The Stranger

The brand-new Vera Project—the very building I've been talking about for over a year, the very building that has cost over a million and a half dollars to build—is finally finished. This weekend's grand opening is so explosive with blistering-hot local talent that these shows just might undo all the hard work and tear that motherfucker apart. Friday night's hiphop showcase features Common Market and Grayskul; Saturday's got These Arms Are Snakes, Akimbo, Elphaba, Talbot Tagora, and Panther; Sunday quiets back down a little (just a little) with Mount Eerie, Holy Ghost Revival, Tiny Vipers, and Ghost to Falco. Plus, to thank you, Vera has made all the shows free. (Vera Project, Seattle Center, www.theveraproject.org for complete schedule. 7:30 pm, free, all ages.) by Megan Seling

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Gregory Euclide uses sumi ink and the clean lines of modernist architecture to create foggy, mystical-industrial scenes on paper. Zac Culler riffs in charcoal and chalk on the pioneer psychodrama of SuttonBeresCuller's beautiful photograph Beast of Burden. Michele Carlson's cheerful pattern-and-decoration planes puncture the anxiety of post-9/11 flight. These artists and others are in Free Parking, a becoming group drawing show at a becoming little gallery called OKOK. (OKOK Gallery, 5107 Ballard Ave NW, 789-6242. 11 am—5 pm, free.) by Jen Graves

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Stephanie Timm writes grim comedies that happen somewhere between the world we live in and the one we remember from fairy tales. In Crumbs, a snowy small town is our setting, the local crazy is our narrator, a sexually precocious little girl is Little Red Riding Hood, a menacing stranger is the Big, Bad Wolf—and that's just one of a dozen subplots. Plus: pet murders, little old ladies, fishing, an ice pick, and enough sexual tension to power all of Nebraska. (Washington Ensemble Theatre, 608 19th Ave E, 800-838-3006. 8 pm, $15—$18.) by Brendan Kiley

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Originally conceived by Shohei Imamura (The Eel, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge), Kazuo Hara's first film is a documentary about an elderly World War II veteran named Kenzo Okuzaki. It touches on cannibalistic war crimes and lunatic political activism and distinctly unromantic matchmaking. Let us now praise those bygone days when all it took to protest a form of government was distributing pornographic pictures of one's emperor. (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, 523-3935. 6:30 and 8:45 pm, $5—$7.50.) by Annie Wagner

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This improbably awesome film about a self-absorbed singer waiting to hear whether she has cancer is by Agnès Varda (The Gleaners and I)—the only female filmmaker and feminist to be associated with the French New Wave. The purpose of this Northwest Film Forum screening, however, is to consider the Michel Legrand score; the 9:00 p.m. screening of Cleo is paired with a 7:00 p.m. screening of the candy-colored musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, by Varda's husband Jacques Demy. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 267-5380. 9 pm, $5—$8.50.) by Annie Wagner

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