DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
You know what’s missing from the modern cinema? Middle aged women who can play good old-fashioned, over-the-top, campy batshit insane. Where are the Bette Davises and Joan Crawfords for the 21st Century? Must we really wait 30 years for Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears to star in a remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Actually, the way those two are aging themselves, ten years might do the trick. But maybe there’s a simpler reasoning for the absence of the mentally unbalanced grande dame: no one’s ever going to do crazy better than Crawford. And few roles highlighted her wild-eyed madness better than Strait-Jacket, in which she plays a jilted wife who lops off the heads of her husband and his lover when she catches them in flagrante. Twenty years of reformation later, she’s released just as her daughter is about to get married. While her doctors seem to think she’s fine, she barely holds it together as she tries to assimilate back into normal life. Of course, Crawford couldn’t assimilate into normal life in reality, let alone in the movies, so it should come as no surprise that heads start rolling again.
The Hillwood Museum’s Divas Outdoors series is screening some great flicks on the lawn this summer, and the screenings come with contests, prizes, and considering the diva in question tomorrow, probably some fabulous Joan Crawford-inspired drag tomorrow night.
View the trailer.
Tomorrow night at the Hillwood Museum and Gardens. Doors open at 6 p.m., activities at 7:30, and movies at sundown. Movies included in price of admission to Hillwood, $15 for adults, $10 for kids 6-18. Reservations required, call (202) 686-5807.
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Mark Anderson may not be in a band, but for 20+ years he’s been as vital a part of the D.C. punk community as any of the more instantly recognizable names from Dischord or DeSoto. In addition to co-authoring one of the definitive books chronicling the D.C. scene, Anderson also co-founded Positive Force D.C., an activist organization that has been doing good work in the community here for 23 years and has always been closely aligned and intertwined with the city’s music. Anderson’s latest project is the We Are Family Senior Outreach Network, an organization devoted to bringing assistance to many of the area’s low income senior citizens. Many of the volunteers who provide this assistance come from D.C.’s punk community, and at WAF’s fundraising event next Wednesday evening (which also serves as Positive Force’s 23rd anniversary), a documentary titled Green Hair, Grey Hair will be part of the festivities. The documentary chronicles the relationships that form between the young punks who volunteer with WAF, and the elderly city residents they work with.
Screens Wednesday, June 18 as part of We Are Family Senior Outreach Network’s fundraiser, which runs from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Gala Theatre in Tivoli Square, 3333 14th Street NW in Columbia Heights. Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served. Suggested donation is $25, but the organization’s press release indicates that “no-one turned away for lack of funds.”
