ARTS FAIR

Meier's Getty. Mapplethorpe's pix. DeLillo's Noise. Predictions '85. Art is all. All is fair.

JANUARY

OSCAR PREDICTIONS

Best Actress: Jessica Lange for Country; Sally Field for Places in the Heart; Sissy Spacek for The River; Diane Keaton for The Little Drummer Girl. And the winner is. . .Sally Field. We see Dr. Haing S. Ngor, of The Killing Fields, snatching the Best Supporting Actor award from John Malkovich, a dual threat for his performances in Places in the Heart and The Killing Fields.

Places, though, will sweep the rest. . ..

This will be the year we see THE $6 MILLION BROADWAY MUSICAL—and the first $50 ticket to pay for it....

PULITZER SURPRISE: Watch for Mark Medoff's The Hands of Its Enemy, which could beat August Wilson's

Ma Rainey fs Black Bottom for this year's Pulitzer....

ROCKING ON: Julian Lennon, with a big push from Atlantic Records; Frankie Goes to Hollywood, taking America in the process; Prince, for sure and forever. ... ROCKING OUT: Michael Jackson, the gee-whiz of show biz; Boy George, the Cheez Whiz of show biz; ROCKY IV, more than enough already.... SILVER THREADS: Would you believe it's the Beach Boys' twenty-fifth anniversary? To celebrate, the aging Boys will provide the juicy fodder for Simon and Schuster's "no-holds-barred" account of the supergroup. Help me, Rhonda!.. .

It will be painter JENNIFER BARTLETT'S year, with a major mid-career retrospective of her work beginning its crosscountry tour in April at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis. ...

And in May, at the Art Institute of Chicago, Andre Kertesz will have his first American retrospective twenty years.. ..

BEST TRASH FUN OF THE YEAR

Hollywood Wives, with a cast—Candice Bergen, Stefanie Powers, Angie Dickinson—all aglitter in Versace, Chanel, and Montana. Coming from ABC.

The big hit of the Metropolitan Opera's season, after Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, will of course be Franco Zeffirelli's production of Tosca with two house favorites, Hildegard Behrens and Placido Domingo. But for true ecstasy see conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli make his Met debut. ...

HOT COUPLE

Kenneth MacMillan's version of ROMEO AND JULIET, staged by the American Ballet Theatre, and John Cranko's, staged by the Joffrey, are coming to a theater near you....

TONY TIME

Derek Jacobi's Cyrano will edge out all comers by a nose at the Tonys, five months hence. He'll be the fourth Brit in five years to take Broadway's top prize. A theatrical War of Independence looms. Best Director will be Terry Hands (alas), of the Royal Shakespeare Company; Best Supporting Actor will be Harvey Keitel (hurrah!), of Hurlyburly. Best Supporting Actress will be Judith Ivey, also of Hurlyburly—and watch for Frances Sternhagen in Home Front. . ..

READY TO TAKE OFF IN '85: Actresses DIANNE WIEST, CHRISTINE LAHTI, and STOCKARD CHANNING, three of the best, who spent most of *84 rising far above their material....

French pianist Richard Clayderman, whose recent American debut was attended by Nancy Reagan, will assault America and become the Julio Iglesias of the keyboard. .. .

The two silliest summer duos will be Richard PRYOR and John CANDY in a remake of Brewster's Millions, and John TRAVOLTA and Jamie Lee CURTIS in a remake of their bodies—the aptly dubbed Perfect....

RAJ-MA-TAJ: David Lean's film of A Passage to India, the PBS mini-series The Jewel in the Crown, the HBO mini-series The Far Pavilions, and the forthcoming movie about Earl Mountbatten all pave the way for the Festival of India 1985-1986, during which some thirty museums across the United States will celebrate Indian culture. The festival opens officially in June in Washington, D.C.; the climax, for many, will be Diana Vreeland's "Indian Court Costumes" show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—followed soon after by saris at Bloomie's....

OUR NEW YEAR'S WISHES

That no one who knew HEMINGWAY intimately in Key West or Paris will write a book about it; that no one who knew HEMINGWAY briefly in Key West or Paris will write a book about it; that no one who even saw HEMINGWAY in a bar in Key West or Paris will write a book about it; that there will be no new interpretations of Carmen; that Steven SPIELBERG will come of age; that Tom WOLFE will safely flee the burning house that is The Bonfire of the Vanities; that Martin Short and Pamela Stephenson will not merely endure SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE but prevail; that GELSEY KIRKLAND will overcome; that ANSWERED PRAYERS was written.