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GREAT DISCOVERY
When the nation's booksellers convened in Las Vegas last June, the buzz was all about new works by old reliables: Jean Auel (The Plains of Passage), Colleen McCullough (The First Man in Rome), Jackie Collins (Lady Boss). Nobody much noticed Edward Rice's 20th book, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. But the biography of the legendary 19th-century English explorer proved as triumphant as the daredevil Burton crossing the Sahara by camel. The February release of Mountains of the Moon, Bob Rafelson's epic film about Burton's adventures, hadn't done big box office, but evidently it was enough to prime a reading audience that put Burton on The New York Times' best-seller list for 10 weeks and made it one of the year's most surprising publishing successes.
NOTABLE QUOTES
''The problem with instant gratification is it takes too long.''-Meryl Streep as Suzanne in Postcards From the Edge
''You've got me hotter'n Georgia asphalt.''-Laura Dern (Lula) to Nicolas Cage (Sailor) in Wild at Heart (below)
PLAY IT AGAIN ''JUST LET GO...''
In Longtime Companion, the first mainstream feature film to deal with the devastation of AIDS, Bruce Davison (as David) delivers the most moving speech of the year at the deathbed of his lover, Sean, played by Mark Lamos. Having nursed Sean at home for months, David understands that his exhausted, tortured friend is ready to die. Softly, slowly, gently, he talks him into letting go of life.
PLAY IT AGAIN THE GREAT ESCAPE
One of the year's best scenes contained not one word of dialogue. All we heard while Miller's Crossing's Albert Finney gunned down two intruders and leapt from his burning mansion were the strains of ''Danny Boy'' coming from his old Victrola. Then he machine-gunned a speeding car until it crashed and ignited. He lowered his weapon. He raised his cigar. And the tenor's voice swelled. '' and I will sleep in peace until you come.''
ALL FAUX ONE, ONE FAUX ALL
As recently as last spring, Milli Vanilli (above) were not only insisting on their authenticity, they were pronouncing themselves ''more talented than any Bob Dylan.'' In November came the news that they didn't sing a note on their Grammy award-winning album, Girl You Know It's True. The Grammy committee took its trophy back, and Milli was left, as Dylan might put it, blowin' in the wind. Other fakes that took the cake: An October segment of ABC's 20/20 informed more than 16 million Americans that the former Our Gang star Buckwheat, a.k.a. Billy Thomas, was now bagging groceries in Tempe, Ariz. One problem: The real Thomas died in 1980, and the subject of the piece was an imposter. In November, Swedish automaker Volvo got caught with its tailgate down. A Volvo commercial showed a monster pickup truck driving over a long row of cars and crushing all except the Volvo, which withstood the weight because of allegedly superior craftsmanship. Actually, the car's roof was reinforced with steel beams, and the company paid over $300,000 to avoid a deceptive- advertising suit. White rapper Vanilla Ice (inset) thought he needed a resume with extra star quality. So he claimed to have gone to the same Miami high school as the 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell, and that a childhood knife fight had left him scarred. In November a paper in Dallas (where Ice really went to high school) questioned many of his claims, but when TV's Rick Dees pressed him about the knife fight, Ice dropped his trousers to reveal what looked like authentic scars. If you'd been caught with your pants on fire, wouldn't you take them off?
