Wednesday Happenings

Freaking Out

-- Dengue Fever, a band based in Los Angeles, fuses Cambodian pop music with old fashioned California stoner rock. Featuring the captivating vocals of Chhom Nimol, who joined the band after a stint as an actual Cambodian pop star. She's performed for the king and queen of Cambodia; her voice is no joke. The band's music recalls past psychedelic fusion acts, from Os Mutantes to Calexico. Museum of Fine Arts, 7:30pm. $25/$20.

Movies

-- The Brattle opens its Roman Polanski retrospective with Knife in the Water (1962), his first feature. It's a cold film, made in his native Poland, about chance, sexual competition, love, and death. You know, the classic themes of European art house. Polanski weaves a young hitchhiker into the lives of a vacationing couple whose barely concealed contempt emerges, in turns, as eroticism and violence. Polanski manages to make a wide-open lake feel as stuffy as a closet. The movie is tidier than his more famous films and among his best. Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge. [Showtimes and tickets.]

Neologisms

-- English already has many more words than any other language; is there room for more? If you are the sort of person who charms friends by inventing brand new words (rather than, say, combining words that already exist and that are your patrimony as an English speaker) to describe every fleeting experience in your life, you will feel relatively less alone tonight as the editors of DailyCandy.com read from their new Daily Candy Lexicon: Words That Don't Exist But Should. Brookline Booksmith, 297 Harvard St., Brookline, 7:00pm. Free.

Local Charm

-- BJ Snowden sings charming, off-kilter ballads about Canada, love, and Daisuke Matsuzaka. Plough and Stars, 912 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, 10:00pm.