Best Bets / August 12-18, 2001

Movies

Jerry Zucker’s zany “Rat Race” is a fresh take on the old-fashioned, large-scale chase comedy, and stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Lovitz, Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese and Dave Thomas, among many others. Opens Friday. Above: Corinne Jones, left, Jane Walsh and Whoopi Goldberg.

Also: Nicolas Cage stars in “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” as a conflicted officer of the Italian army who falls in love with a local beauty (Penelope Cruz) on an occupied Greek island during World War II. Directed by “Shakespeare in Love’s” John Madden. Opens Friday.

Pop Music

The Southland’s arenas and amphitheaters are humming all week with summer concerts, from today’s 100.3 the Beat Summer Jam at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater through next weekend’s Staple Center appearances by Eric Clapton, right.

In between, the schedule also includes Depeche Mode (Staples and the Arrowhead Pond), Barenaked Ladies (Verizon), and Stevie Nicks (Verizon), among others.

Music

Miguel Harth-Bedoya returns to the Hollywood Bowl and the Los Angeles Philharmonic this week to conduct three programs, the first on Tuesday night, when violinist Christian Tetzlaff is soloist. On Thursday, Vardan Mamikonian plays Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto. The soloists with Harth-Bedoya at the Friday and Saturday performances include the L.A. Guitar Quartet and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval.

Theater

Marc Wolf performs his multi-character solo show, “Another American: Asking and Telling,” about the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays. The show, based on three years of interviews with current and former servicemen and women, will run in repertory with Charlayne Woodard’s solo show, “In Real Life.” Opens today at the Mark Taper Forum downtown.

Museums

More than 200 artifacts associated with Jewish weddings, courtship and married life will be featured in “Romance & Ritual: Celebrating the Jewish Wedding,” opening Saturday at the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. The exhibition will look at customs and rituals from different times and places by examining illuminated ketubbot (wedding contracts), restored wedding gowns from throughout the last century, and personal mementos such as photographs, postcards, letters and wedding souvenirs.

Jazz

Gates open at noon today for the concluding installment of the 14th annual Long Beach Jazz Festival, featuring performances by Barbara Morrison, right, Wayman Tisdale & the Group Kombo, Nnenna Freelon, with Al Williams Jazz Society, Marcus Miller, David Benoit, Kirk Whalum, right, and the seemingly ubiquitous Poncho Sanchez.

Video

Jean-Jacques Annaud directed “Enemy at the Gates,” an ambitious World War II drama starring Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz and Ed Harris. During the battle of Stalingrad, a young Russian army sniper (Law) vies with a top-ranking German (Harris), and Bob Hoskins nearly steals the show as Nikita Khrushchev. Arrives Tuesday on VHS and DVD.