Best Bets

Art

“Milton Avery: The Late Paintings,” a touring show opening at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Westwood on Tuesday, is made up of 45 works from the last 15 years of the New York painter’s working life. The first such survey devoted to the influential American Modernist’s late works will include nudes, interiors, seascapes, landscapes and a self-portrait, right.

Movies

Al Pacino, below right, with co-star Robin Williams, plays a sleep-starved homicide detective in “Insomnia,” a thriller set in a small Alaskan town. Director Christopher Nolan follows up his indie hit “Memento” with this adaptation of a Norwegian film. Hilary Swank also co-stars. Opens Friday.

Also: Oscar Wilde veterans--director Oliver Parker and star Rupert Everett from “An Ideal Husband”--reunite for “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a farce based on the play. Judi Dench, Colin Firth, Frances O’Connor and Reese Witherspoon head the ensemble cast. Opens Wednesday.

Music

The 98-year-old Farmers & Merchants Bank, at 4th and Main streets in the center of what was, a century ago, downtown L.A.’s Banking District, is the site today of a concert by the much-admired Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. The performance closes out another season for the enterprising Chamber Music in Historic Sites series.

Jazz

Stand-up bassist Ray Brown got his start in the 1940s as a member of the Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker Quintet. He was a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio and a regular bassist on Norman Grantz’s “Jazz at the Philharmonic” tours for almost two decades. In the studio, Brown has played the bass on more than 2,000 recordings with a long list of music notables. Brown brings his trio to Hollywood’s Catalina Bar & Grill for a six-night stand starting Tuesday.

Video

Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush and Barbara Hershey lead the intriguing Australian import “Lantana.” Written by Andre Bovell, the drama interweaves the lives of a police detective who is cheating on his wife, and a psychologist and her husband who are coping with grief over the murder of their daughter. Directed by Ray Lawrence, this intimate look at personal relationships arrives Tuesday on DVD and VHS.

Pop Music

Country music gets its day(s) in the Southern California sun, with the 37th annual Academy of Country Music Awards on Wednesday at the Universal Amphitheatre anchoring the honky-tonk action. Trace Adkins headlines Tuesday’s annual Sizzlin’ Country, a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. Finally, recent album chart-topper Kenny Chesney, above, plays Saturday at Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in Devore, preceding his May 30 Greek Theatre date.