Best Bets

October 14-20, 2001

Movies

Robert Redford, above left, James Gandolfini, right, go toe to toe in Rod Lurie’s drama, “The Last Castle,” set in a military prison. Redford plays a court-martialed three-star general stripped of his rank who leads his fellow prisoners in a revolt against warden Gandolfini’s brutality. Mark Ruffalo and Delroy Lindo co-star. Opens Friday.

Also: Drew Barrymore stars in “Riding in Cars With Boys,” based on Beverly Donofrio’s memoir about her experiences as a teenage wife and mother and her unlikely path to becoming a writer. Penny Marshall directs the dramedy that co-stars Steve Zahn, Brittany Murphy and James Woods. Opens Friday.

Music

Touring orchestras dominate this week. Claudio Abbado, below left, conducts the Berlin Philharmonic at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa on Monday and Tuesday. His first program lists Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6, his second, the “Eroica” Symphony and Wagner excerpts. Herbert Blomstedt leads the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday; on Thursday it visits Civic Theatre, San Diego.

Theater

South Coast Repertory revisits a landmark production of Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming.” In 1965, the then-fledgling theater company first presented the drama, introducing Southern California audiences to Pinter’s work. The drama is about a British professor who introduces his wife to his father and brothers’ all-male household, with tumultuous results. Opens Friday in Costa Mesa.

Pop Music

When he crafts a masterpiece, Bob Dylan is like no other pop music-maker out there, and he’s made it two in a row with his new album “Love and Theft,” an exuberant panorama of American music styles and absorbing reflections on the title’s themes. Dylan plays at UC Santa Barbara tonight, UC San Diego on Wednesday and L.A.’s Staples Center on Friday.

Art

The UCLA Hammer Museum has gone on the granddaddy of scavenger hunts, through the drawers, shelves and vaults of 32 special collections libraries in L.A. County, and come up with a spectacular cache. “The World From Here: Treasures of the Great Libraries of Los Angeles” includes Amelia Earhart’s log of her 1928 transatlantic flight and an original poster for “Citizen Kane;” a first edition of “Canterbury Tales” (1485) and Anais Nin’s handwritten diaries. The exhibition opens Wednesday. Above, “Schoenbartbuch,” an illuminated manuscript circa 1600.

Jazz

Jamaican jazz pianist Monty Alexander opens his six-nighter at Culver City’s Jazz Bakery on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Brazilian jazz stalwarts Airto Moreira and Flora Purim along with sax man Gary Meek begin their week at Hollywood’s Catalina Bar & Grill that same night.