WEDNESDAY 10/6
Paramount Pictures
SIFF’s Hitchcock salute begins Friday.
Rialto Pictures/Studio Canal
Seberg: cheerfully alienated.
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Books: The Hero's Tail
Steve Duno didn't plan on rescuing a mangy, tick-infested rottweiler/shepherd mix that had been raised on a hidden marijuana farm. The Seattle author also didn't plan that the mutt—named Lou—would transform his life over the next 16 years into "an Indiana Jones film." Last Dog on the Hill: The Extraordinary Life of Lou (St. Martin's, $24.99) recounts Lou's epic adventures, which include catching a rapist, foiling an armed robbery, helping to rehabilitate aggressive dogs, and mastering almost 200 commands. Next to him, Rin Tin Tin looks like a total slacker. Admittedly, animal memoirs are double-edged swords; as glorious as Lou's story may be, a heartbreaking ending is likely (dogs only live so long . . . ). But Duno lovingly recalls his time with Lou, and his enthusiasm is so contagious that you may be inspired to adopt a rescue dog, too. Secret Garden Bookshop, 2214 N.W. Market St., 789-5006, secretgardenbooks.com. Free. 7 p.m.ERIKA HOBART
THURSDAY 10/7
Photography: Exile at Home
In 2007, UW-trained photographer Gregory Schaffer returned to Seattle after two years in China working for the Peace Corps. Things looked a lot different from when he left—then the economy collapsed. Where China had been booming, his adopted hometown suddenly went bust. The 21 images collected in After the Trees Have Grown document that bust, many of them shot during his foot and bicycle travels through industrial South Seattle, some while working for the Refugee Women's Alliance. (A sidebar offers more hopeful portraits of the kids he mentors there.) A downed kite, unharvested fruit, abandoned paint cans in a brushy field, people living in a van—these are the pessimistic scenes Schaffer captures, so unlike his experiences abroad. "Taking pictures was hard, until I realized that King County was my 'new China,'" says Schaffer. What was once familiar terrain became foreign to him. (Through Oct. 29.) Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 296-7580, 4culture.org. Free. Reception: 6–8 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Dance: Non-Danse Dancer
The last time Christian Rizzo was in Seattle, he built a little apartment onstage at On the Boards, where he proceeded to live an eccentric little life, slicing up his clothes and coating his face with cold cream and bright-green glitter. He is a choreographer because he says he is. As a creator in the French non-danse world, he isn't working with movement so much as creating an environment for that potential energy. His new work, b.c, janvier 1545, fontainebleau, should be like watching the controlled explosion of a nuclear power plant. Julie Guibert will be the soloist on stage, with Rizzo orchestrating the mise-en-scène. (Through Sun.) On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 217-9888, ontheboards.org. $25. 8 p.m.SANDRA KURTZ
Books: Lyrical Pessimism
Just when you think you might nod off from the clichés that smother our media culture, David Rakoff responds with the bracing and brutal power of great writing. Gifted with rare "verbal acuity," as he puts it (with an always-implicit eye-roll), he has elevated magazine hackwork to a poignantly funny art of observation and self-revelation. If you've heard him on This American Life, you know he also has an actor's delivery. His droll, nasally, world-weary radio persona is his most hilarious character. His latest collection, Half Empty (Doubleday, $24.95), on the power of negative thinking, is as usual part memoir, part reportage. And while the targets—a Disney Dream House, a porn expo—may at times seem too easy, Rakoff never makes the experience less than hilariously onerous.Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m.MARK D. FEFER
Books/Pets: Paws of Glory
At 40, Steven Kotler was a jaded L.A. journalist whose philanthropy was limited to once having "had sex with a Peace Corps volunteer." But that changes when he falls in love with a woman dedicated to animal rescue. Soon after, he sells his belongings and moves with her to New Mexico to start a dog sanctuary—this transition is the premise of his charming memoir A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life (Bloomsbury, $24). Like most dog-related stories, Kotler's tale is sweet and often heartbreaking. But Kotler doesn't indulge in sentimental prose, and he's frequently hilarious. ("Salty is a three-pound Chihuahua, handsome, blonde, shell-shocked, and not too unlike Michael Caine near the ragged end of The Man Who Would Be King.") Even so, it's obvious from the number of furry photos in his book that he's given his heart to the dogs. Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way E. (Bainbridge Island), 842-5332, eagleharborbooks.com. Free. 7:30 p.m. (Also: Elliott Bay Book Co., 7 p.m. Fri.)ERIKA HOBART
FRIDAY 10/8
Visual Arts: Remembering Dora
Opening today, SAM's fall supershow needs no more fanfare than the First Avenue banners and window-wraps already proclaiming Picasso: Masterpieces From the Musée Picasso, Paris! And if SAM sells enough tickets, T-shirts, coffee mugs, greeting cards, and posters to restore its recession-impacted staff and hours, we say fine. (Though the exhibit does carry a premium over normal ticket prices.) On view will be 150 works by the short, sybaritic Spaniard (1881–1973), including Portrait of Dora Maar, painted in 1937 when she was 30 and her new lover 55. A French-Jewish surrealist photographer, she was raised partly in Argentina, so she and Picasso spoke Spanish together, making them equals to a degree not all his lovers during the period would enjoy. Unlike some of Picasso's earlier, more severely cubist portraits, Maar's pretty features aren't so radically rearranged here; she's allowed a degree of elegance and respect that would last—though with other concurrent lovers—through their nine years together. But eventually she was dumped, childless. She died in 1997, one year after Julianne Moore portrayed her in Surviving Picasso. (Through Jan. 17.) Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $18–$23. 10 a.m.–9 p.m.BRIAN MILLER
