Dance
14. See Big Dance Theater
Back from Byrne.
Her steps pair well with David Byrne’s music (lately in Here Lies Love), but Annie-B Parson returns to her company, and collaborator Paul Lazar, for �Allan Smithee Directed This Play, in which Bolsheviks and American families mingle on a stageful of lawn chairs and pistols. —Rebecca Milzoff
BAM Harvey Theater, September 30 through October 4.

Museum Exhibits
15. Visit Lonesome George
Oldest Formerly Living Tortoise Tells All.
He was a century old when he died in 2012, and for 41 years he’d been the last of his kind�a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise, living only on Pinta Island�and a zoological celebrity. After his death, George was preserved by taxidermists, and he’s making a brief trip, his first, up north.
American Museum of Natural History, through January 4.

Classical Music
16. Hear the New York Philharmonic Perform
Tasty Danish.
A century ago, this Danish composer revived the flagging genre of the symphony with Nordic heat. Now the Philharmonic’s Alan Gilbert is determined to do the same for Nielsen’s reputation. A multiyear concert and recording project concludes with his boiling Fifth and crystalline Sixth. —J.D.
Avery Fisher Hall, October 1 through 3.

TV
17. Watch The 50-Year Argument
Put down your book and turn on the TV.
Directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, it’s a compact yet deep-dish look at that vital institution the New York Review of Books. Sure, NYRB readers will care, but the filmmakers’ skill at explaining everything without seeming to will make it work for everyone else. —Matt Zoller Seitz
HBO, September 29, 9 p.m.

Books
18. Read 10:04
Brooklyn strong.
Possibly the first piece of fiction to hinge on Super-�storm Sandy, Ben Lerner’s second novel is more mature than Leaving the Atocha Station�and contains the cleverest reuse of an already-published story you’re likely to find. —B.K.
Faber & Faber, September 2.

TV
19. Watch Black-ish
Good times return.
Forty years ago, you could see a half-dozen sitcoms that, for all their clowning, dealt with race, class, and other hot-button topics head-on. Today, Anthony Anderson’s Black-ish is almost alone on TV. It’s about a middle-class African-American family pulled, daily and subtly, between assimilation and authenticity. Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross (as the hero’s wife, Rainbow), and co-producer Laurence Fishburne (as his dad) are all excellent. —M.Z.S.
ABC, premiering September 24, 9:30 p.m.

Art
20. See Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India
Sexy darkness.
Clemente paints things like a large hand with a map of the world depicted on it, or a man�perhaps the painter?�chomping down on the tail-eating snake of art. His personal Kama Sutra of penetrations and couplings reconfirms his amazing way with watercolor. The recent work here fizzles, but just being in this great museum makes it all a pleasure. —Jerry Saltz
Rubin Museum of Art, through February 2.

TV
21. Watch Sweeney Todd
These are my friends.
Emma Thompson made a superb Mrs. Lovett, and Bryn Terfel a lustrous Mr. T, in the Philharmonic’s sold-out performances last year. Luckily, Live From Lincoln Center recorded them, plus�in an extreme case of luxury casting�Audra McDonald as the Beggar Woman. —J.G.
PBS, September 26.

Classical Music
22. Hear the Berlin Philharmonic
At Carnegie Hall.
Simon Rattle’s tenure at the Berlin Phil will end in 2018�practically next week, in the time scale of classical music�so their joint visits to Carnegie Hall are numbered. They’ll open the season with a series that includes Stravinsky’s complete Firebird and all four Schumann symphonies. —J.D.
October 1, 2, 5, and 6.

Movies
23. See Starred Up
Life going nowhere, hard.
As Eric Love, a violent U.K. teen transferred to a maximum-security adult prison, young Jack O’Connell lopes down a corridor radiating insolence, ready to strike back before anyone thinks to strike first. It’s a remarkable performance, and his hair-trigger hostility makes things very confusing when he’s confronted by two authority figures, one a therapist (Rupert Friend), the other his father (Ben Mendelsohn). —D.E.
In theaters now.

Art
24. See Lily van der Stokker
Pink. Really pink.
In this show of all-pink paintings, sculptures, murals, and installations, one lumpy wall work is emblazoned with a feminist message: �Only yelling older woman in here. Nothing to sell.� I’m pretty sure the little painting that says �Aunty Roberta and Uncle Jerry� is friendly, though. —J.S.
Koenig & Clinton, through October 18.

Dance
25. See Pacific Northwest Ballet
Big company, small stage.
Distilled works on a chamber scale: Tide Harmonic, the latest of the company’s many collaborations with Christopher Wheeldon; a local premiere by Alejandro Cerrudo; and a sneak preview of a new Justin Peck work. —R.M.
Joyce Theater, October 8 through 12.