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

As we mentioned at the end of the day yesterday, Acting D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has fired Alan Morrison, the lawyer who had been preparing to defend the District's handgun ban before the Supreme Court in March. The timing of this move leads to all manner of questions about how seriously the Fenty administration actually takes this Supreme Court case, and whether the Mayor and the Acting AG are capable of putting important legal proceedings above personal disagreements.

Just a few days from now, the critically acclaimed HBO series The Wire will kick off its fifth and final season. Considered one of the best and most realistic portrayals of crime and corruption in a struggling city (Baltimore, in this case), the show traces the thin line that divides the good guys from the bad. Whether cops stealing stacks of cash during drug busts or thieving dockworkers pooling together money for a stained-glass window at their local church, the distinction between law and lawlessness is often hard to find.

As the clock rolls down on 2007, we've done as bloggers tend to do and taken a look back. The DCist music staff scratched our chins, tapped our temples, and compiled a list of our favorite local acts of the year. Whether it was because they released a new album, had some great shows, or just finally wore us down with press releases, these are the D.C. musicians that really made us proud to call the District home this year.

Believe it or not, it’s that time of year…. again. A time to sit back and reflect, but also to look to the future. But speaking in wine terms, it’s the time of year to pick out that bottle (or bottles) of bubbly to ring in the New Year. As much as we love our champagne, vintage champagne no less, it’s not always the practical choice. Unless you plan on not drinking what so ever before midnight, so that you can fully appreciate an expensive bottle of fizz, we suggest looking to sparkling alternatives. In this final 2007 edition of Buyin' Oeno, we’ll look into why champagne can be so expensive, but also splash into what other more reasonable options are out there.

While the week between Christmas and New Year's is far from a dead zone for movies, most of the new fare that's going to be brought out before year's end has already come out, and those that the studios did save for Christmas day release look wholly uninteresting, from sequels to films that were horrible missteps to begin with, to overly earnest inspirational fare. Instead, we'll join the living in the past bandwagon and revisit our favorite big screen experiences of the past year. Much as we wouldn't mind going to the movies every day, life and work have an annoying habit of limiting just how much time can be spent in a darkened theater. Which, of course, means that it is (as always) highly subjective and hardly comprehensive. And don't let our failure to provide picks this week keep you out of the theater. In addition to all the great and funny stuff that's been coming out in recent weeks, the AFI's Rialto series continues with one of history's best heist movies, Rififi, and starts a Wes Anderson retrospective. And, there's a special midnight preview of P.T. Anderson's latest, There Will Be Blood, at Georgetown on Saturday. As of this writing, tickets are still available.

Welcome back, Washington. We hope those of you who celebrate Christmas had a holly and/or jolly one, and that your stock of material possessions has been satisfactorily increased. As you might expect, not too terribly much happened while you've been away. Davis Mulls Eighth Term: Sure, it was published yesterday, but we imagine many of you may have missed the Post's analysis of whether Tom Davis will seek another term as congressman for Northern Virginia's 11th district. Davis's senatorial aspirations were dashed earlier this year when Virginia's Republican party opted for a convention rather than a primary system, which put Davis at a disadvantage and prompted him to remove himself from consideration. Since then observers have been wondering whether the congressman would leave office for a lucrative private sector job. Although the Post article does a nice job laying out the pros and cons he faces, so far Davis seems not to be dropping many hints as to what he'll do. Ready To Say Goodbye To That Tree?: If so, WTOP has you covered. In D.C. and a number of surrounding counties you can simply put it out on with your recycling and trust that it'll be responsibly mulched — if, that is, you've properly detinseled it. Thousands Of Jobs Headed to P.G. County: The Post reports on the soon to open Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center and its considerable staffing needs. The hospitality complex is getting set to hire 2,000 people, and the county government seems understandably pleased about it. There are so many jobs and so much interest that Gaylord will be running a multi-day job fair at the end of January. Briefly Noted: Kid playing with lighter starts fire, displaces several apartments' residents... Charles County considers banning drive-through liquor stores... Medic involved in serious crash in Alexandria while responding to emergency... There was a water main break in Southwest last night... Murder suspect claims gun discharged during struggle... This Day In DCist: One year ago we interviewed Middle Distance Runner and asked them and a number of other D.C. bands what their top albums of the year were. Image posted to DCist Photos by Flickr user christaki

This week the Washington Post published an article featuring three local pastry chefs creating recipes around exotic fruits. The article was a nod to the recent change that allows the legal importation from Thailand of rambutan, litchis, longans, new varieties of mangoes, and the "queen of fruits", the mangosteen. Many of these fruits were available fresh in Asian markets, but were often smuggled from Canada. The fruits will begin trickling in seasonally from Thailand, and initially be sold in gourmet markets such as Dean & Deluca, Balducci's, and Wegman's.

As we noted this morning, 80 percent of D.C. travelers will be headed out of the city by car, so we thought this photo by m hoek was especially appropriate for Photo of the Day today. If we go by his tags, it looks like this was taken with a medium format Diana clone toy camera.

As you might imagine, there's not a whole lot going on in the art world this week, and unlike the last holiday, even the Smithsonians close on Christmas Day. Nevertheless, we found a few exhibits for you to poke around this weekend. And if you're one of those last minute gift buyers and can't bear to wage war at the mall, don't forget our guide to art museum memberships for something a little more unique than the new Harry Potter DVD on rush delivery from Amazon.com.

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

Aimee Mann never seemed like one of pop's 500 likeliest candidates to release a Christmas album, but last year’s One More Drifter in the Snow was a tasteful, minor-key treat, and her “1st Annual Christmas Show” at the Birchmere last December was one of the best concerts of 2006. As she promised she would at the end of last year’s freewheeling interfaith revue, she's hitched up the sleigh again this year for a monthlong yule-tour that landed for the first of two shows at the Birchmere last night. As before, the show mingled seasonal fare with secular material from Mann’s deep songbook, music with comedy, and Christmas with Hanukkah. Kind of.

This past Friday night and with little fanfare, Alberto’s in Dupont Circle restarted its ovens and pizza-making operations, less than four months after a fire seriously damaged the P street location and left a pizza shaped hole in many pizza lovers' hearts. The same fire also forced the closure of the DJ Hut located above Alberto’s and the Subway next door, both of which remain closed.

Say what you will about the $515.7 billion spending bill the House of Representatives passed yesterday, there is a silver-lining for the District -- the ban on the use of public funds for needle-exchange programs was finally lifted.

Washington Performing Arts Society inaugurated its relationship with the brand-new downtown venue, Sidney Harman Hall, with a recital by Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero on Saturday afternoon. Although you may have heard about her abilities as an improviser on NPR last year, this was her first appearance in the area since she had to cancel her 2005 recital at the Corcoran. As you would expect of someone who took a Bronze Medal at the 1995 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, she was certainly technically impressive, if not rock solid, in a challenging program of three daunting works in the standard repertoire.

Big news from the Washington Post: D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer has resigned after less than a year on the job.

This photograph by akkleis seems like the perfect reflection of the weekend -- a lonely puddle and a windblown, broken streetlamp. The texture of the film gives it a more gritty street feel. EXIF.

If you think the Montgomery County 911 system has problems, D.C.'s 911 office isn't likely going to be having an easy time of it this week either. On Saturday the Examiner ran a small story about how D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At large) had to make a 911 call early Friday morning and says he received "textbook badgering treatment" from the operator.

Adams Morgan residents on the streets surrounding the new Harris Teeter received official notice at the end of last week that the District Department of Transportation is changing the flow of traffic to accommodate the anticipated increase in cars on the surrounding residential streets. As it stands right now, all three streets that bound the block containing the store are two-way thoroughfares. As of January 21, they'll all become one-way. As detailed in the letter:

Our Pilgrim cousins to the north have been having all the wintry fun of late. While we sit here in the mid-Atlantic frantically wondering if we'll get snow instead of an annoying, ice-cold spritz, Boston gets about eight inches of commute-snarling precip. Why do they get all the snow AND all the good sports teams?

The annual visit of the Mariinsky Theater's traveling opera troupe from St. Petersburg came a little early this year. The themes that unite the Kennedy Center double-bill of Verdi's Otello and Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades are self-destructive obsessions and tenor heroes who become villains. Who better to perform The Queen of Spades than the Mariinsky Theater, which hosted the world premiere of The Queen of Spades on December 19, 1890? The opera is thoroughly Russian, with a libretto based on a classic story by Aleksandr Pushkin. The libretto (see this synopsis for details) moves the setting back to the St. Petersburg of the late 18th century, which this 1999 production directed by Alexander Galibin mostly maintained.

Good morning, Washington. Are ya ready for some embezzlement scandal news? Of course you are! This morning's update comes not from the embattled Office of Tax and Revenue, but rather from the D.C. Public Schools front office, as the Examiner reports that Eugene Smith, the former director of internal audits for DCPS, entered a guilty plea yesterday to charges of stealing nearly $50,000 from a charter school account. Smith was fired by the school system...

Though it is District law that cars must stop for pedestrians in every crosswalk, let's be honest -- very few actually do so. When I choose to walk to work, I'm often left to navigate the harrowing crosswalk at Connecticut Avenue and Wyoming Avenue NW, where even a sign reminding drivers of their responsibility to stop is regularly (and at high-speed) ignored. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) is hoping to change that. Cheh's office...

Last night, Fox 5 reported on an alarming attack of a gay man by six or seven men on the Metro. "Nathaniel," as he's referred to in the report, was riding alone on a train Friday night. As the doors closed at Metro Center, the group surrounded and beat Nathaniel, kicking him as he fell to the floor and yelling "faggot". Nathaniel managed to get off the train at the Smithsonian station, and he ran...

A Giant Food opened this morning on Alabama Ave. SE in Ward 8, making it the only full-service grocery store in the Anascostia ward. It's also the first supermarket to operate in the neighborhood in over a decade. On Saturday the Post ran a story highlighting the lengths Ward 8 residents have had to go to up until today to purchase groceries. The "Camp Simms" Giant joins a bank and a hardware in a shopping...

To say D.C. is not known for its fashion sense is an understatement. The people in our fine city get slammed again and again for their inability to dress themselves in anything other than career wear. Luckily this holiday shopping season offers a little incentive in the form of trunk shows for those of us who'd like to look better and help us score some spiffy new duds. As gifts, of course.

Well, maybe this year it won't be snowing? D.C. residents' holiday rituals can include everything from frenetic Black Friday shopping to a trip to the White House Christmas tree. But for some of us with a high tolerance for cold, the traditions include standing in line for hours to get free tickets to the Kennedy Center's Messiah Sing-Along. As we told you last year, much like those folks who lined up the night before to...

It's December, which means that much of the classical music concert schedule is devoted to some holiday that apparently occurs near the end of the month. Consult our Holiday Concert Agenda and our Handel's Messiah Agenda, if that is the sort of thing that interests you. Let's try to keep the regular agenda free of that stuff. There is plenty to talk about without it. VOICES: >> The annual residency of the Kirov Opera, the...

After yesterday's preview of the endless list of holiday concerts in the area in December, it is time to discuss the piece that must not be named, Georg Friedrich Händel's Messiah (1742). Yes, it is a masterpiece of music history, but the lamentable annual round of weary performances at Christmas time (in spite of the fact that Messiah is an Easter work), makes me want to run screaming for anything else this time of...

Chatty Cathys Warren Rojas of Northern Virginia Magazine was on Rockwell this week shilling his new chat, Grill Warren. Do we not have enough food chats/chogs/Q&As in this town? I guess it's an alternative if you can't get your question answered by one of the three Ts, but this is getting a little out of hand. Or maybe DCist is behind the curve on this one, and we should be starting our own chat. But...