Fidelis Cloer takes aim at competition seen and unseen in Bulletproof Salesman. “I want war. I don’t want peace,” says German armored-car merchant Fidelis Cloer at the beginning of Bulletproof Salesman. An hour later, in the doc’s final moments, he offers a slightly more nuanced view, pointing out that he did nothing at all to instigate or sustain the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan than have proved such a windfall for his company.......

K Street, Tuesday, 5:41 p.m., photo by llunardi2 The Post is reporting that participants in today's Iraq war protests were disappointed by the turnout. What did you see? Here's some of the images that have already been uploaded to the DCist Flickr Pool. 17th Street, Wednesday, 8:44 a.m., photo by Fredo Alvarez 17th Street, Wednesday, 8:42 a.m., photo by Fredo Alvarez......

In addition to the long list of anti-war protests planned throughout the city today (we'll have some photos up from some of them later on), around 200 activists staged a "Freeze-In" protest at Union Station on Tuesday. In the video above, you can see several dozen people who "froze" in place for about a minute at 5 p.m. yesterday to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. The group, situated in the middle......

Violent, bloody and chaotic; these are the images that come to us from Iraq on a daily basis. But in My Baghdad, now at Irvine Contemporary, local photographer Phil Nesmith presents another view of Iraq, one that captures the quiet moments of the every day. His photographs are small vignettes, short snippets of life, printed onto glass. They are pieces of time, capturing a small moment in the motion of a waving flag or birds......

Mid-December has arrived, and with that comes the inevitable flood of best-of lists. The Washington Area Film Critics' Association has, for the previous five years of its existence, been in the habit of trying to get their own list out ahead of most of the other critics' societies. We can't really blame them. Considering the fact that none of the critics from the city's biggest newspaper are members, not to mention the fact that the......

Victory — not the concept, but the statue at State Place and 17th Street NW — is the Ghost of Christmas Past. Freedom — the Eastward-facing statue atop the Capitol Dome; not that thing that The Terrorists hate us for — is the Ghost of Christmas Present. And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come arrives draped in the inky robes of Grief. This stunt-casting of local landmarks as Charles Dickens’ familiar trio of......

MONDAY >>Satisfy your cheese cravings as former American Idol star (and Richmond, VA native) Elliot Yamin plays the 9:30 Club, with the Last Goodnight and Josh Hoge. $25, Doors at 7 p.m. >>Australian pop singer Ben Lee -- he of the short-lived Bens and "Catch My Disease" moderate fame -- comes to Alexandria's Del Ray neighborhood to play the Birchmere. Joining him is are Cary Brothers. $19.50, 7:30 p.m. TUESDAY >>Dinosaur Jr. just can't stop......

Regarding Thanksgiving customs, going around the table saying what we’re thankful for is about as basic as it gets. If it seems too basic, this year you can consider adding a new dimension to the tradition by reading for the table what our Presidents have been thankful for. Thanks to the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Massachusetts, all the Thanksgiving Proclamations are available online. That means we have access to Proclamations dating from the Continental Congress......

Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine are two filmmakers who call D.C. home. They've made a name for themselves as writers, producers, and directors of documentary films, often for National Geographic and television, but their latest project has raised their profile far beyond the recognition of their previous work. War/Dance, for which the pair take joint directorial credit, has earned the couple a mantle's worth of awards this year, including the documentary directing prize at......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: War/Dance Sometimes you need an antidote before the poison even arrives. Next week Hollywood releases yet another of those diabetic-shock-inducing films about musically gifted youngsters and how they can be an inspiration to us all, designed to make soccer moms everywhere weep into their hankies. One week prior to that, though, comes a documentary from......

If you are looking for a musical way to celebrate Veterans Day, the Washington Chorus will perform its annual Tribute and Reflection concert this afternoon (November 11, 3 p.m.), in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (tickets: $15 to $55). Their program includes Joseph Haydn's martial Mass in Time of War. Although there are not that many classical music concerts in the early part of the week, the schedule for next weekend is about as full......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Major Release: No Country for Old Men We'll be covering the latest release from the Coen Brothers in more depth tomorrow, but in the time being, we'll tell you this: not only have the filmmakers recovered from the mediocre doldrums of their last couple of outings, but they have returned with a bloody vengeance with a......

We're a little short-staffed today, so if you've got any picks to add for this weekend, please leave them in the comments. FRIDAY >> This weekend the Uptown Theater is playing the final cut of everybody's favorite movie about replicants running amock, and young Darryl Hannah being super sci-fi hot, Blade Runner. >> If an apocalyptic future isn't exactly what you're in the mood for, try on Seattle's dream folk rockers, Band of Horses, for......

With monuments and museums, Washington, D.C. is a haven for history buffs. But what do most of us really know about Virginia? The Kathy Harty Gray Dance Theatre will combine a history lesson with dance with two performances of “Women in Virginia and Other Favorites” this weekend at Northern Virginia Community College's Alexandria campus. The performance will include excerpts of the company’s touring program “Stories to Remember about Women in Virginia”, which covers 400 years......

Artistic duo Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick have a specialty matched by few contemporary artists. They create worlds — historical yet relevant, real yet fantastical — and document those worlds through staged photography, installation, and found objects. This is intellectual art at its best. Kahn and Selesnick’s most recent creation, Eisbergfreistadt, is on view at Irvine Contemporary until December 8, and tells the story of the post-World War I Baltic port town of Lubeck,......

Written by DCist contributor Morgan Hargrave These days, we are not used to seeing reminders of war in our everyday lives. With a new exhibit that opened this weekend, the Smithsonian American Art Museum takes us back to a time when it would have been hard to forget, even for a moment, that we had soldiers dying overseas. Over the Top is a collection of American posters created during World War I to advertise so-called......

The last time I had my heart broken? When Brian Lamb, the founder and CEO of C-SPAN, decided back in 2004 to put an end to Booknotes after 16 years on the air. Sunday nights found Lamb spending an hour (an hour!) with a non-fiction writer (usually a historian, journalist or biographer), peppering them with questions about their latest book and providing viewers with background and insight into their subject and origins. Unlike most......

I'm one of those music fans who tends to stick toward the grittier and more experimental end of the rock spectrum. Mention the words “cute,” “twee,” or “precious” and I’ll likely write off an act, or listen to an album for the sake of trying something new…and then subsequently send them in the direction of my recycle bin. So for those listeners out there who share my musical leanings, take note: writing off Jens Lekman......

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.......

Written by Morgan Hargrave It is usually not a good sign when a museum’s first display details how popular it used to be. It seems the National Museum of Health and Medicine is decades removed from its glory days, when it was called the Army Medical Museum and resided in a series of more prestigious locations around D.C. It attracted between 450,000 and 765,000 visitors per year during the 1960s before being moved away from......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on DCist. AMEX Urban Adventures, because big cities are full of little adventures. Rogue Wave, playing the Black Cat on November 5th. World War Z, perfect as Halloween is coming up. Ambition Facing West, at the H Street Playhouse. Travelzoo, with its Top 20 list on travel deals. DC Vote, with an event on October 23rd (that's next Tuesday!). Busted Tees, where they're......

In England, being named poet laureate is a lot like being named to the U.S. Supreme Court: once there, you're there for life. More importantly, you're expected to be the living, breathing embodiment of a tradition, of an institution constructed entirely of words, texts, precedent. And, though you aren't expected to wear robes when performing your job, you are expected to pen occasional verses on the birth of a royal or on the opening of......

Written by DCist contributor Benjamin Schuman-Stoler Last week in our “revisiting sites we’ve walked by a hundred times" series we presented the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This week, we’ll look at that huge phallus in the exact center of the original D.C. map -- the Washington Monument. Screaming nothing but glory and testament, it is the classic D.C. monument. But we know its background isn’t as simple as its geometric profile. The National Park Service commissioned......

MONDAY: Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert D. Kaplan will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts. According to Kaplan, journalists are too quick to report on the negative aspects of the military. Commence with bickering over the Iraq war ... now. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Blogger Diane Vadino will be at Olsson's in Dupont Circle to read from her first novel, Smart Girls Like Me. 7 p.m. She'll also......

Good morning, Washington. More news today on the Virginia abusive driver's fees front, this time even closer to home. Arlington residents will be cheered to hear that an Arlington County General District Court judge has ruled that Virginia's abusive-driver fees are unconstitutional. Judge Dorothy H. Clarke is the fourth District Court judge in Virginia to make such a ruling, but the first one in Northern Virginia. Naturally, the state will appeal the decision, and this......

Today we bring you a Photo of the Photo of the Day, a little meta-action, if you will. Flickr user akkleis took this shot of the viewfinder image of the World War II Memorial on her friend's Rollei. The developing "mistake" that caused the film strip impression on the right only adds to the feel. EXIF.......

Drum roll please...here's a list of advertisers this week on DCist. Bookfest 2007 at the Library of Congress, which starts in 8 days! Books and Laura Bush! It's party time. Zipcar, because those highways are there for you to use them! War on PBS, because when you put Ken Burns and the word war together, you get a multi-show series on PBS. Look Me In the Eye, in bookstores on September 25th. Busted Tees, which......

>> Following on the heels of MC Hammer and salsa legend Willie Colon, rock 'n' roll pioneer and TV commercial pitchman Little Richard brings his falsetto scream to a free outdoor concert, with openers D.C. female soul vets, the Jewels. 7 to 9 p.m. at at Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. >> Emmanuel Jal, a "lost boy of Sudan" who is the subject of his own upcoming documentary, War Child, will perform his......

Although 192 protesters were arrested Saturday during the March to End the War and competing counter-protest by the Gathering of Eagles, by most measures turnout was low. The Post's Marc Fisher notes in his column that the small numbers of people who marched over the weekend is more a measure of a lack of enthusiasm for protesting in this country, rather than a lack of strong feelings against the war -- just visit any popular......