Critics' Choice: Feb. 27, 1989

BOOKS

RICHARD BURTON: A LIFE by Melvyn Bragg (Little, Brown; $22.95). This meticulous biography includes generous quotations from the subject's letters and a 350,000-word private diary; the result is a portrait of a vivid actor who approached language with the same passion he lavished on Elizabeth Taylor.

THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie (Viking; $19.95). Charges of blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad have earned a death threat for Rushdie and international headlines for his book, an artfully written encyclopedic fiction about the explosive, often comic, meetings of East and West.

THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff (Atlantic Monthly Press; $18.95). A vivid memoir of a bizarre upbringing, dwelling not on hardships but on the promise of awakening every morning in a vast land where people are prepared to forget the past and believe anything.

MOVIES

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. David Lean's 1962 biopic, starring Peter O'Toole as adventurer T.E. Lawrence, was the first and finest epic of ideas. Now the film has been lovingly restored to 217 minutes, every one of them glorious. Military strategy was never so movie compelling. Sand was never so sexy.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. Strange people and situations pile into a Madrid penthouse until the place looks like the stateroom in A Night at the Opera. Carmen Maura is the put-upon heroine in this glossy farce by Spain's naughty new auteur Pedro Almodovar.

ART

ANDY WARHOL: A RETROSPECTIVE, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. The first comprehensive look since the artist's 1987 death at what made him, for better or worse, the top of the pops. Through May 2.

THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY GREEK ART, the Art Institute of Chicago. Sixty-seven choice works from Greek museums trace the emerging lineaments not only of the classical style but also of a civilization's self-image. Through May 7.

HISPANIC ART IN THE UNITED STATES: 30 CONTEMPORARY PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The artists grasp their ethnicity with color, vitality and fantasy, but this show is art, not sociology, and much of it is a revelation. Through April 16.

VICTOR PASMORE, the Phillips Collection, Washington. Honoring his 80th birthday, a recap of the influential British painter's journey through realms of naturalism and abstraction. Through April 2.

MUSIC

MANDY PATINKIN: MANDY PATINKIN (CBS). The Broadway (Sunday in the Park with George) and movie (Alien Nation) actor lets fly with a fearlessly melodramatic song cycle chosen from sources as various as Stephen Sondheim and Al Jolson. Some are a bit florid, but the best tunes (like Anyone Can Whistle) have a delicacy that lingers.

BOB DYLAN AND THE GRATEFUL DEAD: DYLAN & THE DEAD (Columbia). Live recordings from the summer tour two years ago. Casual, lovely and intense, with a particularly astute reworking of Dylan's great tune I Want You.

THE LILAC TIME: THE LILAC TIME (Mercury). Bouncy, folk-tinged Brit pop, with jagged political subtext. Return to Yesterday has the jubilant rhythm and incidental melancholy of prime Simon and Garfunkel.

MOZART AND SCHNABEL, VOLS. 1-4 (Arabesque). The great Artur Schnabel in Mozart piano concertos and solo music, recorded in London between 1934 and 1948.

THEATER