all day MoviesThe first Bollywood-style film to...

all day Movies

The first Bollywood-style film to receive an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film, “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India,” comes to L.A. this week. India has the largest film industry in the world--triple Hollywood’s output--producing three-hour spectacles featuring musical numbers, sexy stars and plenty of action. “Lagaan,” written and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker and produced by and starring Aamir Khan, details an 1893 tax revolt by a small village against a tyrannical British captain, which is settled by a cricket match. In English and Hindi, with English subtitles.

“Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India,” rated PG for language and some violence, opens Friday exclusively at the Landmark’s Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A. (310) 478-6379.

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8pm Dance

The Lyon Opera Ballet production of Maguy Marin’s “Cinderella” has been a hit with local audiences on stage and public television for the last 15 years. Nearly everyone has enjoyed seeing the traditional story of the girl with the glass slipper retold inside a giant dollhouse, with dancers costumed and masked to look like antique porcelain dolls. Fewer spectators, however, have been as enchanted with the cuts that Marin makes in Prokofiev’s score--or the baby gurgles added to the soundtrack. A month ago, Marin’s own company performed a full-evening abstraction in Southland venues, and those who consider her a major figure on the European dance-theater scene should appreciate another look at one of her most celebrated early works.

Lyon Opera Ballet in “Cinderella,” Royce Hall, UCLA campus, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood, 8 p.m. Also Saturday, 8 p.m. $30 to $45; UCLA students with I.D., $16. (310) 825-2101.

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8pm Music

Maytime is MicroFest time, and this year’s spring festival of microtonal music offers five concerts. The first, to be performed by the Harvey Mudd Gamelan and guests, is called “Mostly Metallophones” and brings together music by Bill Alves, Tom Flaherty, Kraig Grady, Masashi Ito and George Zellenz.

MicroFest, Lyman Hall, Thatcher Music Building, Pomona College, 4th street and College Avenue, Claremont, 8 p.m., Free. (909) 621-8022. Also May 11 and 18 at Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, and May 25 and 26 at Pierce College, Woodland Hills.

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8pm Dance

At 54, Mikhail Baryshnikov continues to rewrite dance history, showing with every tour by his seven-member White Oak Dance Project that ballet stars need not give up major roles or compromise their standards when, inevitably, time erodes their classical virtuosity. Indeed, new worlds of dance await them, as Baryshnikov keeps proving. Always committed to contemporary expression, he has turned himself into a modern dancer of exceptional lucidity in his White Oak career, and his repertory choices are invariably daring. The four-part program on the current tour offers works by such major moderns as Lucinda Childs and Erick Hawkins, plus a new choreographic discovery, Sarah Michelson.

White Oak Dance Project, California Center for the Arts, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido, 8 p.m. Also Saturday, 8 p.m. $35 to $65. (800) 988-4253. Also May 23 to 25, 8 p.m., and May 26, 2 p.m., in the Lobero Theatre, 331 E. Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara. $75. (805) 963-0761.

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all day Exhibit

One of the most famous dining destinations of Hollywood’s golden age is revisited in “Under the Hat: Hollywood’s Legendary Brown Derby Restaurants” at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gallery. The show of photos, fan magazines, memorabilia and decor items from the ‘20s to the ‘50s includes the celebrity caricatures that lined the walls at the famed eatery. Best of show: a re-creation of the original Derby booth--think Lucy and Ethel rubbernecking William Holden and Eve Arden in that memorable episode of “I Love Lucy” and you’ve got the idea.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Opens today. Continues weekdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; weekends, noon to 6 p.m. Ends July 14. (310) 247-3600.

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8:30pm Theater

Longtime L.A. performance artist Tim Miller has charted the sexual, spiritual and political topography of his identity as a gay man in several revealing and critically acclaimed solo shows, including one about how his Australian boyfriend was denied U.S. residency. Miller’s new show, “Body Blows,” based on his just-released book of the same name, will be his last as an Angeleno before he and his partner move to London.

“Body Blows,” Highways Gallery and Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, 8:30 p.m. Regular schedule: Fridays and Saturdays, 8:30 p.m. Ends May 18. $15; opening night, $25. (310) 315-1459.

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8pm Theater

Ziggurat Theatre Company premieres Stephen Legawiec’s comedy-drama-martial arts adventure “Red Thread,” based on a 1,200-year-old story set during the Tang dynasty. In this epic, a military governor calls on the greatest of China’s legendary assassins to prevent a potential political disaster, but “Red Thread” turns out to have a secret agenda of his own that may threaten the future of China.

“Red Thread,” Gascon Center Theatre, 8737 Washington Blvd., Culver City, 8 p.m. Regular schedule: Fridays to Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 16. $15 to $20. (310) 842-5737.