Best Bets / JANUARY 2-8, 2000

THEATER

Veteran stage and screen actress Sheree North heads the cast as Amanda in the Laguna Playhouse’s production of Tennessee Williams’ poignant classic “The Glass Menagerie,” opening Thursday at the Moulton Playhouse in Laguna Beach under the direction of Pacific Resident Theatre’s artistic director, Marilyn Fox.

POP MUSIC

The tumultuous trio TLC (Lisa Lopes, left, Rozanda Thomas and Tionne Watkins) has picked a good week to launch the second leg of its headlining concert tour. The group’s 4-million-selling album “FanMail” figures to get Grammy nominations Tuesday, making its Arrowhead Pond show Friday a likely occasion for celebration.

MOVIES

“Here’s Looking at You, Bogie,” a tribute to Humphrey Bogart marking the recent centennial of his birth and his designation as the top male screen legend in a recent American Film Institute poll of more than 1,800 film professionals, runs Friday-Jan. 29 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

MUSIC

Get your first and last hit of Esa-Pekka Salonen for the year 2000 on Thursday. He will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Royce Hall in a one-time-only program of his own compositions before formally beginning his yearlong sabbatical from conducting. The works include “LA Variations,” dedicated to Los Angeles and its orchestra, which has drawn standing ovations and excellent reviews around the world. The all-Salonen program will be recorded by Sony Classical later in the week.

JAZZ

Judy Niemack, a strong improviser who is an expert scat singer, rarely performs in the L.A. area because she lives in Europe these days. However, she will be at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City on Monday, along with guitarist Jon Francois, bassist Putter Smith and drummer Joe LaBarbera.

ART

John Register, a Los Angeles Realist painter who died in 1996, is being celebrated in a national touring show opening Saturday at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art in Malibu.

VIDEO

Though it’s not as good as the 1968 original, the Pierce Brosnan-Rene Russo remake of the romantic caper “The Thomas Crown Affair” is handsome, sexy fun, especially for adults weary of glitzy young love stories. Faye Dunaway, who starred in the original with Steve McQueen, has a cameo as Brosnan’s psychiatrist. The hit steals into video stores Tuesday.