Results tagged “terror”

UPDATE: NBC4 has their videos stupidly set to play automatically every time you refresh the page, so we moved the embedded video as a courtesy to our readers. If you'd like to see the video, you can follow this link or see it embedded below the fold. Photo above is by Bullneck. DCist has a long and well documented irrational fear of manhole mishaps, so we thought we'd better share the glorious terror of...

For all his success outside of it, David Mamet has done all right by Hollywood. More than all right, in fact: His screenplays for The Verdict and Wag the Dog were nominated for Oscars, and, like Woody Allen, he gets to direct his own scripts just the way he wants to because 1) he’s got such unassailable artistic cred that everybody wants to work with him, and 2) he never spends very much money....

Jake Gyllenhaal was frequently quoted this week when, in an interview, he declared that he "Hates preachy message films." No one's going to think twice about something like that coming from Dwane "The Rock" Johnson, but from someone doing press junkets for a film raising awareness about a U.S. government practice it clearly finds abominable, it's bound to elicit a ringing chorus of, "Say What?!?!?". Rendition is a movie so focused on its message that...

Good Morning, Washington. In an apparent attempt to rule the D.C. media landscape through terror and intimidation, the Washington Post has published the scariest local news story we've ever read this morning: apparently, these disgusting-looking creatures called camel crickets are infesting area basements due to the lack of moisture in the ground thanks to the region's rather serious drought. Described as "a mix between a spider and a cricket" and accompanied by disturbing photographic...

Pitiable...arresting...bad-ass...shrew? Charlayne Woodard's portrayal of the infamous Kate in Shakespeare Theatre's The Taming of the Shrew defies one-word description. She's an integral part of what's so appealing about Rebecca Bayla Taichman's take on the show, a production which almost manages to overcome the sexist undercurrents of the work itself. For those who missed English class that day (or have never seen Kiss Me Kate, or Ten Things I Hate About You, or that "Moonlighting" episode...),...

Good morning, Washington. If you're the kind of person who delights in reading angry product reviews on consumer web sites, head over here and read some of the comments about the Presidential Inn on New York Ave. Highlights include "I have never been so disgusted with a place in all my life," "I can't even believe that it is running legally," and, tellingly, "upon my departure I noticed small red bumps all over my body."...

Good morning, Washington. Just one day after officials did their best to reassure metro area drivers that our bridges are safe to travel on, the Washington Post has pored over U.S. Department of Transportation statistics that show that a dozen bridges in the District, hundreds more in Maryland, and nearly 1,200 in Virginia are listed as "structurally deficient," -- the same rating as the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis Wednesday. Still, DDOT says that...

Now that it turns out there's almost nothing more embarrassing than watching self-made videos of goofy Americans asking leading questions to presidential candidates, we'd like to suggest you take a valuable lesson from the experience by choosing not to enter your workplace this morning wearing wraparound sunglasses, a Viking outfit or a salmon-colored suit jacket. We'll leave the choice of affecting an over-the-top southern drawl up to you, but you can probably guess where...

Good morning, Washington. We've just been catching up on the rather scary looking but thankfully not terror-related explosion in Manhattan yesterday. Naturally, our parent site Gothamist has complete coverage of the steam explosion that occurred on East 41st and Lexington Avenue (41st between Lex and Third) just before 6 p.m. yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the explosion, which killed one person and injured 30, had New Yorkers worried for a while, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said...

Happy Friday the 13th, Washington. We do hope none of you are suffering too much from paraskavedekatriaphobia or had bad dreams last night about a psychopathic killer in a hockey mask. We're sure there's nothing to worry about, but just in case we're wrong, why don't we all leave early for the weekend today? Surely having some extra time to make our way to the beach will ward off any potential bad luck heading...

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their...

Hey, DCist, I like fireworks and celebrating the birth of our country. Where should I go, what should I do, help a sister out. -DCist reader Sarah The best (and entirely serious) tip we have for you is of course to avoid the National Mall like it's going to give you cancer. It's a sea of tourists and transit trauma every year down there, but this year it's shaping up to be even worse, with...

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by...

Here’s one you might reasonably assume you’d misheard: “I doubt I would ever have gotten into stand-up comedy if not for 9/11.” The speaker is Tissa Hami, one of the five subjects of Stand-Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age, local D.C. filmmaker Glenn Baker’s almost too-brisk profile of a loose group of comics who have banded together to challenge the perception that all Muslims are humorless fundamentalists. While Hami is the only one of...

We're always trying to think of ways to offer you, our lovely readers, a shot at some free entertainment, and today we've got another great opportunity for you. We've paired up with Landslide Pictures to host a special preview screening of Civic Duty at the Landmark E Street Cinema on Tuesday, May 1 at 7 p.m.. Here's a brief synopsis of the story: Angry and depressed over losing his job, accountant Terry Allen begins to...

Once upon a time, in a dirty and slightly sticky corner of the motion picture industry, there were films produced purely for the sake of feeding audiences' seemingly endless appetite for gaudy sex and near pornographic violence, often slathered with buckets of unnaturally red viscera and always with a splashy title and equally eye-catching poster. The rise of independent cinema in the 1970s made for an explosion of these low-budget features, and audiences hungry for...

In Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), the new film from Mexican-born director Guillermo del Toro, fairy tales are terrifying. This is how fairy tales are supposed to be: coded ways of telling children about the harsh realities of adult life. As the goal of American parenting has become shielding children from reality, as if it did not exist, fairy tales have in turn become been watered down and made less frightening.

Now Ryan Zimmerman knows how George Allen feels. It was as close as they come, but when they counted the votes for NL Rookie of the Year, Zim narrowly lost to Florida shortstop Hanley Ramirez. DCist Matt saw it coming as the year wound down, posting about Ramirez in September: "If anybody's going to beat out our boy Zim, we think it's going to be this guy." It's easy to make a convincing case for...

I was surprised to see a man as liberal as Matt Yglesias argue that expanding the size of the Metropolitan Police Department from its current 3,800 officers to the proposed 5,100 would effectively help decrease crime in the District. I suppose I rarely expect liberals to be on the side of such dramatic increases in police power, given that militarizing a city or country doesn't often track well with pacifying it. Last week Matt claimed...

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing)...

Happy Hot as Hell Tuesday, everyone. Yes, it's going to 100 degrees today, with a heat index up around 110. The best advice is to stay inside whenever possible during what we like to call our Heat Emergency, but if you have to be outdoors, the National Weather Service advises drinking plenty of water, planning activities outside for the morning or evening and wearing loose, light-colored clothing and a hat. It's unfortunate that the current...

Reader Matthew Yglesias responds to a recent piece we posted on crime in the city. Want to add your own voice to this debate? Email Opinionist. Should the District respond to its high crime rates and current purported "crime emergency" by hiring more cops as several City Council members are proposing? Calm heads like DCist's Martin Austermuhle say no and they have the numbers to prove it. He points out that DC has traditionally had...

MONDAY Katharine Weber connects 9/11 to the tragic 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in a book that shifts from seeming historical fiction to something more personal. She’ll be reading from her book Triangle: A Novel. Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW., at 7 p.m. TUESDAY Need your hot buttons pressed? Then join Ray Dolphin as he discusses The West Bank Wall: Fact and Fiction. Jerusalem Fund, 2425 Virginia Ave. NW., at 12:30 p.m. For reservations...

When you think about a mass transit system, especially a subway, you really have a pretty frightening dynamic at work. Hundreds of thousands of people in an enclosed space. Long, narrow escalators between them and the exit. And the only obstacle between the commuting masses and those who would do them harm is a $1.35 farecard. Metro Police have trouble protecting our iPods, let alone our safety, so it was no surprise to us that...

Ahhh, Thursday. First day of the weekend. And a good day to play hooky and watch Trinidad and Tobago (powered by Howard alum Shaka Hislop) take on England at noon. And the news for the day: Controversy Over Terrorism Funds Continues: Local officials feel they were cheated of valuable federal anti-terrorism funds. Federal officials claim that local requests of funds for anti-terror program were ineffective at best. Who should we believe? The Post is...

Though the week was shorter than usual, plenty happened. We found out how many Metro workers it takes to change a light bulb, interviewed Aberdeen City, demanded that out-of-staters register their cars, and welcomed the Inter-County Connector. We discussed how to best secure a bike, cooked up some karahi, demanded some accountability from local cabbies, and found out that the District was getting screwed on federal anti-terror dollars. We checked out Pearl Jam, found...

DCist is screwed in the event of an oil crisis. Not that we're not all screwed in the event of an oil crisis, just D.C. is more screwed. Don't sell your car yet, District resident, a cabbie can kick you to the curb if he doesn't like your address. Not even Metro can save you now. Londonist experiences the London of the future through the wonders of 3D modeling, but while the 3D guys are...

Good morning, D.C. Seeing as we're in the midst of the annual summer spike in crime, you might be feeling a little vulnerable right now. Well, good news! It turns out that we can at least stop worrying quite so much about terrorist attacks — according to DHS, anyway. In order to justify the recent cuts to anti-terror funding for the District, the agency has begun explaining that we simply aren't that likely to be a target. Doesn't that make you feel better? Sniper Receives Six Life Terms: John Allen Muhammed received six consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole in Manassas Maryland yesterday, the Post reports. Muhammed had previously received a capital sentence in Virginia, where he is now imprisoned on death row. The sniper's prosecution may not yet be over: he could still face trial in Louisiana and Alabama. Post Cuts Its Rolls: Fishbowl reports on the latest news from 15th Street. Apparently the Washington Post is trying to trim its fat in the face of declining circulation. Despite our occasional complaining about the venerable paper, we're sorry to see the cornerstone of D.C. media paring itself down (we wish we could say we aren't part of the problem, but we stopped subscribing when our paper started getting stolen every morning). All told, seventy reporters, photographers and administrators have accepted early retirement offers — head over to Fishbowl for the set of names. You might be surprised to see who is (or isn't) on the list. Stadium Gets Commission's OK: WJLA brings word that the National Capital Planning Commission has approved the first phase of the Nationals' new stadium. Some board members expressed reservations related to the building's potential for blocking views of the Capitol, but the final vote was unanimous. This Day In DCist: One year ago today we focused on organizations that do good and took a second stab at guessing who would jump into the mayoral race. Briefly Noted: Alleged weekend carjackers arrested... BGE rate hike still being argued over... "Ursprache" is winning word at Scripps Spelling Bee... More delays at Wilson Bridge... Water restrictions coming for Howard & Anne Arundel counties... Times thinks yesterday's traffic jam was one of the worst of all time, presumably because it happened near their offices... Image posted to DCist Photos by Flickr user Burnt Pixel

NBC4 brings word that the region's security officials will have to do some belt-tightening this year -- the Department of Homeland Security will be reducing the D.C. area's share of federal anti-terror money from $77.5 million to $46 million. The overall size of the grants will be dropping, but D.C.'s receding share seems to largely be due to a new focus on spreading the money more evenly among different communities. Admittedly, it could be worse:...

With estimates in the tens of thousands, immigrants and their supporters took to the Mall yesterday in a massive show of force in favor of progressive immigration reform. As the Post notes, quite a few of the marchers were taking their first steps into political activism, a step that is having a noticeable impact on Capitol Hill. Area bloggers have started sending us their experiences from the march, so if you have any to share, post them in the comments section. We also have plenty of pictures popping up in our Flickr photostream. Of course, that many people made for quite the commute home for areas workers. Pedestrian Scott Travis was quoted in the Post as saying, "I looked up and saw the protest going on...I then looked up the route and decided, 'Uh-oh, time to bail.'" Good move, Scott.