MOVIES
Turns out brainy misfits and slightly embittered intellectuals need triumphant tales too – no matter how askew. With their debut feature, “Little Miss Sunshine,” co-directing married couple Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris deliver an R-rated, pro-dysfunctional-family road movie. Not to mention the best comedy of the summer. The title comes from the kiddie beauty pageant Olive Hoover intends to win. Abigail Breslin delights (in the most authentic way possible) as the 7-year-old who inspires her emotionally challenged kin, played by Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Steve Carell and Paul Dano, to hit the road.|Lisa Kennedy
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Organizers obviously liked what they heard last year when Julia Fischer made her debut at the Aspen Music Festival, because they immediately invited her back for a return engagement. This time, the 23-year-old German violinist will lead a chamber concert at 6 p.m. Thursday, featuring works by such composers as Eugene Ysaye and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. She grabbed the classical world’s attention in 1995 when she won the International Yehudi Menuhin Competition, and her career has been on a steady rise since. Tickets are $48. 970-925-9042 or aspen musicfestival.com.|Kyle MacMillan
POPULAR MUSIC
This Wednesday is a feat of music engineering. Let’s call it Whatever Wednesday, because no matter what you’re into, there’s something for you at area venues. Making a rare Colorado appearance at the Fillmore is Wu-Tang Clan, and the seminal hip-hop troupe that has spun off countless solo projects (and TV shows) and always puts on a show, even after the 2004 death of founding member Ol’ Dirty Bastard. A couple of blocks down at the Ogden Theatre is pop-punk legend Billy Idol, who will take on the renovated theater with the hair, the lip, the fist. At the Coors Amphitheatre in Greenwood Village, Nickelback will make its FM-loving fans proud. And on South Broadway, indie rockers will collect early around the Hi-Dive, where they’re screening the Jean Michel Basquiat cult film “Downtown ’81” (also starring Deborah Harry and Kid Creole). The club’s owner, Matt Labarge, will introduce the movie.| Ricardo Baca
STAGE
Long considered one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” because of its anti-Semitic themes, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s indoor production of “The Merchant of Venice” achieves the difficult task of finding the moral center of this often misdirected and thus misperceived classic. Director Tom Markus solves the play’s many riddles to a degree rarely achieved. 7 p.m. today, Tuesday, Thursday and Aug. 12-13, 16 and 18 at the University of Colorado-Boulder mainstage indoor theater. $14-$52 (303-492-0554, coloradoshakes.org).| Bob Bows
TELEVISION
Turner Classic Movies premieres uncut, uninterrupted airings of “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” at 6 and 9 o’clock tonight (with warnings that they are unsuitable for children under 17). The two films are arguably the most successful and critically acclaimed original-and-sequel pair in Hollywood history. Each won a best picture Oscar and catapulted the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan and Diane Keaton and gave Marlon Brando perhaps his most memorable role, as Don Vito Corleone.| Joanne Ostrow
VISUAL ARTS
A small but worthwhile exhibition focusing on James McNeill Whistler, one of the most important American artists of the 19th century, runs through Aug. 20 at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center’s FAC Modern, 121 S. Tejon St. Stressing creative vision over realism, his often loosely defined, moody evocations helped set the stage for tonalism and, in a more indirect way, impressionism. The show was organized by the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland, to mark the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death in 1903. 719-634-5583 or csfineartscenter.org.|Kyle MacMillan
NIGHT LIFE
No ’80s-themed event is complete without Denver’s own Magic Cyclops, the madman comedian/electro-artist with the ubiquitous Hulk Hogan headband. Fortunately, Magic will MC the Rising Up! event “Through Being Cool,” an early-’80s- themed night at Three Kings Tavern. The promoters promise music, fashion, comedy and “gravity-defying coiffures.” The event will also feature the lo-fi electro-pop Android Assassin (think Devo or Gary Numan), performing in Denver for the last time before heading off to Chicago. The Scooterz will provide skate-punk covers of ’80s classics. 9 p.m. Friday at 60 S. Broadway; $5.|John Wenzel
