Best Bets: December 30,2001 -- January 5, 2002

Movies

Gary Sinise stars in “Impostor,” a sci-fi thriller based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. Sinise, above, plays a government scientist in 2079 who wakes up one morning accused of being an alien infiltrator. Madeleine Stowe, Vincent D’Onofrio, Tony Shalhoub and Mekhi Phifer co-star. Opens Friday.

Theater

On the heels of the national tour of Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen,” the Tony Award-winning drama that originated at London’s Royal National Theatre and closes next Sunday at the Wilshire Theatre, comes a second, home-grown production. The Laguna Playhouse is presenting the nation’s first resident professional production of this speculative drama, based on events about which historians can only guess. It concerns a covert 1941 meeting between two prominent physicists, former friends who took opposite sides during World War II. Opening Saturday, the production kicks off a 24-city tour.

Art

Edward Weston’s photos are so suave and dramatic that it’s easy to forget that many of the images began with ordinary objects. “Edward Weston: Life Work,” an exhibition of 100 vintage prints at the Central Library’s Getty Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, examines the artist’s uncanny ability to turn something as simple as a bell pepper, left, into a complex study of sensual beauty.

Jazz

2001 takes a final bow Monday with Jane Monheit at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood and Les McCann at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City. And 2002 starts in grand fashion Wednesday with Oscar Brown Jr. and Billy Childs at the Bakery and the Jazz Crusaders at Catalina.

Video

Rob Cohen’s “The Fast and the Furious” raced to the top of the box office when it was released last summer. Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster--headline the high-octane thriller about an undercover cop (Walker) investigating a street gang led by Diesel. It arrives Wednesday on VHS and DVD.

Pop Music

There’ll be dancing in the streets--Hollywood Boulevard to be exact--and on the grounds of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, sites of the city’s two biggest New Year’s Eve electronic music events. Paul Oakenfold, Deep Dish and BT anchor Center of the Universe, which stretches along seven blocks of Hollywood’s main thoroughfare, while Paul Van Dyk, Sasha and others volley back the beats from Giant Village in Exposition Park. Below, the Deep Dish duo of Sharam Tayebi and Ali Shirazinia.