Tonight The Stranger suggests:

Maria de Barros
(WORLD MUSIC) The beauty of Maria de Barros is matched by the beauty of her voice, which is called the soul of Cape Verde. The beauty of Maria de Barros is also matched by the beauty of the language she sings in, Portuguese, and the music she makes, which is a smooth fusion of Iberian, Caribbean, black African, and South American rhythms. Do something different for once and go and see live music from an island whose name rarely (if ever) enters your consciousness. (Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Ave, 575-3472 or 325-2993. 8 pm, $20.) CHARLES MUDEDE

It’s a nice movie weekend, too: Police Beat has been extended for another week at the Varsity. Northwest Film Forum is opening its Luc Moullet series (I recommend Brigitte et Brigitte tonight at 7 pm, with additional shows through Sunday; and I highly recommend Attempt at an Opening, a wicked short about Coca-Cola, which plays before Anatomy of a Relationship Monday and Tuesday at 7 and 9 pm. A Girl Is a Gun, which is reputedly excellent.) Finally, there’s a completely FREE program of 3 Stooges shorts at the Grand Illusion this weekend and next: It’s at 11 pm tonight, 12:30 pm and 11 pm tomorrow, and 12:30 pm Sunday. Did I mention it’s FREE?

Also, art-wise:

Here is an Artforum Top Ten written by the anonymous dude who does the cat graffiti in Paris. (His cats were also the subject of the lame Chris Marker movie The Case of the Grinning Cat, which you may have seen at SIFF this spring.)

And finally, does the art of seduction count? Here is a sensationalistic but riveting article from Harper’s about bride tourism in the Ukraine:

But what they really wanted, and what most imagined they would find in Ukraine, was a fusion of 1950s gender sensibilities with a twenty-first-century hypersexuality. Along with everything else, the men had heard that the women here were “wild,” “uninhibited,” that being with them was “a whole different ball game.” [ … ] The vision was Madonna and puttana rolled together, an American male desire shaped in equal parts by the Promise Keepers and Internet porn.

UPDATE: The Coke movie Attempt at an Opening is now playing with A Girl Is A Gun, aka An Adventure of Billy the Kid (not Anatomy of a Relationship) at Northwest Film Forum, Mon-Tues at 7 and 9 pm.