Best Bets / JULY 30-AUG. 5, 2000

Movies

In the Paul Verhoeven-directed thriller “Hollow Man,” Kevin Bacon plays an arrogant military scientist who decides to test on himself a procedure for making humans invisible--leaving Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin to undo the consequences. Opening wide on Friday.

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When NASA whiz Clint Eastwood’s satellite goes awry and threatens to slam into Earth, the agency blasts “Space Cowboys”--Eastwood and ex-Air Force test pilots Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner--to the rescue. The film opens wide on Friday.

Art

A re-creation of six interactive displays by noted designers-architects Charles and Ray Eames will be featured in “Mathematica . . . A World of Numbers and Beyond,” opening today at the Williamson Gallery at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. The exhibition, which celebrates the convergence of design and science, is a series of ingenious learning tools on celestial mechanics, the laws of probability, the Moebius band, topology, minimal surfaces, projective geometry and multiplication.

Jazz

The first annual Costa Mesa Classic Jazz Festival begins Thursday night and continues through next Sunday, and features up to five stages of music. Among the stars will be Jim Cullum’s Jazz Band, the Golden Eagles, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Rebecca Kilgore.

Music

SummerFest La Jolla begins Friday, offering 11 public concerts and auxiliary events through Aug. 20. Artistic directors are David Finckel and Wu Han; among their colleagues: violists Toby Hoffman, Nokuthula Ngswenyama and Cynthis Phelps, and pianists Leon Fleisher, Max Levinson and Christopher O’Riley. Composers in residence are Bruce Adolphe, Augusta Read Thomas and Joan Tower.

Pop Music

It took Steve Earle a while to dig out of the hole of jail and drug addiction, but when the singer-songwriter hit his stride again on the “Dead Man Walking” soundtrack, there was no stopping him. “Transcendental Blues” is the latest in a string of potent albums from Earle, who headlines the Sun Theatre in Anaheim on Thursday and the House of Blues in West Hollywood on Saturday.

Dance

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Lula Washington Dance Theatre mounts a double whammy on Saturday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood. At 10 a.m, Washington’s youth ensemble performs “Cinderella” and “Games.” At 8 p.m., the main company dances a rep retrospective, including excerpts from works by Washington, Donald McKayle and Raymond Johnson.

Video

After nearly stealing “Lethal Weapon 4” in 1998, Hong Kong martial-arts great Jet Li headlines “Romeo Must Die,” his first English-language starring role. Inspired by Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” the crisp martial-arts action thriller features romance and a high body count. Aaliyah and Delroy Lindo also star. The film makes its video and DVD debut Tuesday.