Best Bets / November 25 - December 1, 2001

Movies

Hotshot flyboy Owen Wilson, above, is trapped “Behind Enemy Lines” when, during a routine reconnaissance mission over Bosnia, he photographs evidence of genocide and is shot down. His commander (Gene Hackman) makes a fateful decision to disregard higher-ups and attempt a daring rescue. Joaquim de Almeida, David Keith and Olek Krupa co-star. Opens Friday.

Music

Countertenor Andreas Scholl joins New York’s conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for a performance in UCLA’s Royce Hall, Friday at 8 p.m. The programincludes instrumental concertos by Albinoni and Telemann; Scarlatti’s Christmas Cantata; traditional Irish, Welsh, English and American songs; and two Bach works to be announced.

Pop Music

Some of the rising voices in hip-hop and R&B; are showcased this week, most of them on the MTV2 Sisters for Hip-Hop & Soul Tour on Thursday at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, where India.Arie, Mystic, Kelis and Res, among others, offer a taste of the future.

Art

“Abstraction at Mid-Century,” a splashy new exhibition at the Palm Springs Desert Museum, celebrates a tumultuous period in American art--the 1940s to the ‘70s, when many influential artists abandoned tradition and forged new directions. Drawings, paintings and sculptures by Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann and other artists, all drawn from the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, explore various aspects of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. Below, Hofmann’s “Fantasia in Blue” (1954).

Theater

It’s 1941, and Reverend Dennis, a member of the testifyin’, gospel-singing, down-home Sanders family, is getting ready to ship out with the Marines in the musical comedy “Sanders Family Christmas,” opening Friday at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. Presented by McCoy Rigby Entertainment and created by Alan Bailey and Connie Ray (“Radio Gals”) this high-spirited celebration of rural Americana is a sequel to the Sanders’ first outing, “Smoke on the Mountain.”

Jazz

Chicagoan Kurt Elling’s singing has been called quirky, head-tripping, hard-swinging, gymnastic, cutting-edge and many other things. The three-time Grammy nominee, above, with the Laurence Hobgood Trio, opens Tuesday for six nights at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City.

Video

“Swingers” co-stars Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn re-team for the mob comedy “Made,” which Favreau also wrote and directed. They play construction workers and budding boxers employed by a ruthless mobster (Peter Falk). Famke Janssen plays Favreau’s stripper girlfriend. Faizon Love, Vincent Pastore and David Patrick O’Hara also star. The farce arrives Tuesday on VHS and DVD.