Best Bets

Movies

Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen, right, with Natalie Portman) is a Jedi whose fate is bound to Queen Amidala’s in “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones,” George Lucas’ fifth entry in his space opus. Ewan McGregor co-stars. Opens Thursday.

Also: The directing Weitz brothers of “American Pie” fame take on the bard of arrested male development. They adapt Nick Hornby’s novel “About a Boy,” starring Hugh Grant as a feckless playboy who bonds with a misfit 12-year-old. With Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette. Opens Friday.

Theater

The Broadway musical, “A Class Act,” a West Coast premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, pays tribute to Ed Kleban, the late Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning lyricist of “A Chorus Line,” using his music and lyrics to tell the story of his lifelong search for friendship, love and success. Written by Linda Kline and Lonny Price, the musical begins as Kleban’s ghost, attending his own memorial service and not hearing the accolades he expects, sets the record straight. Opens today.

Music

Written during Esa-Pekka Salonen’s sabbatical from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, his orchestral work “Foreign Bodies” receives its U.S. premiere in three Los Angeles Philharmonic performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion beginning Thursday. Says the composer, who will also conduct this week: “I very much enjoy the energy and joy of my adopted hometown of Los Angeles. And yet I feel foreign, a misplaced, shy northerner amidst extroverted and confident Californians. This polarity is quite inspiring.”

Dance

When American percussionist Keith Terry and Indonesian choreographer I Wayan Dibia get together for Body Tjak, audiences listen. Terry and Dibia first collaborated in 1980, and their combination of Balinese chant, complex clapping rhythms and dancing that involves performers in percussive accompaniment has carried them around the world. Free performances at the Fowler Museum on the UCLA campus Thursday and Friday will enlist students from the departments of world arts and cultures, theater, music and ethnomusicology.

Jazz

Hollywood scriptwriters would say singer Claudia Acuna, above, has a great back story. Born in Santiago, Chile, she decides early in her life to be a jazz singer. She moves to New York City even though she lacks fluency in English and the money to enroll in any of that city’s many jazz education programs. But she perseveres, hanging out at jazz clubs and supporting herself with jobs as a baby-sitter, dog-walker and dishwasher. She is eventually signed by Verve Records and releases two critically acclaimed albums. She opens her six-nighter at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City on Tuesday.

Art

The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena continues its series of exhibitions exploring the intersection of art, technology and science with “Situated Realities: Where Technology and Imagination Intersect,” opening today at the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery. The exhibition of computer-

mediated imagery looks at the changing nature of representation in the age of digital technology and will feature works by 24 artists, including Jim Campbell, Dieter Huber and Anna Ullrich. Above: Simen Johan’s “Untitled #63 (Jump Rope)” (1997).

Pop Music

With the weather warming up and summer getting closer, the big tours are starting to roll. The Dave Matthews Band hits the San Diego Sports Arena on Monday, Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday and Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine on Thursday. Meanwhile, R&B; star Usher headlines concerts also featuring Nas and Faith Evans at the San Diego Sports Arena today and Verizon on Saturday.