`TOMORROW' COMES TONIGHT IN NEW `ANNIE'.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

It's a sign of the passing of days, or decades: Few will probably even blink, let alone cry blasphemy, that the latest incarnation of ``Annie'' features an adorable moppet with red hair utterly bereft of curls for most of tonight's ABC telefilm.

``Little Orphan Annie,'' the comic strip serving as source material for tonight's extravaganza, has long sat unmolested in the remainder bin of pop culture. Its iconography - Annie and pet dog Sandy's creepily pupil-free eyes, Sandy's ubiquitous cry of ``Arf'' and Annie's of ``Leapin' lizards,'' Daddy Warbucks' fantasy opulence - is virtually forgotten or meaningless for today's audiences. So, is reviving ``Annie'' an exercise in nostalgia for the innocence of the Depression era - or for '70s Broadway musicals?

There's not a lot of point in remaking ``Annie'' in 1999, except for the fact that the bloated 1982 movie didn't do the musical justice - and the simple verity that the musical boasts what remains an impossibly infectious score. Tonight's version from ``The Wonderful World of Disney'' gets right everything that the earlier cinematic version got wrong - it keeps the spectacle manageable and not overwhelming and, above all, focuses on the songs - ``It's a Hard-Knock Life,'' ``I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here'' and, of course, the show-stopper ``Tomorrow.''

Twelve-year-old newcomer Alicia Morton plays the mischievous orphan, stranded in a life of servitude in a run-down orphanage run (down, of course) by the harridan Miss Hannigan (Kathy Bates). Depression-era billionaire Daddy Warbucks (Victor Garber), as a public-relations stunt, attempts to adopt Annie, but she still pines for her real parents, so Warbucks announces a nationwide search for them. Hannigan's ne'er-do-well brother Rooster (Alan Cumming) and his dizzy squeeze Lily (Kristin Chenoweth) plot to pose as said parents to grab Warbucks' generous financial reward.

The one misstep in all this comes when the filmmakers attempt to give Bates, their biggest star, more to do and have her attempt the parent-trap ruse with Rooster instead. Logically, it makes little sense - wouldn't a savvy kid like Annie suss out her tormentor of the past decade in a New York minute? - while logistically it deprives colorful Tony winner Chenoweth of a prime opportunity to chew scenery.

My young stepdaughters immediately declared this version superior to the 1982 production starring Albert Finney (who reminds them too much of Austin Powers' archenemy Dr. Evil - they preferred Garber's smoother, less gruff performance). They noted that multiple Tony winner Audra McDonald, as Warbucks' private secretary, has far superior pipes than Ann Reinking, who played the role in the film, and preferred Morton's cute-but-not-too-cute turn as Annie to her predecessor Aileen Quinn's. They preferred director/choreographer Rob Marshall's streamlined work to John Huston's heavy lifting in the earlier film. They're actually pretty savvy little critics.

`Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony'

Blessed with an innate sense of what in our history is both significant and makes for stirring drama, Ken Burns has long been America's premier historical documentarian. His work not only brings his topic to vivid life but also massages the usually unwieldy subject matter into a compelling narrative with a skill that matches Hollywood's best storytellers.

``Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony'' examines a woefully underappreciated chapter in our nation's chronicles - the suffragette movement - relating a story that spans a century in a concise, taut fashion while powerfully evoking the potent emotional underpinnings that propel this saga. By the end of the four-hour film, premiering tonight and Monday, the viewer thoroughly feels the bittersweet nature of the victory posthumously achieved by these extraordinary women.

As narrator Sally Kellerman explains, when these two women were born in the early 19th century, those of their gender were, like slaves, considered property, could own nothing of their own when married and were scarcely allowed educations. They were born into a classic Catch-22: The political process was the only means to improving their lives, but since law forbade them from getting involved in the political process, there wasn't much chance of the laws getting changed. Would men willingly mess up the sweetheart deal they had created for themselves?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony made for an unlikely alliance - Stanton was ebullient, colorfully witty and prodigiously procreative in her marriage, while Anthony was a taciturn spinster. Historian Ann Gordon points out, ``It's a little hard to guess how the chemistry (between them) worked so fast,'' but suggests that the clever homebound wife supplied the spinster who was free to travel with the words and theories of the suffragette movement to disseminate to others. And author Kathleen Barry notes, ``There would be no women's history without them.''

Incremental victories came with a cost, and losses - particularly at the end of the Civil War, when African-American men were accorded the rights of free white men but women were summarily snubbed - were frequent. Together, Stanton and Anthony helped form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, but as Stanton became increasingly radical in her beliefs, Anthony assumed a kind of tunnel vision, keeping her eyes set on one goal: women's right to vote. Anthony's persistence of vision sometimes meant joining forces with dubious allies - she looked the other way as African-American women were banned from outposts of the organization run by religious Southern women, seriously compromising the movement; Stanton's progressive views eventually got her booted from the very organization she created. The political intrigue is endlessly fascinating.

Burns employs his usual stylistic gambit - actors expressively reading period letters and manuscripts over close-ups of evocative, sepia-toned antique photos adorned by simple, poignant acoustic music. It's particularly effective here, since both Anthony and particularly Stanton were not just articulate but even poetic in making their case; their eloquent words compensate for the paucity of archival live-action footage he has to work with. Burns artfully re-creates Stanton's triumphant final speech on the issue, ``The Solitude of Self,'' a brilliantly argued and wrenchingly emotional personal assessment of the necessity for female self-empowerment. ``Not for Ourselves Alone'' is inspirational and insightful, a worthy addition to Burns' canon of Americana.

`Medal of Honor'

Also inspiring but laced with far more testosterone is ``Medal of Honor,'' one of those patriotic productions that seem to get made more through Ted Turner than anyone else in Hollywood. Less than 3,500 of the 50 million men who have served in the American military have been given the Congressional Medal of Honor, which venerates acts so heroically courageous that more than half are awarded posthumously. This hourlong documentary examines a few nearly impossible acts of bravery in ordinary men.

Having been shot twice and hit with shrapnel, medic Clarence Sasser labored seven hours under fire in an ambush in Vietnam, rescuing fellow soldiers. Henry Erwin grabbed a fiery flare that exploded in his plane in World War II, dragged it in his scorching hand to a hole in the plane and threw it out, disfiguring himself but saving the lives of the entire crew. Ron Rosser saved dozens of fellow GIs in Korea by jumping into a trench filled with the enemy and dispatching them after his unit had been ambushed. And James Stockdale - unfortunately best-known for his quixotic run for public office with Ross Perot - endured seven torturous years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp without succumbing to his captors.

Re-enactments try too hard to parrot ``Saving Private Ryan'' in some instances and are overused in general, and the diffident, banal narration (``War is all about risk'') doesn't come close to capturing the heights of heroism these men achieved. The stories of these men scarcely need production-value accessorizing - they're genuinely riveting in their own rights.

`Shake, Rattle & Roll'

``Shake, Rattle & Roll'' - a miniseries that should be considerably more mini - has the look and feel of a '50s teen B flick, only filled with idiotic revisionist touches. Bonnie Somerville - her real name is more appropriate for this material than her character's actual moniker - plays Lyne Danner, a freshly scrubbed, strong-willed woman who introduces ``race music'' to a sleepy Midwestern town, and in particular, to dreamboat-aspiring singer Tyler Hart (Brad Hawkins).

Told this new music is called rock 'n' roll, Tyler inanely replies, ``Cool music - dumb name, though.'' Ty's bland girlfriend, on the other hand, tries to dissuade him from playing in a band with a line that wouldn't have passed muster in a teensploitation movie from that era: ``It's wild music, Tyler - it's what juvenile delinquents listen to.''

So it's no surprise that Tyler and Lyne hook up - or that their first single is a hit, or that bumps occur on the road to success. A record label expresses interest in Tyler, belittling the rest of the group, then molds him to its fatuous specifications. This leads to much inner torment over selling out, a rather specious argument for that period, generally, and for Tyler particularly, since there's not exactly what you'd call conviction to his band's tunes. It takes a whopping four hours to relate what was essentially the plot of one episode of ``The Brady Bunch.''

Atrocious dialogue explains the characters, after a fashion: ``Lyne Danner has more class in her little toe than Noreen Bixlar has in both those Double-D headlights you love!'' ``If you're not going to go to school, the least you can do is stay home and help with your retarded brother.'' Thuddingly expository lines likewise help us keep track of where we are in history: ``I just keep thinking about Buddy Holly, Richie and Bopper going down in that plane last week.'' ``Listen to Bob Dylan - a hard rain's gonna fall, and I plan to be out in it until it washes us clean!''

Tyler and Lyne are the Forrest Gump of '50s pop, variously - and, usually, hokily - encountering Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, Eddie Cochran, B.B. King, Neil Sedaka and other musical icons. The depiction of the era's race relations is shallow and simplistic, which might be explicable if director/co-writer Mike Robe had simply chosen to sidestep the messiness of the issue; instead, he blunders headlong into it, making everyone look foolish.

Ultimately, ``Shake, Rattle & Roll'' is a cliche-riddled show-biz rise-and-fall story, padded mercilessly to miniseries length by repeated performances of new songs in an attempt to convince you to buy the soundtrack CD, much like Tom Hanks' similarly plotted, '60s-themed film, ``That Thing You Do!'' In fact, you could watch both ``That Thing You Do!'' and the ``Johnny Bravo'' episode of ``The Brady Bunch,'' and still save 90 minutes off ``Shake, Rattle & Roll's'' running time.

`The X-Files'

``The X-Files'' returns for what will likely be its last season, what with David Duchovny suing his bosses and creator Chris Carter miffed that Fox yanked his new show, ``Harsh Realm,'' without giving the show much of a chance. This series lost a little steam in the wake of the release of its movie last year, which posed more questions than it answered, and got fans wondering whether the mythology could even be resolved satisfactorily after having been expanded to such unwieldy proportions.

Last season ended (inevitably, if you think about it) with Mulder (Duchovny) going bonkers and Scully (Gillian Anderson) discovering yet more of the kind of evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth that always seems to disappear before the authorities or public can see them. The season premiere is basically just a stopgap to a resolution that'll come a week or two down the line, but it audaciously and portentously suggests that the origin of human life and all that science can't explain is tied to early alien visitors. The evidence, of course, disappears.

Duchovny spends the entire episode in a catatonic stupor, looking as though a particularly rabid fan had just explained all of the series' plot convolutions to him in one sitting. The good news, however, is that with ``Harsh Realm'' out of the way, Carter can devote his time to ensuring that this season of ``The X-Files,'' if it is indeed its last, will be particularly memorable.

The facts

The show: ``Annie.''

What: Remake of the Broadway musical based on the comic strip.

Who: Alicia Morton, Kathy Bates, Victor Garber, Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Audra McDonald.

Where: KABC (Channel 7).

When: 7 tonight.

Our rating: Three and one half stars

The facts

The show: ``Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony.''

What: Ken Burns' documentary about the women's suffragette movement.

Who: Narrated by Sally Kellerman.

Where: KCET.

When: 8 tonight and Monday.

Our rating: Four stars.

The facts

The show: ``Shake, Rattle & Roll.''

What: Miniseries about a fictional band's rise and fall at the birth of rock 'n' roll.

Who: Bonnie Somerville, Brad Hawkins, Kathy Baker, Frank Whaley, Travis Fine.

Where: KCBS (Channel 2).

When: 9 tonight and Wednesday.

Our rating: Two stars.

The facts

The show: ``The X-Files.''

What: Season premiere of the paranormal phenomenon.

Who: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Mitch Pileggi.

Where: Fox (Channel 11).

When: 9 tonight.

Our rating: Three stars.

The facts

The show: ``Medal of Honor.''

What: Documentary examining acts of heroism that won soldiers the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Where: TNT.

When: 8 tonight.

Our rating: Three stars.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1) Victor Garber and Alicia Morton star in ABC's remake of ``Annie.''

(2) PBS gets into the sweeps mood with Ken Burns' documentary on Susan B. Anthony, left, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

(3) With her FBI partner in a catatonic stupor, Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) gets lots of screen time on the ``X-Files'' season premiere.

(4) Bonnie Somerville and Brad Hawkins make some noise in CBS' ``Shake, Rattle & Roll.''