Top Stops
What's going on tonight?
Sound Bets
Music with a local flavor
Dine & Dash
D.C. eats in quick bites
Booze Clues
D.C. deals:drink them in
Off the Cuffs
Style and error
Broadcast Muse
Small screen, big ideas
The Reelist
Get a movie on
Baggage Check
Ask Dr. Andrea Bonior
Swengali
Sports talk with attitude
WEDNESDAY: Today is Saint Patrick's Day, in case you forgot, and its status as a Wednesday prevents you from celebrating. Probably. Hey, who knows where you work.
Anyway, you can honor the Irish more soberly with Irish Book Day, wherein volunteers stand at your Metro stop and hand you copies of Irish literature for free. For a list of the stops they'll be at, visit Solasnua.org.
CULTURES, TRADITIONS AND political priorities may differ, but Olympic fever is universal. For a different take on what lengths a nation will go to in order to look like winners in time for the games, see Philipp Stoltz's "North Face," opening on Friday. The film is a fictionalized re-creation of a horrific actual event — the doomed 1936 Alpine climb up a flank charmingly called "The Murder Wall" by Bavarian climbers and an ambitious photographer. To say that things do not go well would be an understatement. To point out that the climbers' dramatic struggle was played out before guests at a luxury hotel with a fine view of the peaks would just be cruel.
» E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; opens Fri. Feb. 26; 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)
TUESDAY: Kyle Cooper is the man who gave movie opening title sequences the significance they enjoy today. He's designed openers for more than 100 films, from "Across the Universe" to "The Mummy," and he's here to give you a lecture on his art. Yes, it matters.
» U.S. Navy Memorial and Heritage Center, 701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW; Tue., Feb. 23, 6:30 p.m., $35 or $15 for students; 202-737-2300. (Archives)
Photo from Revolution Studios
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a caterer doesn't win a TV cooking competition but does win the hearts of the viewers? Or when a cook goes up against chef Bobby Flay and beats him cold? For "Top Chef" contestant Carla Hall and Chantilly chef and Thai Basil owner Nongkran Dak, the reward is a chance to be a keynote speaker at Les Dames des Escoffier's Celebrating Food! culinary expo. The daylong event features dozens of speakers, hands-on cooking classes, samples of new products and seminars on everything from rice varieties to food writing and restaurant reviewing.
» The Universities of Shady Grove, Sat., Feb. 27, 9 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., $95; 202-973-2168, registration and directions at Lesdamesdc.org.
Continue Reading "Food, Glorious Food: Culinary Expos and Olympic Happy Hours" »
BESIDES THE MANY festivals we in the Washington area are blessed with, our local silver screens will be bristling with individual gems. Sobering times, apparently, call for nonfiction, so expect a passel of earnest documentaries. But there's also action, animation and fictional crime to take us into the warm weather.
'NORTH FACE': CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN, OR ELSE
Mountains and Nazis? While it's based on a true story, this ain't "The Sound of Music." Two German climbers are "persuaded" by Nazi propagandists in 1936 to scale the impassable north face of the Eiger (of "Eiger Sanction" fame). It doesn't go well.
» Avalon, 5612 Connecticut Ave., NW; opens Feb. 26, $10.50; 202-966-6000.
'THE RED SHOES': ARCHERS AND ARCHES
Brit auteurs the Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) were already on the mark (sorry) with "Black Narcissus" when they hit the bull's-eye (sorry!) with this 1948 ballet-within-a-ballet tale. UCLA archivists spent three years restoring it with funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Nice to know the Golden Globes are good for something.
» National Gallery of Art, 4th Street & Constitution Avenue NW; March 14, 4:30 p.m., free; 202-842-6799. (Archives-Navy Memorial)
BRITISH FILMAKER ANDREA ARNOLD won an Oscar for her short, "Wasp," and the Cannes Jury award for each of her features, "Red Road" and this year's "Fish Tank." Young actress Katie Jarvis caused a stir with her debut performance in "Fish Tank" as an angry, unfocused teenager drawn to her mother's new boyfriend, who's ... it's hard to say. Kind? Creepy? Attentive? Too attentive? Michael Fassbinder of "Hunger" plays the mysterious Connor in this transfixing study of burgeoning sexuality and adult responsibility.
» Landmark E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; opens Fri. Feb. 5; 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)
Get Your Shorts On
Attention span too gnat-like to sit through the whole D.C. Shorts Film Festival? See what you missed — or at least the best of it — when "Best of the Fest" comes to the Burke Theater at the United States Navy Memorial. The films on Friday and Saturday's slate include the juried award winners and audience award winners from 2009's festival, and indicate that there's a metric ton of filmmaking talent far from Hollywood. You'll see a tense courtroom drama, an acrobatic circus mouse, a pharmaceutical grifter and even a particularly pernicious fridgefull of leftovers.
» U.S. Navy Memorial, 710 Pennsylvania Ave. NW; Fri. Feb. 5 & Sat. Feb. 6, 7-10 p.m. $15 per show; 202-362-1444. (Archives-Navy Memorial)
Photo courtesy IFC Films
MIKE DAISEY PERFORMS with nothing more than a table, some papers and a glass of water, but his long-form monologues cover all the ground of a large-scale production.
In his newest work, "The Last Cargo Cult," Daisey tackles America's relationship with money through his arsenal of personal anecdotes and cultural hypotheses. To gain insight into the topic, he visited an indigenous "cargo cult" on a remote island in the South Pacific that reveres America and its bounty of high-tech goods.
» EXPRESS: When and how did you get the idea to go to the island?
» DAISEY: All of my works develop differently, but for this one the generative moment was very dramatic. It was November 2008 and I was doing a production in New York, another of my monologues. I stayed up very late, because after I do a show I can't sleep afterwards. I was surfing the Web and I came across an article about [the island's annual festival of America called] John Frum Day. I was really into cargo cults and had studied them for a number of years. But reading about John Frum Day and specifically reading about it in the moment that the financial collapse was unfolding — it was literally at that moment that I realized I had to go to the island.
Continue Reading "Money Man: Mike Daisey, 'The Last Cargo Cult'" »
TUESDAY: The Newseum likes to spice up old journalism movies with appearances by star newspeople.
Tonight that means NBC News anchor Brian Williams talking about "Absence of Malice," the 1980s film about a bright-eyed reporter played by Sally Field and the Scoop That Went Awry. First you watch the movie, then you talk about journalism. With Brian Williams!
» Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW; Tue., Jan. 12, 7:30 p.m., $25; 888-639-7386. (Archives)
ONE OF THE greatest acting talents in America, Jeff Bridges, stars in "Crazy Heart." First-time writer-director Scott Cooper's drama opens on Friday at the two local Landmark Theatres. Bridges plays Bad Blake, a washed-up country singer with mountains of talent and molehills of success, whose career limps along while that of his protege (Colin Farrell) soars. Bad grasps for redemption in the form of aspiring journalist and single mother Maggie Gyllenhaal, and if it all sounds like hand-me-down Horton Foote, bear in mind that the film is generating Oscar buzz for Bridges.
» E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)
» Bethesda Row Cinema, 7235 Woodmont Ave., Bethesda; 301-652-7273.
Bringing a Silent to Life
The National Gallery of Art celebrates the films of cinematic pioneer D.W. Griffith with one of its Cine-Concerts. The 1925 silent film "Lady of the Pavements" screens to live accompaniment by composer and pianist Donald Sosin and vocalist Joanna Seaton. The film was Griffith's last of the silent era and stars the lovely Lupe Velez — then an ingenue and a promising Hollywood talent — as a prostitute who inveigles Prussian aristocrat William Boyd into marrying her.
» National Gallery of Art, East Building, 400 Constitution Ave. NW; Sat., 2 p.m., free; 202-842-6799. (Archives-Navy Memorial)
Photo courtesy Fox Searchlight
IN A LONELY PLACE
In Pedro Almodovar's twisty, passionate latest film, "Broken Embraces," Penelope Cruz shimmers through embodiments of screen goddesses past. She plays an actress who attracts the obsessive interest of a filmmaker (Lluis Homar). The fictional director unspools his history with the equine beauty, eventually revealing the incident that led to his isolation and remorse. There's more to "Broken Embraces" than a man obsessed with a woman — just ask Alfred Hitchcock how far that story can take an auteur — but we won't spoil it here. It closes after Thursday, so scurry.
» E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)
» Bethesda Row Cinema, 7235 Woodmont Ave., Bethesda; 301-652-7273. (Bethesda)
ART, UNDONE
The process of making art gets a close, curatorial look with two films screening this weekend at the National Gallery of Art. On Saturday, "Process in Time: Shorts by Richard Serra" (2 p.m.) offers five silent films by the artist exploring his interest in strength and structure. On Sunday, "15 Days of Dance: The Making of ‘Ghost Light': Day 3, Morning" (4:30 p.m.) tracks the American Ballet Theater and choreographer Brian Reeder as they eke a ballet out of sweat, long hours and imagination.
» National Gallery of Art, 400 Constitution Ave. NW; free; 202-
842-6799k. (Archives-Navy Memorial)
Photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classics
Addison Road