Best Bets, November 5-11, 2000

Movies

“Wonder Boys,” Curtis Hanson’s film starring Michael Douglas as a 50ish, falling-apart English professor, has Frances McDormand, Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr. heading the supporting cast. With awards season just around the corner, Paramount is re-releasing the film in a wide run on Wednesday.

Theater

In “Closer,” Patrick Marber’s dark comedy about two men and two women locked in a lovers’ quadrangle, the dynamic constantly shifts as they struggle to attain new levels of intimacy. Set in London, Marber’s love story is an edgy exploration of sex, sexual politics and longing. With Christopher Evean Welch and Maggie Gyllenhaal, right. Opens Thursday at the Mark Taper Forum.

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East West Players kicks off its 35th anniversary season with the world premiere of “The Theory of Everything,” Prince Gomolvilas’ comedy about seven Asian Pacific Americans who gather weekly for a UFO watch on the roof of a Las Vegas wedding chapel. A co-production with the Singapore Repertory Theatre, it opens Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater.

Dance

Music visualization reigns supreme when the 18-member Mark Morris Dance Group, right, returns to Royce Hall, UCLA, on Friday and Saturday, performing mixed repertory to live accompaniment. The program includes “Silhouettes” to music by Richard Cumming, “Sang-Froid” to Chopin, “The Argument” to Schumann and “Canonic 3/4 Studies” to piano waltzes by various composers.

Music

At the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Carl St.Clair is guest conductor this week when Opera Pacific presents Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” in the production designed by Maurice Sendak in 1980 for Houston Grand Opera. In leading roles are Pamela Armstrong, Jan Grissom and David Miller. Stage director is Dorothy Danner. It opens Tuesday night and concludes next Sunday afternoon.

Pop Music

Like her more rock-and-soul-leaning sister Shelby Lynne, country singer Allison Moorer, right, has made one of the year’s most impressive albums and watched it founder commercially. Moorer will try to stir up some momentum for the intimate and revealing “The Hardest Part” by playing some live shows, including one at the Roxy in West Hollywood on Thursday.

Jazz

Benny Golson has been a major tenor-saxophonist, bandleader, arranger and composer (“I Remember Clifford” and “Whisper Not”) since the 1950s. He leads a quartet at the Jazz Bakery for six nights this week, starting Tuesday.

Video

John Woo staged terrific action sequences for “Mission: Impossible 2,” but just as with the 1996 original, this action-thriller based on the old TV series is short on plot and common sense. Tom Cruise returns as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, who is sent to Sydney, Australia, to destroy a deadly bio-weapon. Also after the organism is a sadistic former IMF agent (Dougray Scott), who has already stolen the cure. The blockbuster makes its video and DVD debut Tuesday.