Best Bets / January 28-February 3, 2001

Movies

A spurned high school admirer stalks four San Francisco women over Valentine’s Day weekend in the thriller “Valentine,” with Marley Shelton and David Boreanaz, above. Opens Friday in general release.

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Also: “The Visit” stars Hill Harper as a young man, imprisoned for 25 years for a rape he insists he did not commit, struggling to establish a relationship with his family. With Billy Dee Williams, Phylicia Rashad, Rae Dawn Chong and Obba Babatunde.

Pop Music

With new arrivals from England such as Badly Drawn Boy and Coldplay pounding on America’s gates, the Brit-pop wave of a few years ago is already starting to seem like ancient history. Endeavoring to bridge the gap, singer-songwriter Richard Ashcroft, right, hits the Knitting Factory Hollywood on Saturday and next Sunday for his first solo shows since the breakup of his band the Verve.

Art

Melding labor-intensive crafts such as painting, silk-screening, stitchery and needlework, modern samplers chronicle global and personal issues in “Resolutions: A Stitch In Time,” opening today at the Skirball Cultural Center. The exhibition will present 20 major pieces featuring 19 stitched artworks and a single sculpture that are the result of a six-year collaboration between Chicago--who is best known for her large-scale feminist piece “The Dinner Party”--and 17 expert needleworkers.

Theater

Hal Linden headlines Arje Shaw’s new comedic drama, “The Gathering,” about a grandfather, father and son who take an unexpected journey from their dinner table discussion of the son’s upcoming bar mitzvah to Bitburg, Germany, circa 1985, the year of President Ronald Reagan’s controversial visit there. Opens Saturday at the Wadsworth Theater in Westwood.

Dance

The contrasting creative stances of writer Joseph Conrad and artist Marcel Duchamp fuel “Paysage Apres la Bataille,” above, the controversial full-evening work by French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, to be danced by his Ballet Preljocaj to a computer score by Goran Vejvoda on Friday and Saturday in Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in Westwood. Recommended for mature audiences.

Music

The Russian National Orchestra--once a radical example of self-governance in the USSR and now celebrating its 10th anniversary season--arrives Wednesday at the Music Center and Friday in Orange County, on its first U.S. tour since founder Mikhail Pletnev handed over the music directorship to Vladimir Spivakov. Pletnev didn’t go far, however--he’ll solo in Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto.

Video

Robert Zemeckis directed “What Lies Beneath,” a creepy horror thriller starring Michelle Pfeiffer as a seemingly happy married woman confronted by a ghost from her husband’s past. The box office hit arrives Tuesday on video and DVD.