Best Bets / OCTOBER 22-28, 2000

Movies

Weatherman John Travolta, above, and Lotto ball woman Lisa Kudrow connive to rig the contest so their own “Lucky Numbers” come up. Tim Roth and Bill Pullman also star in Nora Ephron’s film, which opens wide Friday.

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Award-winning documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” delves deeper into the legend of unspeakable evil in rural Maryland. Opening in general release on Friday.

Art

Merely a magazine illustrator or a modern master? Decide for yourself as the traveling retrospective “Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People” opens Saturday at the San Diego Museum of Art. The survey will include more than 70 oil paintings and 322 covers of the Saturday Evening Post by the popular realist painter. Above, Rockwell’s “Triple self-Portrait.”

Theater

“The Mummified Deer,” a mysterious and humorous odyssey about an 84-year-old woman’s fight for life, long-held family secrets revealed and an ancestral spirit of a Yaqui deer dancer, is a world-premiere play by Luis Valdez, author of the landmark “Zoot Suit.” Presented by San Diego Repertory Theatre, it opens Friday at Horton Plaza’s Lyceum Space.

Jazz

Veteran trumpeter-singer-comedian Jack Sheldon has been keeping very busy. In addition to appearing at Catalina’s tonight with his big band, he is performing on a weekly basis at the Money Tree (Tuesdays), Jax (Wednesdays) and Lunaria (Thursdays), somehow never running out of wisecracks.

Dance

Famed for its school as well as for its stellar alumni, the 125-member Perm State Ballet (Russia’s third-largest classical company) appears all weekend at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. The complete “Swan Lake” is on view Friday and Saturday, and “Giselle” is scheduled for the final matinee next Sunday. The company’s own orchestra accompanies all the performances. At right, Vitaly Poleschuck and Natalia Moiseeva.

Pop Music

If you’re curious about the electronic dance-music experience but don’t fancy a trip to the desert or the mountains or other favorite rave sites, Monster Massive, Saturday at the L.A. Sports Arena, may be your 100-beats-per-minute ticket. The event features some of the genre’s biggest stars, including Armand Van Helden, LTJ Bukem, Christopher Lawrence, Carl Cox, Ming & FS and the roster of L.A.’s Moonshine Music.

Music

Christoph Eschenbach, who was here recently with his NDR Symphony Hamburg, returns to conduct the L.A. Philharmonic in a Leonard Bernstein-Barber-Schumann program beginning Friday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Principal concertmaster Martin Chalifour plays the Barber Violin Concerto; American mezzo Florence Quivar is featured in Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” Symphony.

Video

The sprawling, violent Revolutionary War epic “The Patriot” finds Mel Gibson (in one of his best performances) and his eldest son (Heath Ledger) waging a personal battle against the British. Directed by Roland Emmerich of “Godzilla” and “Independence Day” fame, the film also stars Jason Isaacs, Chris Cooper, Tom Wilkinson and Joely Richardson. It arrives Tuesday on video and DVD.