DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Repertory: The 400 Blows Expect to see plenty of French New Wave retrospectives over the next year or so, as 2008 represents the movement’s 50th anniversary. If Claude Chabrol’s 1958 Le Beau Serge lit the fuse, François Truffaut’s 400 Blows was the first in a subsequent series of cinematic explosions that announced France’s new generation of…

DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Romance & Cigarettes John Turturro’s third film as a director is the sort that seems tailor made to become a cult classic. Not nearly polished or glamorous enough to be the sort of Broadway to big screen musical hit that Chicago or Hairspray was, it was too oddball to fit into the heads of most…

>> DAM! Fest kicks of with its first night of shows featuring a dozen different bands at three venues, including New York’s A Place to Bury Strangers (don’t miss our interview with the band) and Dirty on Purpose at the Rock and Roll Hotel, Vandaveer and Julie Ocean at the Red and The Black, and Foreign Islands at DC9, among many others. Check out our guide to the DAM! highlights. >> Two film festivals open…

You know what they say — better one scandal too late than never at all. We’ve received word from the office of Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) that tomorrow afternoon he’ll be hosting a public roundtable on the Water and Sewer Agency, which has had something of a rough year so far. Reads an email from Graham: I will be holding a public roundtable on the status of the public water main system in…

>> A Place To Bury Strangers bring their surf rock inflected shoegaze (with just a hint of Echo and The Bunnymen) to the backstage at the Black Cat. Airiel opens. 9 p.m., only $7. >> Georgie James plays an acoustic set at DC9 tonight during the ShervinFoto Book Release Party. Shervin Lainez’ Happy Accidents documents 25 D.C. bands over the past 2 years. The book comes with a compilation CD or 12 tracks from…

DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive new guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Foreign: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg The Avalon is screening tonight, for one night only, this classic musical by Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand. Both bittersweet and endlessly charming, the film features the always enchanting Catherine Deneuve as an umbrella saleswoman in love with the local auto mechanic. Nothing works out the way anyone wants it…

FRIDAY: >> Even though Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an obvious choice for the movie-going crowd this weekend, the Avalon Theatre — just north of the Potter madness at the Uptown — is showing Talk to Me, the new biopic on the life of famed Washington, D.C., talk-show host and activist Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene Jr. 5:50 and 8:30 p.m. >> Unbuckled alumni The Vita Ruins celebrate the release of their…

MONDAY >> Today’s Fort Reno show features local indie poppers Greenland (***) with Statehood and Kitty Hawk. The weather report calls for clear skies, but bring water. 7:15 p.m., free. >> How about another free event? The Black Cat backstage will feature movies about punk rockers Murder City Devils and Anti-Flag. 9 p.m., free. >> This week marks the sixth year of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, sponsored by the DC Commission on the Arts and…

>> “A federal appeals court ruled today that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, must report to prison shortly to begin serving his 30-month sentence for lying to federal investigators about his role in leaking a CIA officer’s identity.” [WaPo] UPDATE: Man, we honestly thought that first comment was a joke for a minute! Bush has commuted Libby’s prison sentence. >> Please Add L2 to NextBus, K? Thx [The…

It’s time to dig your stakes out from under your beds, Buffy fans. Those of you who thought deep love for the series was dead should have known better. After all, Buffy creator Joss Whedon is the man who turned a beloved but hastily canceled TV sci-fi western into a feature length sci-fi film. As we learned in the fifth season, Buffy never really dies. Throughout the country, fans of the Scooby gang will…