Movies - June 3, 2001

Brutally driven covert operative John Travolta, above, and his assistant, Halle Berry, lure computer hacker Hugh Jackman into a scheme to steal $9 billion in “Swordfish,” the latest explosive thriller from producer Joel Silver. Don Cheadle, Vinnie Jones and Sam Shepard co-star in the film directed by Dominic Sena and opening Friday.

Also: A young cartographer fulfills his grandfather’s dream of finding “Atlantis: The Lost Empire.” The animated adventure, with the voices of Michael J. Fox and James Garner, opens Friday.

Theater

John Belluso’s play “The Body of Bourne” is about the brief life of one of America’s most influential intellectuals: essayist, orator, poet and playwright Randolph Bourne, who became the voice of youth, idealism and progressive ideas in the early 1900s. His works, including more than 100 essays, still resonate. Premieres Thursday at the Mark Taper Forum.

Dance

The UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance offers an experiment in collaboration by the Asia Pacific Performance Exchange on Saturday in the Japan America Theater in L.A. “Creating Across Cultures: An APPEX Experience” enlists dancer-choreographers from Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, China and the U.S., and stage directors and composers from many countries.

Pop Music

Indie rock takes a step uptown when the Chicago group Tortoise, which usually plays rock dives when it hits L.A., headlines at UCLA’s Royce Hall. It’s not a bad fit: The group’s sophisticated instrumentals have the panache of the progressive. The show also marks a step up for one of L.A.’s best rock dives, Spaceland, which is promoting the event under its Spaceland Productions banner.

Art

The Nature of the Beast: Portrayals of Animals in Japanese Paintings,” opening today at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, examines the ways artists such as Katsushika Hokusai, Ito Jakuchu and Minol Araki depicted animals and birds in paintings and prints during the Edo period (1600-1868). Above, “Monkey Performing the Sambaso Dance” (1800), by Mori Sosen.

Jazz

Al DiMeola is known for his hot-blooded fusion electric guitar playing and his more stylistically varied work on acoustic guitar. He’ll be strutting his stuff at the Key Club in West Hollywood on Saturday.

Video

The most successful foreign-language film released in America, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” also won numerous critics’ awards as well as four Academy Awards. Taiwanese Ang Lee also became the first minority director to win the Directors Guild of America Award for the martial arts fantasy. Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi, below, star. The import arrives Tuesday on VHS and DVD.