Can't Miss It: Monday
FREE CHEESE!: Head down to Victor Steinbrueck Park (at the north end of the Market) today for some free cheese samples care of the Sargento Smart Snack Squad. Sure, the name is cheesy (buh dum ching - we'll be here all week), but we are never one to turn down string cheese or cheddar sticks. Besides, it's a good warmup for the fifth annual Cheese Festival, now only six weeks away!
3-6 p.m. // Victor Steinbrueck Park // 2000 Western Ave // free
EAT A DICKENS: Harvard- and Yale-educated author Matthew Pearl writes historical fiction literary mysteries. By which we mean in his debut, The Dante Club, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell team up to catch a serial killer in post-Civil War Boston (of course), while The Poe Shadow examined the circumstances of Edgar Allan Poe's actual demise by mingling real people with fictional characters, such that you can't tell the difference without looking at the book's endnotes. Now his new book The Last Dickens is a thriller centered on Charles Dickens' final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Pearl is at the University Bookstore tonight for reading and signing.
7 p.m. // University Bookstore // 4326 University Way NE // free
FILM FORUM DOUBLE-HEADER: The two films currently showing at the Northwest Film Forum are both worth your time, so why not make a night of it with a NWFF two-fer? Tokyo Sonata can be considered the Japanese American Beauty, with a family of four all simultaneously falling apart and coming back together; Silent Light is over two hours of lovely slow-moving Mexican cinematography, creating the perfect setting for a quietly steamy Mennonite love triangle. The former recently won big at the Asian Film Awards, while the latter made scads of top ten lists last year. Tokyo Sonata shows through this Thursday, Silent Light shows through next Thursday.
Tokyo Sonata: 7 p.m., 9:15 p.m.; Silent Light: 7 p.m., 9:30 p.m. // Northwest Film Forum // 1515 12th Ave. // $9
