DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Major Release: There Will Be Blood We should have held our tongues on our top 10 for the year until the actual end of the year. Paul Thomas Anderson's new film slipped in just under the 2007 wire in limited release last week, and the director channels John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, and his own wild-eyed imagination......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

Finally legal and ready to party 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......

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. While you've got some time off for the holidays, take a minute to submit your application and entry......

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......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Foreign: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Imagine writing a book when your typing speed is roughly half a word per minute. That picture of painstaking persistence only scratches the surface of the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French Elle magazine editor who suffered total paralysis after a stroke that left him only able to communicate......

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......

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. According to Alberto’s staff, renovations to reopen the......

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. For the past nine years Congressional Republicans successfully prohibited the District from using any of its resources to promote needle-exchange programs, regardless of their efficacy in combating the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. As a consequence,......

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......

Big news from the Washington Post: D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer has resigned after less than a year on the job. Singer tendered her resignation this morning, having reportedly been frustrated for months with her role in the Fenty administration. Fenty has been relying more heavily on General Counsel Peter Nickles, whom the mayor has apparently now named as the interim attorney general. The timing of Singer's departure, just months before Supreme Court arguments are......

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. We had nearly 30 folks make it out to the DCist Photographers Meet-up Sunday at Rocket Bar. As you can see from the lingering evidence, they're getting bigger and camera nerdier every time, just the way we like it.......

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. Catania placed the 911 call after being awakened by the sounds of......

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? This weekend is our next chance at a winter coating, but again, we sit on the line of pure snow......

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,......

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. Trunk shows are......

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......