Arts and Events: July 2009 Archives

As demonstrated by so many remakes, often it is best to let a film remain in its genre or language of origin. Blood: The Last Vampire was apparently a pretty good, if somewhat short, manga film about a human-vampire half-breed who turns against her evil kind while working for a secret agency. Action flick director Chris Nahon, who made Kiss of the Dragon with Jet Li and the marginally better L'empire des loups, could not leave well enough alone and has made it into a live-action film. (Nahon reportedly replaced Hong Kong-born director Ronny Yu when the French independent studio Pathé took responsibility for co-production.) Screenwriter Chris Chow, who has also worked as an assistant cameraman, helped adapt the anime storyline created by Kenji Kamiyama from the comic book characters of Katsuya Terada. Manga fans will surely enjoy seeing a cult favorite come to life, as will anyone who has ever wondered if a film could satisfy an Asian school-uniform fetish and a love of martial arts violence at the same time. Everyone else, even those like me obsessed with vampire flicks, is advised to wait for DVD.

FRIDAY:

One of the best things about Summer is getting to eat strawberry-rhubarb pie. But with strawberries almost past season, we'll just have to settle for southpaw20's rhubarb to make into a tart crumble. EXIF.

>> Saturday night, head over to the vacant lot at 1st and K Streets SE to see over 20 artists perform some live street art for Breaking Wave: Mural Jam. Presented by the Capital Riverfront BID and Artomatic, they'll also have music, food and drink from 5 to 11 p.m. This event has been postponed.

MUSIC: It's looking like a nice night for Fort Reno, with the always inspiring Imperial China and FFFever, who are gaining more buzz than we can even keep up with. The Key Blanks will get things started at 7:15 p.m. Free.

     

Last night Liv played host to some of D.C.'s hip-hop luminaries as they paid homage to producer/rapper James "J Dilla" Yancey, in what's become an annual event, and raise awareness about the condition that cut his life short. The Detroit native died in 2006 from complications of Lupus.

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.

In 2007's Capital Fringe Festival, local actress Zehra Fazal mounted an impressive and potentially controversial staging of My Friend Hitler, a solo show depicting the internal tension the dictator might have felt during his rise to power. Fazal returns to this year's Fringe with another solo production that has been gaining some buzz. Headscarf and the Angry Bitch centers around Zed Headscarf, a character who is trying to be a professional folk-rocker. Using songs and parody, Fazal's original play explores what it means to be a contemporary Muslim-American woman.

A sunny day...a man in a suit with his back to us ready to sell newspapers to passing motorists...a beaten path...an even-further beaten spot to stand on. Thanks to the perspective and subject of ::-::'s shot, my head fills with a low, haunting, jangly guitar score the more I stare. EXIF.

The performance places heavy emphasis on all five of the senses, and produces a plethora of texture to be consumed by each one. For touch, the audience is outfitted with "pajamas" and are instructed multiple times to "feast on your neighbor's pajamas." This involves touching and fondling of the various fabrics, feathers and objects that adorn the costumes given to audience members.

MUSIC: Held in conjunction with the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, some of D.C.'s finest hip-hop artists will be at Liv tonight to celebrate the life and musical legacy of Detroit-born emcee/producer James "J. Dilla" Yancey, who died from complications of Lupus. Slated to appear are Kev Brown, Kaimbr, and Three Stars alum Wayna, among others. Phife from A Tribe Called Quest and Grap Luva (Pete Rock's brother) will play host while J. Dilla's mother (Maureen Yancey) and younger brother (Illa J) will be in attendance. Free (donation to Maureen Yancey Fund suggested), 9 p.m.

Earlier this year we pointed out that DaVinci Code author Dan Brown's newest book, The Lost Symbol, is set here in Washington, concerns itself with the mysteries of the Masons, and is due out in September. Now via The New York Times' Arts Beat blog, we finally get a look at the cover of the book, which depicts "a shadowy skyline of the Capitol."

Summer: A time for walking along the Mall, enjoying our national monuments, eating, drinking, and generally having a good time. At the end of the day, tired and laden with all our trash, we seek out one of the few trash cans on the Mall. And, being good citizens, we proceed to stack our styrofoam containers and patriotic cups as high as they'll go. Yospyn captured the scene with a trusty Mamiya RZ67 Pro II. That's film, kids, so no EXIF.

>>Vocalist Diana Rodriguez is a relative new comer to the local scene, but this NYU grad shows promise. She will be playing Twins Jazz tonight in a guitar/bass/vocal trio. Call. 202-234-0072 for set time and cover information.

The recently reinstated 2009 edition of Screen on the Green, now a joint production of HBO, Comcast, and the Trust for the National Mall, has announced the programming for the remainder of the summer's dates. When it was revealed that the series had been rescued from extinction earlier this summer, organizers only announced the first title on the schedule, a July 20 screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Titles for the remaining three dates — SotG was shortened to only four weeks this year from the normal five due to the last minute planning — were released this morning.

Flickr contributor m hoek encapsulates the urban bicyclist's experience with this dramatic image shot from a unique perspective. We can only hope that he was wearing a helmet. (No EXIF data -- it's on film.)

>> French sister act Les Nubians made a name for themselves several years ago with songs like "Makeda" and "Temperature's Rising" will be at the Birchmere. $29.50, 7:30 p.m.

It's July in D.C., and you know what that means -- you'll have your fill of festivals and musicals to choose from (if not necessarily much else) in the theater world. Here's what's on the horizon.

>> Those revered veterans of indie rock, Sonic Youth, begin their two-night stand at the 9:30 Club tonight. They're on the road in support of their sixteenth studio album, The Eternal, just released on Matador last month. And while the Yoof may be the elder statesmen on the scene these days and that once-raw noise seems just a tad more sterile, their late-period catalog has shown remarkable consistency, guaranteeing at least one or two gems per release. 'Course, their 9:30 shows have been sold out for a good while now. Maybe some luck here? Doors 7 p.m., with openers Endless Boogie.

We hope you get a chance to check out our slideshow of photos from the Fourth. Gdudg's photo, taken during Jazz in the Garden at the National Gallery of Art, is a subtle celebration of the holiday weekend. The bright red of the sculpture against the backdrop of blue sky and white clouds creates an abstract version of the American flag.

DCist's guide to lectures and discussions in the D.C. area

                 

The District: Hands down the best place on the planet to celebrate the Fourth. This writer spent the holiday eating and drinking too much with half the neighborhood before climbing on the roof to watch a 360-degree panoramic fireworks show from all across the city. No doubt, your holiday was pretty similar. Here are some photos of some things you might have missed if you didn't brave the Mall for the official celebration -- plus some summertime looks for kicks.

It's summer, which means it's time for glossy, eye-popping, multi-million dollar blockbusters. And those aren't just limited to movie screens. The touring production of the wildly popular, multiple Tony-nominated musical adaptation of Alice Walker's now-classic novel The Color Purple is in D.C. for the next month, and is just as jaw-dropping a spectacle as anything Hollywood has in store.

FRIDAY:

*Toshio* took this shot of the Smithsonian Castle peeking out behind the Folklife Festival, continuing down on the Mall through the rest of the weekend from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a few performances that begin around 5 and 6 p.m to round out the day. You can see the full daily schedule for the three exhibits, Wales, Giving Voice: The Power of Words in African American Culture, and Las Américas: Un Mundo Musical online here.

The CONCACAF Gold Cup - the bi-annual soccer tournament for the championship of North and Central America and the Caribbean - kicks off Friday, but the festivities will through the District next week when RFK Stadium hosts a first round double-header on Wednesday July 8. The United States, fresh off that tremendous Confederations Cup run, will play the nightcap against Honduras, while Haiti and Grenada will duke it out in the early 7 p.m. match. Tickets are available here. Maybe you’re familiar with the U.S. team, but not so much the others? We figured as much, so here is your official DCist guide to the 2009 Gold Cup.

When a woman offers two strangers $20,000 to dine with her for an evening, there's naturally got to be a catch. But in Jose Rivera's , being given a thoughtful, intimate staging by Rorschach Theatre Company, none of the cliche scenarios and hypotheticals that may have popped into the mind apply to what's about to happen to this trio of women from disparate, if equally desperate backgrounds.

       

As we noted in Go Home Already, the cast members of the Real World house officially made their way to their new Dupont Circle home today. And I was not the only "reporter" waiting for them on the corner of 20th and S Streets NW. There was videoblogger elizabethany and her friend, along with self-proclaimed soon-to-be blogger Martin, who was keeping us informed of all the latest RWDC news (presumably via tweets from #RealWorldDCNEWZ), and a couple of other random stalkers. They brought me up to speed on what I'd missed a couple of hours earlier, principally that six cast members had arrived, without much fuss at all, despite some reports to the contrary.

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.

Two years ago, dance-rockers Ra Ra Rasputin played their first show in D.C. at Wonderland Ballroom. Since that time, they've developed a steady following. They've also played at most of the live music venues in the District, and up and down the East Coast. In a few weeks, however, the group will be performing, for the first time, at 9:30 Club. Mark your calendars, the show is Friday, July 10th. The line-up also features fun, radio-friendly locals The Dance Party and Casper Bangs, as well as Brooklyn's awesome Tigercity. If you haven't heard them before, Ra Ra Rasputin's stuff is synth-heavy, dance-friendly, and a little dark. Sometimes sounding like The Knife (as on their track "Elif") and at others, like the layered, energetic !!! (Chk Chk Chk) with some Trans Am thrown in. Recently, we sat down with Brock, Ken, Anna and Patrick to discuss the upcoming show, the proliferation of Ra Ra-prefaced band names, the D.C. music scene, day jobs, and the perils of rehearsing in a capoeira studio.

When does a local band start to really become local? When does it cease to be local? Is Laughing Man considered local even though they only recently moved to D.C. from Philly? Are Jukebox the Ghost or Thao Nguyen still local artists even though they no longer live here? Can D.C. claim Animal Collective at all since Geologist lives somewhere within city limits? For several months, I wrestled with this question, and as such hesitated to interview Farley Miller, the brains behind local avant-garde project Cannot Be Stopped. By the time I’d really gotten a chance to check out his brand of drum-initiated electronics, I’d found out that he’d be moving to California upon graduation from American University (which happened in May.)

Version 4.0 of the Capital Fringe Festival was supposed to get smaller, like the microchip, but instead it got bigger, like the American waistline. This year’s incarnation of the (largely) unjuried freakfest, which kicks off one week from today, will boast a super-sized lineup of more than 120 shows, sayeth Julianne Brienza, Fringe’s executive director. At a lengthy press conference/preview at RFD in Chinatown last night, Fringe organizers gave an overview of Fringe ‘09’s improvements over past iterations before ceding the stage to teaser performances from about two dozen of the acts on the bill.

MUSIC: More Fort Reno action will be going on tonight, this time with heavy piano/guitar/drums instrumental power trio Caverns and Aerialist. If instrumental heavyweights aren’t your thing, the mysterious TBA has finally been announced: rappers The Eubonics will also perform, who claim on their MySpace page that they "want punks and hipsters to put their motherfuckin' hands in the air," and list influences ranging from Trapped in the Closet to Joni Mitchell. Sign us up. 7:15 p.m., Free.

It took a while to figure out just what this is. After giving up and looking at Spodie Odie's helpfully detailed tags, it still took a minute or two before, "Oh NOW I see it!!" rang out down the halls. EXIF.

Despite what they say about first impressions, in music it's the second impression that can be the most important. Call it what you want, the sophomore jinx or the sophomore slump, the second album determines whether an artist can match his or her first effort or even grow beyond it. D.C.-based artist Laura Tsaggaris (suh Gair iss) must've spent the four years between her 2005 debut Proof and her newest record, Keep Talking, thinking about second impressions, because it's clear she wants to throw out some of the singer/songwriter conventions from her introduction.

>> The Hirshhorn brings us two interesting and sure to be popular events this July. For the beginning of the month, learn what a curator and a critic thought of the Venice Biennale at In Conversation: Kristen Hileman and Blake Gopnik on Art in the Present. July 9, 7 p.m. At the end of the month, Hirshhorn After Hours returns Friday July 24, 8 p.m. with The Nighthawks. Tickets will only be sold in advance, so get yours now.

DCist's guide to lectures and discussions in the D.C. area

MOVIE: NoMa Summer Screen presents Lady Sings The Blues, the 1972 biopic starring Diana Ross in a role based on the life of Billie Holiday. On L Street NE between 2nd and 3rd, by the New York Ave. Metro. Free. DJ collective Fatback starts music at 7 p.m., film begins at sundown.