BASTILLE DAY AT THE MARKET: Seattle's French restaurants are in Francophile overdrive tonight in celebration of French independence. Le Pichet (1933 First Ave.) starts its annual party at 6 p.m. and features Gypsy jazz until 11 p.m., when the d.j. takes over. Maximilien (81A Pike St.) has a special three-course dinner tonight for $35 and an accordion player. And Cafe Campagne (86 Pine St.) tops them all: a street fair is happening in Post Alley......

When we walked into the Bagley Wright Theatre last night, we had absolutely no expectations from Aurelia's Oratorio. We'd seen the publicity photos and figured it had something to do with playful illusion, but that was the extent of it. What we saw was astounding. Curtains alive and in love, violent clothing, puppets watching a show starring Aurelia's head, and Aurelia's leg disappearing right in front of us, as a thread-hungry creature unravels the lace......

Trader Joe's Silent Movie Mondays wrap up tonight at the Paramount -- the redoubtable Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ -- with a trifecta of Charlie Chaplin shorts from 1917: The Cure, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer. Tickets are $12. The show starts at 7pm, but if you get there early, you can hear Freehold Theatre's George Lewis talk about Chaplin's contribution to the field of physical comedy. In the first short, an alcoholic......

Monday the 10th, at 7pm, the Paramount Theatre presents Charlie Chaplin's 51st, 52nd, and 53rd films, all from 1916: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, and The Vagabond. They're all half-hour or so shorts from early on in his Mutual Films era, and feature Chaplin's genius for environmental comedy, with mishaps with escalators and fire poles. In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote that his notion of humor was based on "the subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears......

Rock stars are dark and mysterious, calculating and philanthropic, and almost always stylish and physically attractive. And then there are Jack Black and Kyle Gass. The collectively overweight, bad-toothed, bald, poorly dressed, and lyrically challenged duo who call themselves The Greatest Band on Earth showed Friday’s Paramount crowd how truly enigmatic rock stars can be when they twist, shout, and don’t take themselves seriously. As the house lights went down, the crowd roared, and the......

SIFF enters its second full week with a slew of great documentaries, including the final screening of fair trade coffee doc Black Gold (Tuesday, 9:30pm @ the Egyptian). The directors, Marc and Nick Francis, will be in attendance, as will Tadesse Meskela, an Ethiopian Farm Cooperative Organizer featured in the film. The SIFF screenings mark the first time the directors and subject have been together since the making of the film---and the first time......