Man Stops Traffic at 17th and K to Demand $200 Million
Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
Judge Throws Out WTU Suit Over Teacher Layoffs
Vegetate to Close at the End of the Month
Today in Crime Trend Stories
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Repertory: D.C. Labor FilmFest
Strictly speaking, the D.C. Labor FilmFest isn't a repertory festival, but with over half of their programming falling into that category, plus a dedicated retrospective to the great Ken Loach, we'll go ahead and shoehorn it into the category this week. The festival is put on by the Washington Metro Council of the AFL-CIO and highlights films that focus on labor issues, which is a perfect fit for the filmmaking of Loach, long a champion of the working class through his gritty social dramas about the British worker. The festival's retrospective on the director features eight of his films, including classics like Bread and Roses, Riff-Raff, and Poor Cow, as well as his excellent 2006 Palm d'Or winner on the genesis of the Irish Republican Army, The Wind That Shakes the Barley. But the real showpiece for the festival is scoring the U.S. premiere (tonight!) of Loach's latest, It's a Free World, a grim take on the plight of exploited migrant workers in Britain that should resonate pretty strongly in the U.S., and in the D.C. area in particular. As added incentive to make it out to the premiere, tonight's opening night festivities benefit the D.C. Employment Justice Center. Other festival highlights include Mike Judge's now cult-classic Office Space, the latest by Volker Schlöndorff, Strike, which examines the beginnings of the Polish Solidarity movement, along with a number of recent documentaries.
Runs October 11-17. Most programs at the AFI Silver Theatre, with other screenings at a number of other venues around town. See the schedule for times and locations. There are even some chances to play hooky from the office at lunchtime in there, and as Woody Allen expressed in Crimes and Misdemeanors, there are few pleasures greater than sneaking out of the office to catch a movie in the middle of the day.
---
Indie: A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory
Esther Robinson's documentary about her 41-years-missing uncle was a hit at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, as well as in Berlin, where it picked up the best documentary prize. In 1966, Danny Williams walked out of the life and the Factory of Andy Warhol, and was never seen or heard from again. Stranger still is that he began fading from memory and history, becoming little more than a footnote when evidence suggests he might have been more of an important figure at the time. Robinson searches for clues to who her uncle really was, and with the intriguing mystery of his sudden disappearance comes a look at the nature of fame and how the past is continually re-shot through the lens of the present. And how that lens can distort the truth significantly. D.C. audiences have but one shot at seeing this on the big screen, as the Hirshhorn kicks off its fall film series tonight with a single screening of the film.
Playing tonight only at the Hirshhorn's Ring Auditorium at 8 p.m. Admission is free.
---
Special Event: Reel Affirmations 17
Tonight is also the opening night for Reel Affirmations, D.C.'s annual international gay and lesbian film festival. Opening night at the Lincoln Theatre includes a screening of the fairly self-explanatory Naked Boys Singing, followed by a kickoff party. Other festival highlights: a screening Sunday of For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary about how conservatives twist the Bible to persecute gays, followed by a panel discussion with Chrissy Gephardt, daughter of Dick Gephardt, both of whom are featured in the film; a women's filmmaker brunch also on Sunday to accompany a screening of Kurt Voelker's ensemble relationship comedy, Park; and on the final Sunday of the festival, the East Coast premiere of The Walker, Paul Schrader's D.C.-set political thriller featuring Woody Harrelson as a male escort and Lauren Bacall as a member of D.C.'s society elite. In between are over three dozen films plus a number of collections of shorts.
Runs October 11-20, with most programs at the Lincoln Theatre and the Goethe Institute, with a few at E Street Cinema. See the schedule for times and locations.
---
Foreign: Vanaja
Rajnesh Domalpalli's debut film has been cleaning up at festivals around the world for the past year. Which is made all the more remarkable when one considers that it was made with first time actors for a sparse $20,000 as the director's master's thesis for the Columbia University film program. The film has been praised for its frank appraisal of sexuality and caste in modern India, as it follows the 14-year-old title character through a two year journey as she attempts to escape from her low-caste background into a more beautiful life as a dancer for a rich benefactor. Domalpalli could have gone two ways with this, to either make a triumphant and uplifting story, or to stick with the grim social realities. Suffice to say that Vanaja is not the feel good hit of the autumn, but is a beautiful, if sobering film nonetheless.
Now playing at E Street Cinema.
---
Major Release: Michael Clayton
Screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Dolores Claiborne, The Devil's Advocate, The Bourne Trilogy) makes his directorial debut in this legal thriller that is racking up a lot of laudatory press. The only knock against it seems to be that it may be a little too earnest in it's social commentary, which centers on George Clooney as a jaded and debt-ridden lawyer taking on an evil corporation bent on destroying anyone who tries to subvert their evil plans. Despite the stock Grishamesque setup, it appears Gilroy raises the level of the material with a brooding script that rides on the same wave of moral ambiguity and conflict within the protagonist that made the Bourne films something other than just another action series. And Clooney gets another chance to bite into the type of role he's been relishing of late, that bypasses his charm and charisma and allows him to dig a little deeper.
View the trailer.
Now playing in Georgetown, opens Friday all over the area.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
i know this isn't related to annything, but oh my GOD i hate those busted-tees ads.
A Walk Into the Sea was the best thing I saw at SilverDocs this year. Everything from the archival footage to the soundtrack was spot on. A really beautiful and moving film.
Hey, that's that creepy dude who is always taking an inappropriately large number of photos of little girls in Meridian Park.