BEST BETS: FEBRUARY 27-MARCH 4, 2000

MOVIES

Mike Nichols’ “What Planet Are You From?” stars Garry Shandling as an extraterrestrial sent to Earth to impregnate a human to facilitate universal domination by his planet. Annette Bening, John Goodman, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley and Linda Fiorentino star. Opens in general release Friday.

POP MUSIC

D’Angelo will play the 6,000-seat Universal Amphitheatre in April, a venue suitable for a chart-topping soul crusader (his new album, “Voodoo,” debuted at No. 1). That makes his five shows at the 1,000-capacity House of Blues starting Wednesday all the more enticing as the singer gears up to revive the momentum of his “Brown Sugar” debut some five years ago.

THEATER

Deaf West Theatre Company begins its 10th anniversary season with Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” featuring a cast of deaf and hearing actors. The show inaugurates the company’s new complex in North Hollywood and will be presented in American Sign Language with voice interpretation and projected subtitles. Opens Saturday.

DANCE

Now 20 years old, Tina Ramirez’s always provocative Ballet Hispanico performs Ramon Oller’s “Bury Me Standing,” Pedro Ruiz’s “Guajira” and David Rousseve’s “Somethin’ From Nothin’ ” on Friday and Saturday in Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in Westwood. A UCLA faculty member, Rousseve collaborated on “Nothin’ ” with Grammy-winning jazz pianist and composer Eddie Palmieri.

MUSIC

Guest conductor Mark Elder leads two programs in his three-performance weekend with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Friday through next Sunday. The first lists Verdi’s Requiem, with Alessandra Marc, Stephanie Blythe, Marcello Giordani and Denis Sedov as the soloists. Cellist Colin Carr joins Elder and the orchestra Saturday night, in music by Elgar, Verdi and Dvorak.

ART

“Departures,” an exhibition of commissioned projects by 11 L.A. artists, inspired by works in the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collections, will open Tuesday at the Getty Center. Working in a wide variety of media, artists John Baldessari, Uta Barth, Sharon Ellis, Judy Fiskin, Martin Kersels, John M. Miller, Ruben Ortiz Torres, Lari Pittman, Stephen Prina, Alison Saar and Adrian Saxe respond to works by Albrecht Durer, William Henry Fox Talbot and others, demonstrating the strong link between art history and contemporary art.

VIDEO

Harrison Ford plays a Washington, D.C., police detective who discovers that his wife was having an affair after she and her lover die in a plane crash, in the Sydney Pollack drama “Random Hearts.” He then falls in love with the spouse (Kristin Scott Thomas) of his wife’s lover, a sophisticated politician. The offbeat romance arrives Tuesday on video.

JAZZ

Guitarist Stanley Jordan, a master of tapping technique, often can sound like two or three guitarists at once. Whether playing vintage jazz standards or more current tunes, Jordan brings a fresh perspective to the music. He performs at Catalina’s this week, starting Tuesday.