THURSDAY 1/7
Courtesy Greg Kucera
Newport’s heavy-metal knitting.
Janus Films
Tati in action.
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Film: No Speed Limit
How many times does World War II prisoner Steve McQueen bounce the ball against his solitary-confinement cell walls in The Great Escape? That 1963 guy movie famously culminates with McQueen leaping his motorcycle over a barbed-wire fence to escape the Nazis; the role helped propel him away from his '50s teen image in The Blob into leading-man territory. Through March 11, the Thursday-night "King of Cool" series celebrates the late screen icon (1930–80) with titles including The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, and—featuring my favorite car chase ever—Bullitt. His widow, Nellie McQueen Toffel, is scheduled to attend the latter screening on Feb. 18. Passes typically sell out for SAM film series, yet a dozen individual tickets or more can usually be purchased day of show. But if you should drive your vintage green 1968 Mustang GT fastback downtown to a screening, please observe all applicable traffic-safety laws. (Not that McQueen would've.) Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $58–$65 (series), $7 (individual). 7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Visual Arts: Feats of Comfort
Knitting rocks. Or knitters rock. Or rockers sometimes knit. Michigan artist Mark Newport combines yarn and heavy metal in his sewn superhero suits and photographs. Life-size and meant to be worn, the multicolored costumes are a bit like Mexican luchador getups, castoffs from the dressing room of KISS, or prototypes for Marvel comic-book heroes who never made their way into print. (Behold the power of Valueman! Able to clip coupons and find great bargains at tag sales!) The suits are soft and non-threatening, like fuzzy long underwear, and also suggest old Halloween costumes from childhood—stored in a shoebox that you can't quite bear to throw away. Their loose, handmade texture isn't meant for men of steel or leaping over tall buildings, but for more domestic feats after a long day of fighting crime (or rocking out). Because even superheroes like to snuggle. (Through Feb. 13.) Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., 624-0770, gregkucera.com. Free. Reception 6 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
FRIDAY 1/8
Books: Color Castes
For Seattle fantasy readers, English author Jasper Fforde is always a welcome visitor. His whimsical works, including Thursday Next, aren't exactly sci-fi, aren't exactly fantasy, and Shades of Grey (Viking, $25.95) is very much a book about blurred boundaries. In its soft-Orwellian future, the world is organized chromatically into clans. Depending on what part of the color spectrum you can perceive, you are ranked in a strict social hierarchy. You daren't marry or move out of your group; some are rulers and some are ruled. Whether read as an allegory of feudalism, the English class system, religious sects, or ethnic castes, Shades is also a tale of star-crossed lovers: Fforde's young hero is a Red expected to marry within his color denomination. But naturally he falls for a girl on the other side of the color wheel; worse, she rejects the rigid distinctions of color and class. She's a rebel, possibly an anarchist, and dangerously alluring for that reason. And her color? Grey. Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way N.E., 366-3333, thirdplacebooks.com. 6:30 p.m. T. BOND
Film: Leading With His Pipe
SIFF begins a Jacques Tati retrospective with Mon Oncle (1958), in which Mr. Hulot's sister keeps up appearances (and gadgets) and nudges her brother into her husband's plastics factory. The comedy confirmed Tati's modernist fascination with and tight control over color, score, and noises as idiosyncratic as voices. Following on Saturday is Playtime (1967), the culmination of Tati's interests. Hulot visits Paris' outer limits, with its International Style architecture, and ritualizes the mistake of the city newcomer: paying attention to everything, with sweetly absurd results. On Sunday, the lesser Traffic (1971) inexplicably stars Hulot as a designer of the very thingamajigs that once flummoxed him! The series concludes Jan. 15–18 with Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953), the international hit that established Tati's innovative stylistic armature of gags in long shot, sharply delineated sound design, and sidewalk-café observational pacing. Throughout, Tati is a joy to watch, an artist in motion: pipe, raincoat, stalking gait with a liquid lag, murmuring and awkwardly gallant. SIFF Cinema, 321 Mercer St. (McCaw Hall), 448-2186, siff.net. $8–$10. 7:30 p.m. NICOLAS RAPOLD
Stage: Write, Rehearse, Perform
Unlike most plays, which are long-incubated, rewritten, and endlessly workshopped, those in the biannual 14/48 theater festival have a lifecycle of precisely two days. Fertilized with an idea, 14 playwrights run off on an overnight script bender, whereafter casting, directing, set designing, rehearsals, and music composition funnel into the magical sausage machine of artistic production, culminating in 10-minute plays of wide-ranging quality and subject matter. My funny money's on prolific local bard Scot Augustson, whose recent Penguins, Episode One at Annex served up some of the wittiest ecclesiastical drollery since Molière. Augustson's kooky, melodramatic "Sgt. Rigsby" silhouette puppet sagas are great preparation for big storytelling packed into tight external constraints. 14/48 participants include a mix of event veterans and virgins. Forged in this frantic cauldron, their short works are unlikely to bubble forth again. (Repeats Saturday; 14 new plays will be performed Fri., Jan. 15–Sat., Jan. 16.) ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, 1448fest.com. $20. 8 and 10:30 p.m. MARGARET FRIEDMAN
