BEST BETS / OCT. 3, 1999

MOVIES

In Sydney Pollack’s “Random Hearts,” tough-minded internal affairs cop Harrison Ford falls for embattled congresswoman Kristin Scott Thomas after he discovers that his wife and her husband were killed in a plane crash en route to a tryst. Opens in general release Friday.

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Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey” stars Terence Stamp as an English ex-con who travels to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter’s death. Artisan Entertainment promises that “All of L.A. will know he’s in town.” Peter Fonda and Lesley Ann Warren co-star. Opens wide on Friday.

THEATER

The Mark Taper Forum presents “Space,” Tina Landau’s odyssey about a neuro-psychiatrist who suddenly attracts patients claiming to be alien abductees and finds himself drawn into strangely overlapping worlds of estraterrestrials and hard science. Produced in association with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Opens Thursday.

Pop Music

Beck to Tool to Perry Farrell, Rage to Moby to Pavement, rap to electronica. . . . Those are the ingredients of the most ambitious pop festival in Southern California since the day of California Jam--the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, being held on Saturday and next Sunday at the Empire Polo Field in Indio.

DANCE

San Francisco Ballet introduces its lavish and controversial new staging of “Giselle” to Southland audiences at the Orange County Performing Arts Center from Wednesday to next Sunday. Expect the doomed titular heroine to be danced by Tina LeBlanc, Yuan Yuan Tan, Joanna Berman, Kristin Long and Lucia Lacarra during the six-performance run.

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The always provocative Pine Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal returns to Southern California for performances of “Nelken” (Carnations) on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and next Sunday in Royce Hall, UCLA. In addition the Goethe-Institut is hosting free lunchtime screenings of Bausch films and videotapes from Monday through Friday.

ART

Inventive sculptures created by Los Angeles mechanics from recycled automotive parts are the focus of “Muffler Men, MuNecos and Other Welded Wonders,” a companion exhibition to “Recylced Re-Seen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap,” currently on display at the UCLA/Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Opening today, “Muffler” features works made from spare spark plugs, brake rotors and wheel rims, among other things, that are welded together to create devils, dogs, ducks and other characters.

MUSIC

Boris Brott and the New West Symphony open a new season Friday in Thousand Oaks; soloist is Paul Badura-Skoda, 72, playing Brahms. The San Diego Symphony opems also: Jung-Ho Pak conducts; Garrick Olson plays Beethoven (G-major).

VIDEO

The Quinn brothers-actor Aidan, cinematographer Declan and writer/director Paul-collaborated on the tragic Irish drama “This Is My Father.” James Caan stars as a Chicago schoolteacher who travels to Ireland to find the father he’s never known. Aidan Quinn plays Caan’s father in flashback sequences. The romance, which was a hit in Ireland, arrives Tuesday in video stores.