The Magnificent Mile Lights Festival offers a full day's worth of freebies—including concerts, pictures with Santa, a fireworks finale, and giveaways. From 11 AM to 5 PM at Lights Festival Lane (Pioneer Court, 401 N. Michigan), guests can decorate free holiday cookies at the Whole Foods booth, fancify a free piece of cheesecake at the Eli's Cheesecake booth (bring a donation for the Greater Chicago Food Depository to receive an additional free piece of cheesecake), and grab free clementines from the Cuties Clementines booth. From 7 to 9 PM, More Cupcakes (1 E. Delaware Place) will give away their signature "More" cupcake: a chocolate cupcake with a cream center (limit one per person) and Best Western (125 W. Ohio) will pass out free gourmet hot chocolate and cookies. More booths will be passing out more stuff to eat and drink.

As part of Select Media Festival 8, which highlights experimental and contemporary art and media, the "Oral Asstravaganza" will take place at the Co-Prosperity Sphere (3219 S. Morgan) on Saturday from 8 to 11 PM. Billed by its organizers as "the most important reading since Charlton Heston uttered the words carved onto those stone tablets that he retrieved from the misty mountains where the clouds spoke to him in the years that pre-dated knowledge," this free event features readings by Kokie Whirlwind Arcuri, Lulu Callier, Mike McBeardo, Davide Tortuga, and I Feral Wolfhound Gleason. Guests will also be able to view the Super Bad Ass Exhibition—featuring works by dozens of artists—for free. On Sunday, 11/22 from 8 to 11 PM, artist Jacob C. Hammes will close out the festival by hypnotizing his audience.

On Saturday at 3 PM singer-songwriter Alexa Woodward plays a free show at Reckless Records (3126 N. Broadway) in Lakeview as part of her midwest tour. Woodward draws upon her experiences studying human rights law and working the New York City roots music circuit to create songs that tap into familiar themes of human existence, such as hope and melancholy. Her distinctive banjo-playing style, haunting melodies and emotional voice and lyrics have won her fans across the country and in Europe.

• canderson

Tomorrow night at 9 PM local garage punks A/V Murder (whose lineup includes members of the Tyrades and CoCoComa) headline a free "Rock 'n' Roll Bailout" show at the Double Door (1572 N. Milwaukee); opening are Pale Gallery, the Braves, and Radar Eyes.

Next Wednesday, it's Rob and Allison Leavitt of Mado, one of the best new restaurants of 2008.

• Laffy4k @ Flickr

UPDATE: The opening of the Millennium Park ice rink has been delayed until 11/20 due to unseasonably warm weather.

The McCormick Tribune Plaza and Ice Rink in Millennium Park (Michigan Avenue between Washington and Madison) opens Wednesday Friday and will remain open through March 14, weather permitting (hours are below). Skating is free and open to the public, but skate rental costs $10.

• Tony Leung Chiu-Wai in "Red Cliff"

After 16 years in Hollywood, Hong Kong action auteur John Woo made his triumphant return to Asian production with the two-part Chinese historical war epic Red Cliff, the first half of which was the most expensive and most successful film in Asia, ever, on its release last year.

The Western release, a condensed version that combines the two parts, has a free preview screening Monday 11/16 at Landmark's Century Centre.

• MV + EE

When Matt Valentine (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Erika Elder (vocals, mandolin, lap steel), aka MV + EE, tour with a band, they call it the Golden Road. But if you drove a car the way their recent releases veer between styles and sounds, you'd get pulled over. There are no songs on last year's LP Ragas of the Culvert (Three Lobed), just woozy instrumentals that sound like a class of sitar students detuning their instruments. But they've followed it up with Drone Trailer (DiCristina) and Barn Nova (Ecstatic Peace!), two albums that situate their spacey explorations within songs that sound like good old-fashioned classic rock. That is, if your idea of classic rock begins with Neil Young's Zuma and ends with the side of Young's American Stars 'n Bars that has "Will to Love" on it, with a detour down John Bonham's Boulevard of Heavy Beats. This Monday at the Empty Bottle they'll play as a duo, so I'm betting things will be pretty loose. Locals A Tundra open and the show is free.

Starting at midnight tonight, free Colt 45 will be served (while supplies last) at Berlin (954 W. Belmont) as part of the "Get Get Down" event presented by Vice Magazine and Colt 45. Free performances by Juiceboxxx, Pooper, Pizza Dog, and resident DJs Zebo and Poptastic begin at 11 PM.

• "The Wall"

East German artist Jürgen Böttcher, also known as Strawalde, went to work for the state film production company DEFA after his paintings were ideologically blacklisted in the 1950s.

He captured the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall and the ghostly operations of disarmed border guards in his 1990 documentary The Wall, playing Thursday 11/12 as part of the the Goethe-Institut Chicago's free screening series Made Behind the Wall: Masterpieces of East German Cinema.

• Viggo Mortensen in "The People Speak"

Rapper Lupe Fiasco and actor Michael Ealy (Barbershop 1 & 2) perform live readings alongside author and filmmaker Anthony Arnove, who screens excerpts from his documentary The People Speak, Wednesday 11/11 at Northwestern.

Arnove adapted the film from the book Voices of a People's History of the United States, which he cowrote with Howard Zinn. It's free and "open to members of the Northwestern University community."

The last free day of the year at the Museum of Science and Industry (5700 S. Lake Shore Dr.) is this Wednesday during regular hours, 9:30 AM to 4 PM. General admission and the U-505 submarine exhibit will both be free (tours of the submarine are not).

Doc Films will host a free preview screening of Werner Herzog's giddy, frequently hilarious cop thriller Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Producers Gabe and Alan Polsky will take questions after the screening, which begins at 9 PM on Tuesday, November 10, at the Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th Street.

The first installment in what will be a regular monthly Monday series at the Whistler (2421 N. Milwaukee)—one featured writer a month riffs on the question "so you think you have nerves of steel?" in whatever manner he or she deems appropriate—starts this week.

Featuring host Harold Ray (aka ACM fiction editor Jacob Knabb), The2ndHand contributors Chris Bower and Jill Summers, and "literary stalker extraordinaire" Amanda Marbais.

Musical backing throughout will be provided by Nora Barton on cello, Eliza Bangert on clarinet and Allie Deaver on flute. Billie Howard of Paver assists.

Music starts at 8 PM, readings begin at 9 PM. Presented by The2ndHand.