CRITICS' PICKS : MUSIC.

G whiz!: In the early '90s, President Clinton said pop saxophonist Kenny G was one of his favorite musicians.

Clinton spoke for a lot of people who've made the mellow ``contemporary jazz'' of the man born Kenneth Gorelick one of the most commercially successful instrumental sounds in history.

Kenny G - who appears Saturday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in support of his best-selling album ``Classics in the Key of G'' - took up sax as a kid after seeing the instrument on TV.

Starting on alto, Gorelick made the soprano sax his signature instrument. At 17, he played in Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra and in the '70s became the only white musician in a Seattle funk outfit called Cold, Bold & Together.

After earning an accounting degree and spending a few years playing with Oregon's Jeff Lorber, Gorelick signed with Arista as a solo act. His first three albums sold respectably, but his fourth, ``Duotones,'' reached No. 6 on the pop chart and spawned the Top 10 single ``Songbird.''

Subsequent albums have gone straight into the pop and contemporary jazz charts. And as if that wasn't enough, our Kenny was one of the first investors in a little hometown coffee chain called Starbucks.

The Civic Arts Plaza is at 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. Show time is 8 p.m. and tickets are $42 to $72. Information: [phone].

- Fred Shuster

television

Clash of the titans: At 7i p.m. Saturday, two icons of 20th-century television square off against one another: David L. Wolper and Scooby Doo. OK, everyone knows Wolper and his monumental achievements - ``Roots'' and the 1984 Olympic Games' splashy opening are just his highest pinnacles. As for Scooby, don't you remember the Mystery Machine, Shaggy's wimpy cries of ``Yoinks!'' or Thelma's epiphanous yelps of ``Jinkies''?

Wolper, of course, is the guy who pretty much made TV both as respectable and as cheesy as it is these days, with the emphasis on the former. The History Channel presents ``David L. Wolper: The Man Who Makes Things Happen,'' a tight, enthralling biopic - Wolper created the original ``Biography'' series, too - about television's most inspired mogul. It charts the career of the man who both created the concept of syndicating programs (he sold his 1960 Emmy winner, ``The Making of the President,'' to individual stations when the networks wouldn't bite) and chased after Bigfoot in a TV special. He created the National Geographic and Jacques Cousteau specials, as well as a documentary about bugs, ``The Hellstrom Chronicles,'' which inexplicably beat out ``The Sorrow and the Pity'' for the best documentary Oscar in 1971. He also produced cool movies, from ``Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'' to ``L.A. Confidential.'' And yet, this documentary takes the time to inform us, ``delightful coeds further distracted him from his studies'' - yoinks!

And, jinkies! ``Scooby Doo and the Witch's Ghost,'' 7 p.m. Saturday on the Cartoon Network, comes at least two days and as much as a month late - it's a Halloween-flavored special accentuating the Pilgrims' Puritanism. But, let's face it, it's the first new taste of Scooby - the baby boomers' version of Courage, the Cowardly Dog - in eons, so it merits some consideration. It concerns Scoob's gang, now young adults rather than ``meddling kids,'' in New England investigating a horror writer who's an amalgam of Clive Barker and Stephen King and a pop group that's a cross between Britney Spears and the Spice Girls, only ostensibly scarier. So even if I found it wan in comparison to my memories of Scooby et al., the animation represents a baby step forward and my stepdaughters were alternately and appropriately amused and spooked.

- David Kronke

film

That `Hollow' feeling: Less quirky than most Tim Burton films and all the more stunning for it, ``Sleepy Hollow'' is a triumph of production design and a pretty cool ghost story in the bargain.

Taking great liberties with Washington Irving's classic tale, Burton and company turn the tale into a 200-year-old, supernatural murder mystery. Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane is a scientifically oriented, New York City detective sent upstate to prove a series of decapitation murders have a worldly rather than superstitious origin. He's quickly proven wrong, and faints like a girl.

Shot mostly on soundstages in England, ``Sleepy Hollow'' presents a detailed, haunted countryside like nothing filmed before. Burton's influences range from medieval woodcuts and early-American fashions to the cheap but luridly lovely Mario Bava and Hammer horror movies of the 1960s. The result is an aestheticized creepshow of the highest order - and one that rarely forgets to be fun.

- Bob Strauss

art

From trash to treasure: Ever notice how one person's junk is another's art? (And we're not even thinking of Jesse Helms and Robert Mapplethorpe.) At UCLA's Fowler Museum of Cultural History, that platitude gets a fascinating new look with ``Recycled, ReSeen: Folk Art From the Global Scrap Heap.'' This traveling exhibition, running through Jan. 2, displays some 700 objects made from recycled materials from 50 different countries. Transformed through human ingenuity, they combine individual whimsy with practicality in ways that often speak volumes about the people, societies and values systems that produced them. From African tin can travel trunks, to toy tanks made of soda pop bottles and machine parts for children in the world's war zones, these objects amuse, intrigue and challenge us by asking what we value, and why. The show is running in conjunction with two other exhibitions, ``Castoff/Outcast: Living on the Street'' and ``Streetwise: The Mafundi of Dar es Salaam.'' For information, call [phone] or visit www.fmch.ucla.edu.

- Reed Johnson

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1) Kenny G

(2) Scooby Doo

(3) Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp star in Tim Burton's ``Sleepy Hollow.''

(4) Felipe Archuleta Tesuque's 1975 snake sculpture, made from bottle caps, is part of ``Recycled, ReSeen: Folk Art From the Global Scrap Heap,'' at UCLA's Fowler Museum.