Unforgiven. Not a musky new cologne for men—not yet, anyway—but rather the name of this year's Academy Award-winning film. Maybe.

Neither Westerns nor CLINT EASTWOOD has tended to win, though Unforgiven has already gathered in nine awards (New York Film Critics' Circle, National Society of Film Critics, and Golden Globe), and the time may never be so ripe. Certainly Warner Bros, is excited. "I feel very positive about the nomination aspects," says Rob Friedman, the studio's president of worldwide advertising and publicity. "I'm very confident." Meanwhile, Eastwood has scarcely enjoyed a moment of squinty reflection—he's too busy finishing up Wolfgang Petersen's In the Line of Fire, in which he plays an agent assigned to protect the president. The character, naturally, has a little something to atone for: one of his previous jobs was protecting J.F.K.

Unforgiven also describes the permanent condition of GEORGE STEINBRENNER in the eyes of many. Unforgiven for two decades of compulsive meddling with the Yankees, unforgiven for firing the beloved YOGI BERRA, unforgiven (but pardoned, by Ronald Reagan) for his illegal contributions to Nixon's re-election campaign. But the Yankees' principal owner is back on the job full-time as of the first of this month, his "lifetime" banishment from baseball commuted after two years. Revisionists hold that Steinbrenner brings welcome excitement to the Yankees, which is a little like saying that, yes, Idi Amin may have at times displayed certain regrettable character flaws, but—you had to admit—there was never a dull moment in Uganda while he was in charge.

Berra, the Hall of Fame player-manager-aphorist ("If you come to a fork in the road, take it"), continues his self-imposed exile from Yankee Stadium, where he refuses to set foot until the ball club is 100 percent Steinbrenner-free. Speaking from the safety of suburban New Jersey, Berra stands fast. Doesn't he think the man may have mellowed? "That I don't know," Berra replies carefully. He sounds more sanguine regarding the Yankees' chances, and he definitely likes Jim Abbott, the pitcher acquired from the California Angels ("He got beat a lot of games, but look at the games he got beat"). As for getting involved with baseball again (beyond watching four games simultaneously on TV), Berra's response is swift and unequivocal: "Who, me?"

LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO, the extraordinary a cappella group, comes to Broadway this month (in a Steppenwolf production of The Song of Jacob Zulu), but without one of its founders, Headman Shabalala, who was shot dead in his car by a white security guard outside Durban in 1991. The guard, free for a year on the equivalent of $380 bail, was recently sentenced to five years in prison—two suspended, the rest likely to be served under house arrest. "When I heard about the judgment, the pain was exactly like the day when I heard my brother was shot to death," says Joseph Shabalala, Ladysmith's leader. Incredibly—or maybe not so incredibly, in South Africa—the guard is trying to appeal his sentence.

I he lThe long knives are already out for the WHITINEY BIENNIAL. Conservative art critics love to howl about the museum's approach, but this Biennial isn't the customary hodgepodge of controversial, fashionable, challenging, politically correct art. No: it's a hodgepodge of controversial, fashionable, challenging, politically correct art with a focus. There are several curators, but a single head (Elisabeth Sussman). "It was a process that operated within a particular form, as opposed to a group of people determining what they thought was best," says filmand-video curator John G. Hanhardt, a Biennial veteran. In other words: less infighting. (Some 80 artists are represented, including Spike Lee, with the show's first music video.) "The Biennial is a target," Hanhardt admits, "but the criticism throws into relief the issues that are being debated." Besides, he adds, "we're the only museum that does this—aren't we?"

BRIDGET FONDA, currendy filming Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha, stars in John Badham's Point of No Return, the remake of La Femme Nikita. The Hollywood version was almost called The Specialist—nice—but, presumably, duller heads prevailed. Also in the cast are Gabriel Byrne, Anne Bancroft, and Harvey Keitel, though not all of them in the parts you might have guessed. Keitel, talented though he is, does not attempt the Jeanne Moreau role.

Enter is one of the major premieres of the MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY'S 40th-anniversary year. Before its Manhattan run at City Center, it was staged at the Paris Opera House. (Le Monde called it "le couronnement de toute line oeuvre," which means either "the crowning glory of a life's work" or "the boiling of an entire egg"—probably the former.) Cunningham, 73, created Enter partly on his computer, and he confirms the keyboard allusion of the tide. "You could also say 'Exit,' " he says, laughing, "but I prefer 'Enter.' " The other two premieres are Doubletoss and Touchbase, so Enter might just as easily have been called, oh, Backspace or even CapsLock. In any event, GoSee.

GEORGE KALOGERAKIS