Phindile Mkhize as Rafiki in that little-show-that-could, The Lion King. Photo by Joan Marcus. Drama lovers, a word: Here in the lavishly appointed ahr-eee Theater cubicle of DCist’s state-of-the-art underground headquarters, we have what you call an ethos. For us, casting arbitrary, semi-informed judgment on the bustling stage traffic of Our Nation’s Capitol is about a lot more than just getting free tickets to the latest hot offering from reliable companies like Catalyst or......

>> Yesterday we profiled Five Four, the hardest working all girl band in the city, with the cutest shoes, in a Three Stars piece. Tonight you can see those shoes up close and personal at DC9, $8. If that's not the dose of local music you were hoping for tonight, how about Meredith Bragg at the Black Cat, or Gist at Iota? >> Ever thought, I'd like to get a new perspective on Scientology. A......

Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping are of the opinion that the masses have an opiate other than religion. And if it's the merchandise that keeps us in line, then there is no time of year when we binge on our fix of choice like the holiday season. Bank accounts and credit card statements across the nation can do the testifying for us on this point. And so it is at the most......

>> A non-rolling tennis ball catches a lot of parking tickets on Cliffbourne Place. [Marc Fisher] >> D.C. police are trying to identify a body found in the Tidal Basin. [NBC4] >> "A DC Team is in the Super Bowl again. The Beacon House Falcons are in Pop Warner Football’s Pee Wee Division Super Bowl on Saturday, December 8th at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex." [Notions Capital] >> The District government expects to......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Repertory: The 400 Blows Expect to see plenty of French New Wave retrospectives over the next year or so, as 2008 represents the movement's 50th anniversary. If Claude Chabrol's 1958 Le Beau Serge lit the fuse, François Truffaut's 400 Blows was the first in a subsequent series of cinematic explosions that announced France's new generation of......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice......

Would you be willing to pay $25 for a photograph of yourself standing next to someone who looks eerily similar to your favorite celebrity? That's the question you'll want to answer before venturing in to the new Madame Tussauds wax museum at 10th and F Streets NW, which opens to the public today. Last night, DCist attended the opening party for the attraction. We say attraction purposefully, because Madame Tussauds isn't a museum at......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: The Darjeeling Limited By now, five features into his career, it's likely you already have a strong opinion on Wes Anderson. Despite his tendency to borrow liberally from his own film and literary heroes, from Kubrick to Fitzgerald to the entire French New Wave, a Wes Anderson film feels like a Wes Anderson film from......

Your mission, should you choose to accept: With only one week, adapt a randomly-chosen Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale into a compelling stage production. Such was the challenge for the team over at Rorschach Theater, which will premiere its season-opening stunt on Saturday. Last Sunday, 40 D.C. artists, many of them company members, were charged with the responsibility of turning tales like "Hansel & Gretel" into something we'd like to see on stage. Norman Allen, Randy......

Between remakes of The Stepford Wives, and sitcoms ranging from "Desperate Housewives" to "Weeds," it’s easy to think the catty, sterile, back-stabbing nature of suburbia has been played out recently as a topic for satire. It turns out that all you need is some super show tunes and some women who can fly to keep the genre fresh. The Witches of Eastwick, making its U.S. premiere at Signature Theater, after a successful run in London......

Those who showed up at the 9:30 Club on Saturday night with any doubts about The Kooks' talent were certainly persuaded, and maybe even wooed into super-fan territory. The four lads from Brighton played a pitch-perfect set that had all the classic elements of an epic rock show, including crowdsurfing and a young woman who threw her underwear up on stage. The Kooks have been on the fast track to superstardom since forming in 2004,......

It's only 36 hours until Deborah Jeane Palfrey makes her national television debut on ABC's 20/20, and we're once again torn between hope and disappointment. You'll remember our yawns at the leak identifying Harlan "Shock and Awe" Ullman as a former client of Palfrey's escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates. The alleged madam then kicked up her media blitz by releasing a page of phone records and promising that her high profile customer list included......

As April was the month of 80 zillion new play openings, we kind of thought things would slow down a bit for the theater community in May. Not the case – we’ve got lots of exciting productions to share with you, from post-modern Hamlet comedies to, well, Hamlet itself. Plus, something new from the guy behind “Schindler’s List”. Here’s what’s playing. Catalyst Theater impressed all its larger competitors by taking home the award for best......

People have been asking us: What's that big film crew doing downtown today? Why must my commute be ruined by greedy Hollywood movie producers? The answer: Why it's National Treasure: Book of Secrets, the sequel to the polarizing Nicholas Cage swashbuckler, of course. Here's the details on the filming for today, though circuses of production vehicles will likely be popping up elsewhere around the city for a while longer. The D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT),......

It starts at 12:20 p.m. this afternoon. Tip-off. For some, the pinnacle of sports fandom rests in these next few days. They are epic: 12 hour days that capture some of the very reasons why we watch sports. The NCAA Tournament has the most exhaustive field in major U.S. sports, giving 65 teams a shot at glory in the national spotlight. Year after year, the Big Dance provides buzzer beaters, star turns, Cinderella stories and......

By DCist Contributor Mehan Jayasuriya We here at DCist have noticed a rather disturbing trend recently. More and more often, it seems, touring bands are skipping over the District in favor of our neighbor to the north, Baltimore. It makes sense if you think about it: Baltimore has a burgeoning arts scene, a variety of music venues and a seemingly disproportionate reputation for housing a large number of twentysomething scenesters (not that we're short on......

>> Bad news: The Sex Worker Art Show at the Rock and Roll Hotel has been cancelled due to inclement weather. Check the HIPS website for news of a possible reschedule date. >> The Washington Nationals issue a call for people who want to be the Racing Presidents! Yes, it's fun fun FUN for the home crowd as Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt square off for a battle of base-running supremacy. Will YOU step......

There's something strangely Disney-like about Arena Stage's production of She Loves Me. Is it the candy-colored sets? The cartoonish dancing? The opening song, "Good Morning, Good Day," which calls to mind Beauty and the Beast's "Bonjour" number? Or maybe it's just that leading lady Brynn O'Malley seems to have taken her recent performance as Belle in Broadway's Beauty and the Beast and transplanted it in D.C.? She Loves Me, a classic, romantic musical adored by......

Laura Graves loves chocolate and she has been eating and baking with it for as long as she can remember. The 33 year-old Arlington resident is a self-described chocoholic, so when she decided to quit her marketing job last fall to make gourmet chocolate truffles full time, no one who knew her was too surprised. But she craved something healthier to pair with her chocolate fix, and she sensed that consumers did, too. Graves started......

Let's take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for? Austinist was in an entertainment state of mind as they covered the dickens out of the Austin Film Festival, depicted all the Big 12 football coaches as South Park characters, and interviewed Jose Gonzalez. Chicagoist talked about the passion as they bid adieu to Bell's Beer,......

MONDAY >> New York's Teenage Prayers offer up a sound that leans heavily on the best kind of influences -- from Solomon Burke to The Kinks -- to the Red and the Black tonight. Should be just the right kind of band for this intimate venue. $8. TUESDAY >> The last time Art Brut came to town, DCist Kyle said, "I honestly can't remember the last time I had so much fun at a rock......

Some bands find their place in the college music scene; they have their devoted, occasionally sober fans who follow them anywhere, but more often need only head over to the campus auditorium to see them play. The two-night show at 9:30 Club last weekend was comprised of bands such as these, headlined by the Virgina Coalition, or VaCo as the kids like to say. But we didn’t quite “feel like gettin’ it on” Friday night......

Can the "tale as old as time" survive a Broadway musical makeover? True, the stage version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast has been around for some time, but those who have yet to make the nostalgic pilgrimage can head to Wolf Trap this weekend and answer that question for themselves. Love it or hate it, this is Broadway spectacle at its most elaborate. From lavish costumes to looming sets, the show exudes dollars and......

Although the advent of the real-time Gawker Stalker map has freaked out certain celebrities who would prefer that their Us Weekly-devouring public not know that they're dining at New York's Tao or taking their fruit-monikered babies out for walks on Fifth Avenue, DCist has no qualms about letting its readers know where local celebs hang out. And there's no area celeb more freshly minted than George Mason University basketball coach Jim Larranaga, who just yesterday......

Today the Post confirms the rumors that have been swirling over the past week: beginning next season newspaper columnist/television host/radio personality/D.C.-area curmudgeon Tony Kornheiser will be joining the Monday Night Football broadcast. The news comes as part of a slew of changes for the venerable telecast, as the program makes the move from ABC to ESPN. Kornheiser will be parnered with Joe Theismann and Mike Tirico. Neither John Madden nor Al Michaels — the program's......

Can anything make air travel a more pleasant experience? Unless it involves flying First Class and skipping airport security altogether, we're not really sure. But, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security are sure going to try. The Post reported this morning that Dulles International Airport, along with Houston International, will be part of a pilot program to "present a warmer welcome to foreign visitors who face post-Sept. 11, 2001, security changes."......

Perhaps not every reader spent long car rides singing along with her family to the soundtrack of Oliver! like this DCist, but the story’s familiar to anyone who’s tackled Charles Dickens, or grew up on the somewhat-forgotten Disney classic, Oliver And Company. Olney Theatre has taken the dusty but resilient old musical, based on the life of a lonely orphan and his association with a band of thieves, and given it brisk pacing and a......

FRIDAY >> Calling all horror, cult, and Italian cinema freaks. The screening of the summer is upon you. The Library of Congress is hosting an extremely rare chance to see Dario Argento's "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" at 7 p.m. Make sure to call the Pickford Theater by 4 p.m. to reserve your seats, as this film is not available on DVD and is very difficult to find. The final episode of the so-called "Animal......

When DCist met Jessica Cutler a few weeks ago, we were charmed. She e-mailed us after we invited her out to drinks and turned out to be a very nice, down to earth person -- surprising, given the stereotype that Washingtonians are obsessed with their own stature. Maybe it was careful media coaching from her Disney-owned publisher, but we got the feeling that she was a genuine person, caught unexpectedly last year in a media......

As part of Disney's celebration of Mickey Mouse's 75 anniversary the company has designed 75 Mickey Mouse sculptures which will be touring the country. All 75 will be shown at the International Trade Center downtown from March 19 to April 30. Even though he says "I don't really even like mickey mouse and have never been to disneyland," local photographer Eric Petersen wrote to let us know the exhibit is already up, and he......