BEST BETS / June 10-16, 2001

Movies

Those lips! Those hips! Angelina Jolie, above, swings into action as “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” based on the popular computer game. Iain Glen, Daniel Craig and Leslie Phillips co-star in the film directed by Simon West. Opens Friday.

Theater

Amy Brenneman, Marlee Matlin, Kathy Najimy, Jean Smart, Kimberly Williams, Carol Kane, Amy Pietz and a host of other female celebrities will perform staged readings of movie scenes written for men in “Glen Mary Glen Rose: Women Do Men.” The evening will benefit Step Up Women’s Network and the Revlon/UCLA Breast Center. Wednesday at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Dance

Last year the COLA performance series made news with its edgy, uncompromisingly contemporary work. This year, COLA, which stands for city of Los Angeles, begins Friday and Saturday with Licia Perea performing solos in one hall of the L.A. Theatre Center downtown and Dulce Capadocia’s Silayan Philippine-American Dance Company holding forth in another. A single ticket gets you into both events.

Art

“Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the 1870s,” a traveling show opening today at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, looks at the relationship between Homer’s painting and the critical ideas of nationalism in the decade following the Civil War. The survey brings together a group of paintings, including, below, “A Temperance Meeting (Gloucester Farm)” from 1874, that Homer created as he emerged as a promising artist.

Also: “Sharon Lockhart,” a traveling show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, features the Los Angeles artist’s large-scale photographs, which often suggest movie-inspired narratives.

Pop Music

With the Warped Tour, Ozzfest and KROQ’s Weenie Roast still to come, June is by far the biggest mega concert month on this year’s calendar, and it shifts into high gear in L.A. this week with KIIS-FM’s hit-makers’ summit, Wango Tango (Aerosmith with Steven Tyler, above, Bee Gees, Backstreet Boys, et al), at Dodger Stadium and Mariachi USA at the Hollywood Bowl. Both events are Saturday and next Sunday.

Video

Tom Hanks received a best actor Oscar nomination--he won the best actor Golden Globe--for his performance in “Cast Away.” Hanks, who gained and lost 50 pounds for the role, plays a Federal Express efficiency expert stranded on a desert island for four years. Robert Zemeckis, who guided Hanks to his second Oscar in “Forrest Gump,” directed. The movie arrives Tuesday on VHS and DVD.