Silver Spring's new Fillmore music hall will be getting an $800,000 tax break over ten years under a law proposed by Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett. The proposed measure applies to the county's arts districts in Wheaton, Silver Spring, and Bethesda, and a county memo says the only projects eligible for the tax break would be the Fillmore and any condos units in a Bethesda building, the Trillium, that are occupied by "certified" artists or......

Is this the end of the Silver Spring Fillmore saga? About a week after withholding funds for Live Nation's Fillmore music hall in downtown Silver Spring, Montgomery County Council members voted yesterday to approve $2 million more for the project. A week ago, we wrote that the Council voted to hold back the money to wait for some answers to questions about the project, but worried that their delay could cost them some or all......

The Montgomery County Council voted last week to withhold $2 million in county funds for Live Nation's Fillmore concert hall in downtown Silver Spring until some details are explained. The council members wanted to see the planning and land use details before releasing the other $2 million of their contribution. The county and state of Maryland are set to spend $4 million each on the Fillmore, with Live Nation and a developer adding about......

The plot thickens for the Montgomery County-Live Nation concert hall deal. In September the county signed a non-binding letter of intent with concert promoter Live Nation for a Fillmore concert hall in Silver Spring, which would give the company $8 million in state and county funds, rent well below the market rate, and other perks. But now, county council members, groups of residents, and even the Howard County executive are questioning the county's deal and......

It looks like I.M.P., the Montgomery County-based company that runs the 9:30 Club and Merriweather Post Pavilion, hasn't given up on opening a Silver Spring music hall. In September, we wrote that concert producer and venue owner Live Nation had signed a non-binding letter of intent to put a Fillmore music hall in the old J.C. Penney store at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road in Silver Spring, across from the AFI Silver Theater. Both the......

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. LAist saw national headlines soar this week with......

The promise of turning over a new leaf and forming a different identity is frequently an appealing one, but sometimes it can be a necessity for survival. At least, that's how it seems to Arlie, who has just been released from prison, and plans to get through life as her better, more respectable half, Arlene. Of course, all of this is easier said than done in Getting Out, a challenging work being produced by the......

New Yorker fiction pieces can be predictably melancholy. Sample plot: the narrator discovers a personality flaw, or flaw in her love life - "flaw" is the key word here—and the reader is left feeling seasick by the end. Luckily, a few amusing anecdotes have slipped into print along the way, and Theatre J has adapted some of these collected memoirs by Laura Shaine Cunningham into Sleeping Arrangements. Pain, failure, and all things deserving self-pity are......

Many critics accused the recent hit movie Little Miss Sunshine of borrowing stock eccentric characters from the abstract Land of Generic Quirk. The same might be said of Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis, a play with characters who seem to be a conveniently thrown-together group of wackos rather than anything resembling a realistically dysfunctional family. We’re talking a dominatrix, a possibly-retarded sister, an obsessive-compulsive cleaning lady, and naturally, the Elvis, to name a few.......

Before there was Lois and Clark, Hepburn and Tracy or David and Maddie, there was Beatrice and Benedick. Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, now being staged at the Folger Theatre, gave us the original archetypes who proved that if a couple doesn’t wittily express their initial hatred before eventually realizing they’re nuts about each other, they’re really not all that interesting to watch. And Folger’s duo is certainly more than interesting enough to keep......

MONDAY: >>Lucinda Williams brings her raspy voice to the D.C. tonight. Her Tom Petty-inspired brand of roots rock can be heard on her latest album, Live At The Fillmore. Or you can catch the real thing tonight at the 9:30 Club. $35, 7:30. >>Grab your Coke, gel your hair, and spend the evening with the man who made teenagers and soccer moms wear out their voting fingers in 2003. Clay Aiken at Wolf Trap, $25......

D.C.'s best arts and arts organizations were honored Monday night at the 20th annual Mayor's Arts Awards. The gala ceremony, which took place at the Kennedy Center, was presented by the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities and hosted by Mayor Anthony Williams and WRC anchor Jim Vance. Leonard Slatkin (shown at left), music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his imaginative musical programming and......