The AFI opens up a Charlie Chaplin retrospective this weekend, and while the program is certainly heavy on all the accepted must-sees of Chaplin’s career — City Lights, The Great Dictator, Modern Times — it’s nice to see them kicking things off with a movie that really ought to be mentioned in the same breath as all of those, but for some reason gets relegated to a second tier. Of course, even if this was second-tier Chaplin, it would still rank as an unadulterated masterpiece for most other directors, so maybe we’re splitting hairs.
Graphic designers: Back away from the computer and head to the Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. In the sixty displayed postered portraits, one can see an evolution of graphic design and advertising, with each era screaming its identity through fonts, colors and graphic techniques, as well as the obvious context of the featured face. Keeping true to the NPG’s mission, all 60 posters are about Americans or American films, however…
FRIDAY: >> Tired of putting those great costume ideas on the back burner till October? Dying for a chance to wear a costume without wearing a jacket over top? Three Stars vets New Rock Church of Fire feel the same way. Tonight, join NRCOF, D.C.’s The Gaskets and Richmond’s The Invisibles at the Rock & Roll Hotel for July-O-Ween. Incognito fun, rip roaring rock from all three bands, DJ sets, drink specials, a costume contest…
In light of this momentous weekend in movie history, we here at DCist would like to take a brief look back at some of the seminal events in moving pictures. Ever since the dawn of the 20th century, the transmission of images on celluloid has captivated people around the world. Silent films, such as Georges Melies’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Charlie Chaplin’s varied oeuvre…
