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. more ›

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into... more ›