CRITICS' PICKS.

Byline: Fred Shuster, Bob Strauss, Marla Matzer Rose, David Bloom 

MUSIC

REDONDO BEACH BOY: It's always a rare night when Brian Wilson performs, but it's even rarer for the ex-Beach Boys auteur to headline a New Year's Eve show.

Wilson, who continues to record often-marvelous new music 33 years after the release of the awe-inspiring "Pet Sounds," appears tonight at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.

Although he's issued a series of solo albums, a short soundtrack of a 1995 Don Was-produced documentary about Wilson, "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times," acts as a terrific introduction to the inscrutable singer-songwriter's post-Beach Boys artistry.

Further, it isn't widely known that some of Brian Wilson's best work of the '60s was done away from the Beach Boys as a producer/arranger for hire.

During those years, while his brothers in surf toured, Wilson worked in the studio for artists ranging from Glen Campbell and the Honeys to Dino, Desi & Billy, sometimes echoing the sophistication of "Pet Sounds."

To hear some of those sides Wilson wrote, produced and/or performed for others, a 32-track compilation titled "Still I Dream of You: Rare Works of Brian Wilson" is well worth searching for.

The Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center is at 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach. Show time is 10 p.m. and tickets are $75 and $100. Information: [phone].

- Fred Shuster

FILM

`GREEN'-ING OF THE NEW YEAR: If you want to remind yourself just what it is we're celebrating 2,000 years of, we've got the movie for you.

"The Green Mile" doesn't look like a religious allegory on the surface. Set in a Louisiana penitentiary in the 1930s, this Stephen King Death Row drama builds impressive passion - and compassion - over its extended but always engaging length.

Tom Hanks is the picture of decency as the head guard who discovers that one of his doomed charges, the gigantic Michael Clarke Duncan, possesses miraculous healing powers. The film's a little too impressed with itself and kind of screwy, race-wise. But it's mainly a touching exploration of goodness transcending the most unlikely circumstances.

Happy New Year.

- Bob Strauss

TELEVISION

MACHO MEN: Think you like to party hardy on New Year's Eve? Chances are you're a mere lightweight compared to the Village People, the '70s disco group whose anthems such as ``YMCA'' and ``Macho Man'' live on at weddings and bar mitzvahs the world over.

Sunday's installment of the dishy/trashy ''E! True Hollywood Story'' promises to reveal ``the wild ride to stardom ... surrounded in scandal and controversy'' of the singing sextet. The band members give us such insights as: ``It was almost like Camelot. You didn't think anything could go wrong'' (David Hodo, a k a the Construction Worker) and ``It was a time when the gay subculture was ... taking a more positive possession of their masculinity'' (Randy Jones, a k a the Cowboy).

Also lending their disco-era expertise to the show will be diva Gloria Gaynor and celebrity hairstylist Jose Eber. Like VH1's ``Behind the Music,'' ``True Hollywood Story'' is best when it gets down 'n' dirty with the sex-and-drug fueled exploits of the rich and famous; there should be plenty of that to go around in this one-hour special.

There is one sobering thought here, though: By the time you sit down to watch this show, the '70s will have begun three decades ago. (``The Village People: The E! True Hollywood Story,'' 9 p.m. Sunday on cable channel E!)

- Marla Matzer Rose

REMEMBER 'WISEGUY'?: Back in 1987, schlocky action television producer Stephen J. Cannell produced what may have been his finest series (admittedly, there are few worth mentioning in his lengthy and profitable oeuvre), the truly great crime drama ``Wiseguy.''

For most of its three-year run, the show featured hunky, heavy-lidded Ken Wahl as undercover organized-crime agent Vinnie Terranova, sidling up next to a series of deliciously evil bad guys sketched against a darkly atmospheric dramatic sensibility seldom matched in episodic TV.

``Wiseguy'' ended in 1990, after a three-year run and not long after Wahl departed in a squabble with producers. But blessedly, Court TV of all places has licensed the series and will be showing it in reruns beginning with a 14-hour marathon Sunday.

Cannell and Court TV anchor Catherine Crier will host the marathon, with Cannell taking viewers on a tour of the Brooklyn locations featured in some of the episodes and telling some of the stories behind the show's making.

Best of all, the marathon will feature the 11 truly whacked episodes that followed the story of Mel and Susan Profitt, a twisted pair of outlaw siblings played brilliantly and creepily by Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance.

So if the end of the millennium (save it for later, sticklers) hasn't totally turned you inside out, check out this TV classic. Assuming the power still works on Jan. 2.

- David Bloom

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) ex-Beach Boy Brian Wilson (no caption)

(2) Village People (no caption)