NO FORTUNE COOKIE

Outtakes recently served up a critical scoreboard to Michael Cimino’s “Year of the Dragon.” Now a parting shot from the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael, who last week dismissed the film as “hysterical, rabble-rousing pulp,” noting, “The only thing that’s clear at the end of the movie is how Cimino wants to be taken--as bloody proud, as possessed and smoking hot.”

She liked John Lone as the Chinese Godfather: “The only character who seems to have any brains or emotional use.” She didn’t like Mickey Rourke’s performance or his character’s rudeness; she took exception to leading lady Ariane as the newscaster-love interest (“officious and nostrilly, like an Oriental Ali MacGraw”) and--perhaps more than her peers--she hated the Cimino-Oliver Stone script: “They’re bouncing their ideas off a mirror, so neither one knows when he has become a public embarrassment.”