ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

MOVIES

A Knight by Any Name: Actor Michael Caine was knighted in London on Thursday, but he chose to receive his country’s prestigious honor under his given name, becoming Sir Maurice Micklewhite. “I was named after my father, and I was knighted in his name because I love my father,” Caine, who took his stage name from the film “The Caine Mutiny,” said after receiving the honor from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. Caine, who has won two Oscars, including this year’s supporting actor prize for “The Cider House Rules,” called his knighthood “the recognition of a lifetime--this is the top one.”

POP/ROCK

HOB Expands to Anaheim: The House of Blues in Anaheim will open in January with a pronounced Orange County accent supplied by two major O.C. acts as the club’s inaugural headliners. Club officials are still making final plans for the group that will play the Jan. 10 opening-night concert in the 800-seat facility in downtown Anaheim, part of the Disneyland Resort expansion. But tickets are already on sale for five nights with veteran punk band Social Distortion, Jan. 23-27. The new venue, the eighth in the House of Blues’ national chain, will give Orange County an intermediate-size venue that falls between the region’s three dominant live-music clubs: San Juan Capistrano’s 475-seat Coach House, Santa Ana’s 550-seat Galaxy Theatre and Anaheim’s 1,200-capacity Sun Theatre.

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Pop Picks: MTV and Rolling Stone magazine have named the Beatles’ “Yesterday” as the No. 1 pop song since 1963, with the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” making up the rest of the Top 5. The list was compiled for a “100 Greatest Pop Songs” special that will air on the cable channel throughout next week.

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Judge Needs to Know: A judge in Puerto Rico has ordered singer Marc Anthony to appear in court to respond to charges that he assaulted a local TV personality. Leo Fernandez III, who appears on a gossip show, filed a lawsuit claiming that Anthony assaulted him in July when he asked if Anthony’s wife was pregnant. Anthony, who later announced that he and his wife are expecting a child next year, has denied the assault allegations.

TELEVISION

Asian Protest: In its continued protest of a recurring sketch character on Fox’s “Mad TV,” the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition says it will ask the series’ sponsors to drop their ads from the show. The call comes after the group’s Nov. 9 meeting with Fox’s senior vice president of diversity and representatives from the network’s programming and broadcast standards departments, in which the coalition unsuccessfully sought to have the character--a nail salon owner whose customers cannot understand her English--dropped from the series. A network spokesperson noted that the character comes from “a fictitious country named Kuvaria” and said that Fox has made “good-faith efforts to clear this up, including numerous meetings” with the coalition.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Weill Programs: Soprano Sheri Greenawald will replace Audra McDonald, who has been having complications with her pregnancy, in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Kurt Weill centennial celebration concerts, Nov. 30 and Dec. 2-3 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Zubin Mehta will lead the orchestra in Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins,” which Greenawald and the Hudson Shad Quartet will sing in German. Meanwhile, Center Theatre Group will also celebrate the Weill centennial with a Dec. 4 benefit concert hosted by Michael Feinstein at the Mark Taper Forum.

QUICK TAKES

Madonna and rapper Eminem topped the 2000 MTV Europe Music Awards held in Stockholm on Thursday, winning two awards each. . . . NBC has named Minnesota Gov. and former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura an analyst for the network’s weekly prime-time XFL football broadcasts that will begin on Feb. 3. The new football league is co-owned by NBC and World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Inc. . . . Nora Dunn, Teri Garr and Sanaa Lathan (“Love & Basketball”) are booked for a Dec. 12-31 run in “The Vagina Monologues” at Beverly Hills’ Canon Theatre. . . . ABC will premiere “Dot Comedy,” a half-hour reality series produced by Carsey-Werner and cable’s Oxygen network, on Dec. 8, airing Friday nights at 8:30. Based on a British series of the same name, “Dot Comedy” will feature Internet content, including viewer submissions. . . . The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, will co-host the Dec. 7 Fox special, “The Ultimate Auction.” Among the items up for bidding will be a necklace once worn by the duchess’ late sister-in-law, Princess Diana. . . . Last week’s editions of ABC’s “Nightline” and “Politically Incorrect” both benefited from the election turmoil, with “Nightline” averaging 5.9 million viewers, its best ratings since April 1999, and “Politically Incorrect” averaging 3.8 million viewers, the show’s biggest audience in more than two years. . . . Nickelodeon has ordered 26 more episodes of Bill Cosby’s year-old animated preschool series “Little Bill.” . . . The La Jolla Playhouse has announced what it says is the final extension for “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” through Dec. 10.