FRIDAY

Plenty to keep you busy today. Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 crime masterpiece, opens at SIFF and screens for one week only. In this film, four people give four different accounts of a murder; it’s “truthiness” at its finest. “Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves,” Kurosawa wrote in his memoir, Something Like an Autobiography. “They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.”

Speaking of embellishing… Documentary La Danse is already being called “the greatest dance film of all time.” It’s about the “best ballet company in the world,” the Paris Opera Ballet. And it’s by award–winning director Frederick Wiseman. We haven’t heard that kind of hype since Windows 7 came out. Fingers crossed…it screens at Northwest Film Forum through December 10.

This is the final season of Intiman Theatre’s holiday offering, Black Nativity , a high-flying gospel, jazz, blues and dance performance written by Langston Hughes. It’s been an Intiman staple since 1998, so let Pastor Patrinell Wright lift your spirits with one last “Hallelujah” chorus before the show closes December 30.

And for one night only, “America’s reigning diva,” soprano Renee Fleming, comes to Benaroya Hall. The Vancouver Sun called her show Tuesday a “remarkable, sophisticated evening”; expect the same in Seattle, when she performs works by Olivier Messiaen, Jules Massenet, Henri Dutilleux (his Time and the Clock, on tonight’s program, was composed with Fleming in mind), and more. Pianist Gerald Martin Moore provides accompaniment.

SATURDAY
It’s like a bad math problem: What do you get when you cram 1,000 budding artists into one building with live (some nude) models, free art supplies, and 12 hours to draw? At least one sketch worthy of the refrigerator. It sounds like fun to us—we’ll see you at the 10th annual Drawing Jam at Gage Academy of Art. Food, drink, and entertainment included. $10, 10am-10pm.

SUNDAY
Call us crazy, but we think you should try a double-header at Seattle Repertory Theatre today. Start at 2pm with the final performance of Opus, a musi-drama (we’re trying to coin a new term) about a string quartet with the temperament of a dysfunctional family, preparing for the gig of their lives at the White House. The play’s only 90 minutes, so you’ll have plenty of time to stretch, eat, ride the Space Needle elevator, whatever, before the 8pm performance of Equivocation. Read our review of Bill Cain’s Shakespeare story here.