaded to part with certain tickets at $1,000 a pop. Or you can go to the multiplex in December and catch the duo in the movie version of The Producers musical. --By Richard Corliss

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Beginning an Ariel Bombardment

Rosemary Harris,74, has always possessed the gift of making common sense seem a stroke of genius, a thing of beauty. Her equipoise will be tested as she inhabits a nation wracked by war in Ariel Dorfman's The Other Side (opening Dec. 6 at New York's Manhattan Theatre Club). It's one of three plays by the Chilean author (Death and the Maiden) to premiere this season. Purgatorio opens in Seattle in October, Picasso's Closet in Washington in June. --R.C.

MOVIES

BIGGEST BUZZ

On Oscar Night, Will the Man in Black Be Handed a Man of Gold?

This legendary singer from the South had a string of genre-bending hits in the '50s and kept his luster for 50 years, through marital breakups and drug busts. He had a sibling whose early death haunted him. He himself died just as he was about to be immortalized in a Hollywood biopic.

Bet you didn't know how much Ray Charles and Johnny Cash had in common.