Dark Shadows

The rousing return of Indiana Jones, a scathing British comedy, a quiet evocation of Chinatown and three meditations on the Big Apple from three of today's most popular directors top the list of this week's new videos. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989) (Paramount) $24.95. 126 minutes. 1/2 Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, River Phoenix, Alison Doody. In his third screen adventure, the whip-smart archaeologist has to rescue a dad instead of a damsel in continuing distress.

A play about a flood that takes place in the Deep South has its resonance ready-made, opening as Voices Underwater did near this first anniversary of the Katrina catastrophe. Abi Basch's surreal history play actually seems to have Noah's flood in mind, although neither echo yields much meaning. Voices Underwater uses a house to suggest the layers of time. The house was a hospital during the Civil War, and a wounded soldier (Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey) recounts fragments of his life.

Former New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey said he has no desire to return to politics since he left office two years ago amid a sex scandal but hopes his new tell-all book leads to public acceptance of his homosexuality. McGreevey, 49, who announced his resignation in a televised speech on Aug. 12, 2004, said yesterday that he felt he had to come clean about his personal and political life. "The danger is when people have to act out in dark shadows," he said. "If people can be who they are in the bright light of day, can celebrate their uniqueness . . . that's what promotes a moral fabric in a society.

This has been an extraordinary week for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Tuesday's final, towering performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah was still ringing in some ears, when on the following afternoon, Wolfgang Sawallisch announced that the 1999-2000 season will say Lebewohl (farewell) to the 18th and 19th centuries, Come September, the season will consist of music made in the orchestra's own first 100 years. Thursday night's subscription concert could hardly match such ambitions - nor was there so vast an array of humans and instruments on stage as for Mendelssohn's epic work.

It started in 1972. I was a 15-year-old sophomore at St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia. Democratic National Headquarters in Washington had been burglarized. I remember nothing about the beginning. What I do remember with crystal clarity is that by 1974, "Dark Shadows," my favorite after-school show, was pre-empted for live broadcasts of the Watergate hearings. What could be so serious? It was the birth of my fascination with historical epics. In 1976, I walked out of a theater stunned, overwhelmed, amazed by "All the President's Men. " It was like this terrible thing had happened in my own house when I was a kid, and as an adult, I had to discover it by myself.

Truth is stronger than fiction, as anyone who's seen Apollo 13 can testify. In a similar vein, the superlative documentary thriller One Day in September deploys news footage to reconstruct the drama of the 1972 Munich Olympics, where eight Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage in an epochal bungle that cost 11 Israeli heroes, five Arab terrorists, and one German police officer their lives. The film breaks news in that it confirms German collusion in spiriting the three surviving terrorists to Libya.

In a movie season that's already seen the release of a big-budget remake of "Lost in Space," and is preparing for a new film version of "The Avengers," Friday's large-screen release of "The X-Files: Fight the Future" isn't that big a surprise. Familiar TV titles come with built-in audiences, and crossing from one medium to another is nothing new. In fact, when it comes to TV and the movies, it's something very, very old. The movie version of "The X-Files" is being called unusual, and by some people unprecedented, because it's presenting a movie version of a TV series while the series itself is still in production and very popular.

To honor the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Clinton came to Wall Street yesterday and asked America's business leaders to do more to help the underprivileged share in the nation's wealth. "We have to bring the worlds of the gleaming office towers and the dark shadows together," Clinton said, "because the people who live in each of those worlds are all Americans, and because we need each other. "We've got to develop the skills and potential of our people.

Midnight approached, and in the dark shadows of the visitors' dugout, Jim Fregosi was waiting to see if and when the Phillies would make him a loser in the first World Series game of his managerial career. He had his lieutenants on either side of him - John Vukovich on his right and Johnny Podres on his left. He wore a windbreaker and his hands were jammed in its pockets. Occasionally, he spat. After swinging strikes and called strikes and hittable pitches that went foul, he momentarily winced.

The Democratic Party served notice yesterday that it is going to try to rough up George Bush in a way it never dared to attack Ronald Reagan. In scathing language laced with biting humor, Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk Jr. used a gathering of state party chairmen here to spell out what he called "the case against George Bush. " "It is a pathetic picture to see George Bush, whose only clear profile is that of a quintessential establishment elitist Republican country clubber with no connection to . . . working-class America, applauding in the dark shadows of this Republican administration as it turns thumbs down on public ethics . . . on the Civil Rights Restoration Act . . . on a simple 60 days' notice to working men and women who are about to lose their jobs," Kirk declared in one 95-word sentence.