Television: Dec. 13, 1968

(3 of 4)

YELLOW SUBMARINE. The Beatles are the nominal heroes of this fey animated film about a trip to Pepperland aboard a yellow submarine. Viewers may find themselves paying most of their attention to the visual puns and graphic artistry of Designer Heinz Edelmann.

PRETTY POISON is a little comedy of murders that is full of some nice surprises: notably excellent performances by Tony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, and some telling satire on the current climate of violence by Director Noel Black, 31, and Co-Producer Marshall Backlar, 32.

COOGAN'S BLUFF. Director Don Siegal, hymned in the pages of esoteric French film magazines, proves that his reputation is no Gallic caprice with this tough crime film about an Arizona sheriff (Clint Eastwood) who goes to New York to extradite a prisoner.

BULLITT. Steve McQueen plays it fast and supercool as a San Francisco detective in this modish thriller about current life styles in the criminal underworld.

FUNNY GIRL. A loud, brassy and almost anachronistic musical biography of Fanny Brice. Barbra Streisand plays the lead in a typically brazen manner that will please her confirmed fans.

WEEKEND. Jean-Luc Godard excoriates the bourgeoisie in this savage satire, which would be sharper if its Maoist political harangues were not so dull.

BOOKS

For Children at Christmas Ages Eight to Twelve

THE DREAM WATCHER by Barbara Wersba (Atheneum, $3.95). Albert is a misfit—he reads Thoreau, enjoys gardening, and is always worried about his "crummy soul." As a mini-Holden Caulfield he is as real as he can be.

LANGSTON HUGHES by Milton Meltzer (Crowell, $4.50) is a good, straightforward biography of the late Negro poet, who saw, felt, understood and wrote about what it was like to be black in America

COUNT ME GONE by Annabel and Edgar Johnson (Simon & Schuster, $3.95). An 18-year-old boy attempts to discover himself by rehashing four wild days that led to an automobile crash.

THE DONKEY RUSTLERS by Gerald Durrell (Viking, $4.50). A gifted writer turns his attention to a book exclusively for children. It is a marvelous spoof of village conservatism confronting the "Communist menace."

THE CHILDREN OF THE HOUSE by Brian Fairfax-Lucy and Philippa Pearce (Lippincott, $3.95) concerns four lonely children growing up in aristocratic poverty in England before World War I. It is quietly moving to watch them finding happiness of sorts among themselves and with their only allies, the servants.

WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT by Vadim Frolov; translated by Joseph Barnes (Doubleday, $3.95). A Russian adolescent with the universal problems of youth—girls, school, drink and parents—struggles against narrow-minded, evasive adults in this more-adult-than-usual young peoples' novels.

MISTER CORBETT'S GHOST by Leon Garfield (Pantheon, $3.50) is a weird story about spirits in a London apothecary shop, with chilling illustrations by Alan E. Cober.

EDGAR ALLAN by John Neufeld (S. G. Phillips, $3.95) a white family in a California town adopts a black child, then returns him to the adoption agency because the white father—a minister—finds he cannot stand the pressure and hatred that his act of charity has caused.