Short Takes: May 25, 1992

CINEMA

Smoking Gun, Nonstop Excess

IT'S SWEET OF MURTAUGH (DANNY GLOVer) to keep pulling unlighted cigarettes out of his partner's mouth. Since the cops' lives are a nonstop succession of explosions, fire fights and car chases, lung cancer is probably the last thing Riggs (Mel Gibson) needs to worry about. The last thing the makers of LETHAL WEAPON 3 worried about was a complex story -- it's simply about stolen guns. The idea was to push the action to a level of excess where it turns parodistically comic, and this is done expertly. They've brought back Joe Pesci as a goofy cop buff, added Rene Russo as the love interest for Riggs -- a policewoman as crazily brave as he is -- and made a cheerfully amoral movie that cannily caters to and satirizes our passion for cinematic violence.

POP MUSIC

Digging Deeper

BRAZILIAN MUSICMAN SERGIO MENDES captivated U.S. audiences in the 1960s by adding a light bossa-nova flavor to pop tunes like The Look of Love. But today's record buyers, their tastes enlivened by the spicier fare of Jamaican reggae and South African mbaqanga, demand more authentic sounds. In his new album, Brasileiro, Mendes digs deeper into his musical roots to produce a down-home sampler ranging from a lively baiao -- folk music from Brazil's northeast -- to an off-beat Bahian-style rap. There are lots of leisurely sambas too, but the best selections are those on which drummers from Rio's samba schools burst into the explosive rhythms that provide the sound track for the city's joyous carnival.

OPERA

Minimal to the Max

LIBRETTOS HAVE BEEN CONSTRUCTED out of some unlikely material -- Gertrude Stein's poetry, ancient Sanskrit texts -- but never have the words been so, well, unwordy as those for Atlas, a new opera by the minimalist composer- singer-dancer MEREDITH MONK that was performed last week in Brooklyn. La la la and Hay yo, Hay yo are just two of the "arias" in this tale of an ! explorer named Alexandra (Monk), who travels to the roof of the world with a handful of intrepid companions and finds both adventure and, in the end, herself. An offbeat but sophisticated hybrid of simple chord changes, birdlike ululations, soaring vocalises and stylized dances, Atlas is the apotheosis of Monk's decades-long quest for artless simplicity.

BOOKS

Jokey But Not Funny

WRITING IS A SIMPLE, RHYTHMIC EXERcise, like hitting a major-league curve ball, and sometimes you go 0 for June. The usually peerless Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show, two funny, sad, marvelously human novels about the Southwest, misses badly with THE EVENING STAR (Simon & Schuster; $23). The new novel, a sequel to Terms of Endearment, is big, flabby and aimless. It picks up Terms' Aurora Greenway in her 70s and deals lengthily with the impotence of her 80-year-old lover, who has taken to exposing himself. There's more, equally jokey and unfunny. Before the book's midpoint, the reader asks himself the question that should have occurred to the book's editor: Why am I spending time with these people?

TELEVISION

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