Best Bets / june 4-10, 2000

Movies

Reformed car thief Nicolas Cage resorts to his old ways to get little brother Giovanni Ribisi out of a jam in “Gone in 60 Seconds.” Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall and Delroy Lindo also star in producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest movie, which opens Friday.

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Kenneth Branagh has another go at Shakespeare on film, this time interpreting “Love’s Labour’s Lost” into a ‘30s Hollywood musical with tunes by Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. It opens Friday in selected theaters.

Theater

A young bride with an insatiable desire for her married lover and an escalating feud between two families figure in “Blood Wedding/Boda de Sangre,” Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Spanish ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ” about forbidden love and revenge, which begins La Jolla Playhouse’s summer season. Staged by England’s critically acclaimed Mark Wing-Davey and featuring a bilingual cast, it opens today.

Pop Music

In one of the richest concert weeks of the year--visitors range from such commercial blockbusters as ‘N Sync and Matchbox Twenty to critical heroes Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith--one show stands out as the most intriguing: Nine Inch Nails on Tuesday at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, where Trent Reznor has a chance to reclaim his role as a true rock force.

Music

Ending an 11-season tenure, Long Beach Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta leads her final concert as the orchestra’s permanent conductor, Saturday in Terrace Theater, Long Beach. Her soloist-less program is visually slanted: Respighi’s “Botticelli Triptych,” Martinu’s “Frescoes of Piero della Francesca” and the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Art

“The Next Wave: New Painting in Southern California,” opening today at the California Center for the Arts Museum in Escondido, looks at 20 Southern California artists who are redefining the medium of painting--L.A.’s Ingrid Calame, Steven Criqui, Salomon Huerta, Enrique Martinez Celaya and Lezley Saar among them.

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The Museum of Contemporary Art hosts the first major survey devoted to Mexican multimedia sculptor Gabriel Orozco, as an exhibition of his sculpture, photography, videos and works on paper opens there today. Known for utilizing found materials, Orozco’s unique sculptures include a pingpong table complete with lily pond, a large Plasticine ball that collects dust to equal the artist’s weight, and a deconstructed Citroen car.

Jazz

Pianist Ahmad Jamal has had his own individual style since the 1950s. Paying close attention to dynamics while swinging, Jamal and his trio enjoy building up the suspense, volume and heat ever so slowly. They will be at the Jazz Bakery this week starting Tuesday.