Best Bets / October 31-November 6, 1999

Movies

“The Bone Collector,” a suspense thriller, stars Denzel Washington as a forensics detective paralyzed from a gunshot wound and Angelina Jolie as a street-smart rookie cop who team up to track down a brutal serial killer. Opening in general release on Friday.

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“Last Night” imagines the world coming to an end in a mere six hours, and Don McKellar, who also wrote and directed the film, Sandra Oh, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, David Cronenberg and Genevieve Bujold play characters preparing in their unique ways for the impending Apocalypse. Opens Friday at selected theaters.

Jazz

Harry Connick Jr. has had a diverse career as a jazz pianist, a middle-of-the-road pop singer (inspired by Frank Sinatra) and as a highly regarded actor. The former two skills will be on evidence as he brings his swing-oriented orchestra to the Universal Amphitheatre this Wednesday, performing originals plus occasional standards.

Theater

Michael Cerveris, Tony Award nominee for “The Who’s Tommy,” reprises his gender-bending starring role in the Off-Broadway hit rock ‘n roll musical, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” written by John Cameron Mitchell, with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask. From Canon Theatricals, it opens on Halloween at the Henry Fonda Theatre.

Art

The relationship between dreams and archaeology is explored in “The Shadow of Gradiva: A Last Excavation Campaign through the Collections of the Getty Center by Anne and Patrick Poirier” opening Saturday at the Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center. The installation will include photographs, documents, manuscripts and books which were all collected in search of Gradiva, a fictional female character from Wilhelm Jensen’s 1903 novel “Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fantasy.”

Music

On Wednesday, soprano Kiri Te Kanawa brings to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion a recital program that includes songs from her New Zealand homeland and her Maori heritage (a related CD was just released) combined with the Western classical music that made her famous.

Dance

Aided by a life-size, inflatable corps, Susan Marshall and Company create contemporary dance from ancient winter solstice and New Year’s rites in her full-evening “The Descent Beckons” on Thursday in Campbell Hall on the campus of UC Santa Barbara. Next Sunday, Marshall’s balloon-dancers descend and beckon at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.

Video

Adam Sandler proved critic proof again with his summer hit, “Big Daddy.” Though most reviewers gave the comedy thumbs down, audiences flocked to see Sandler play a smart-aleck slacker who adopts a little boy. The movie, which also stars Joey Lauren Adams, arrives Tuesday in video stores.