Like a virgin: Said in the first Fanfare

THE STAR WE HATE TO LOVE

'Truth or Dare' and the many moods of Madonna

The first time I saw Madonna I was a college student, and she was already Madonna, though at the time -- 1981 -- it wasn't very widely known. I was walking on upper Broadway with my pal Sylvia, talking about whatever life-or-death issues of living through our early 20s were on the agenda that day, when suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks to watch a petite, powerhouse blonde in a white T-shirt and jeans parade past us.

"Did you see that girl?" she asked me. "Who does she think she is?"

In a city full of proficient pavement artists, prestardom Madonna was working that sidewalk as if it were a Paris runway, commanding absolute attention sheerly by virtue of her native attitude: born to vogue.

-- MIM UDOVITCH, a Manhattan-based freelancer, who wrote the first cover story

CONFESSIONS OF A MOVIE CRITIC

During one of my earlier incarnations as a film critic, a friend chided me for admitting in a review of a Sylvester Stallone movie that I don't like Stallone in anything. "How can you be fair to a movie if you don't like the star going in?," he asked. "By admitting I don't like him," I answered.

If the defense was weak, so was the charge. Although many people seem to believe that reviewing movies should be blind, like justice, with fair hearings leading to thoughtful verdicts ("It stinks!" "It's great!" "It's great, but it stinks a little"), it never works that way.

-- JACK MATHEWS, Newsday's movie critic from 1991-99

KATIE THE COMFORTABLE

The selection of a new morning show anchorperson is a process as important as the coronation of a new queen, and I would like to say a few words about the reign of Katie Couric, which starts officially tomorrow. . . . What's so great about Katie is that she has something that few people are born with. She is as comfortable on camera as she is off, a talent few can translate to TV. Bob Costas has it, for one. He is everybody's smart little brother; Katie is the smarter older sister.

-- MARVIN KITMAN, Newsday's TV Critic from 1969 to 2005

TOMMY TUNE: THE LAST OF THE RED-HOT DANCER-DIRECTORS

If I say "Tommy Tune," you're likely to think tall, skinny tapper -- a combination of Astaire and a stretch limo, a gentle giant with a chorus-boy's enthusiasm and a tendency to sprinkle his Tony acceptance speeches with new-age gosh-gollyisms.

Just now, however, we should be thinking dodo bird. At 52, Tune is an entire endangered species, the last of the precious, dance-driven Broadway directors who defined the great modern American musical. He is a creature whose colleagues are either dead -- Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Gower Champion -- or too unproductive to count anymore -- Jerome Robbins.

-- LINDA WINER, Newsday's theater critic, on the opening of Tune's latest show, "The Will Rogers Follies"