Brightest Young Things

Just as things started dying down a little more when it comes to freeness and movieness in DC (Screen on the Green wrapped up its meager run last week, Psychotronics are still on break) Comcast and Strathmore come and save the day (and week) with a super solid summer movie lineup going all the way through Friday.
So-get ready for (mostly) quality entertainment that you (never) have to pay for.
(click on links for more details and print/send to friends)

MONDAY
The year was 1989, I was still but an innocent child of 9 years. The scariest thing I've seen up until then (E.T. nonewithstanding) was the dark wizard in "Swan Lake". And that was a ballet. Then-Batman came out. I laid my eyes on Jack Nicholson and could not sleep for a good month. Even looking up the thumbnails for this post today provoked a Pavlovian respone in me. Relive all the macabre fun tonight with Tim Burton's original Batman @ Crystal Screen

Also today:
Indiana Jones & The Crystal Skull @ Strathmore, which is the only Indiana Jones Movie I haven't seen so I have nothing to say about it.

And speaking of scary, Bruno is playing for 1 dollar only @ Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse tonight

TUESDAY,
Singing in the Rain @ Strathmore. They play this movie at some outdoor film series at least once every summer, and who can blame them-it is perfect.

WEDNESDAY
Grab your inner, needy, desperate, vampire-loving, secretly Mormon teen and go see Twilight @ Strathmore. To mentally prepare: read this.

THURSDAY
To view the trailer for Tokyo Gore Police, which is showing tonight at 7pm @ Freer Sackler you actually have to sign up and confirm you're 18 years of age on youtube, which, frankly, is recommendation enough for me.

Brief synopsis:
Intended for mature audiences. The New York Times calls Yoshihiro Nishimura’s film a “splatterific social satire.” Employing geysers of blood, mountains of severed body parts, mutant go-go girls, and other delights, it takes place in a Tokyo of the near future in which a privatized police force wages hyper-violent war on a new breed of cyborg criminals who can transform their wounds into weapons.

ALSO- The completely and utterly deserving Academy Award winner for Best Movie of 2008 Slumdog Millionaire is playing tonight @ Strathmore. If you haven't seen it-see it. If you have-see it again. One of the most satisfying movie going experiences around.

FRIDAY
It was fun while it lasted: The Strathmore outdoor movie series ends today with Madagascar 2

and a Bill Murray rings in the last two weeks of "I <3 The 80s" series with Ghostbursters @ Rosslyn Gateway Park (next week it is "Meatballs"). Harold Ramis steals this movie & Ghostbusters 2 is actually somehow funnier, so rent it and make it a double feature

ALSO: The very promising sounding My Mother is a Belly Dancer is playing at 7pm @ Freer Sackler

Brief synopsys:
A group of working-class housewives finds liberation when a new instructor takes over their traditional dance class and teaches them belly dancing in this charming, surprisingly moving drama by Lee Kung-lok.

SATURDAY
And Theodore Dreyer's film series concludes with Gertrud @ National Gallery of Art

Brief synopsys:
In Dreyer’s final modernist masterwork—”equal in madness and beauty to the last works of Beethoven,” according to Jean-Luc Godard—a woman’s search for a romantic ideal of love ends with her casting off the four men in her life and retreating into calm isolation.”

To wit: all clips of Dreyer's work on youtube are dubbed in Spanish (must be the solid catholic guilt) but even the non-speakers can understand exclamations like "Erotic Ecstasy" in this tidbit, which you know means something:

SUNDAY
In case you had actual plans on Friday night, you have another chance to cathc "My Mother is a Belly Dancer" as it happens Again today at 2pm

and adding value to Spike's Sundays (which cost 10 bucks for a day at the pool) is the dusk movie series which this weekend features "Office Space" @ Cap Skyline

If I missed something-let me know in the comments.
Godspeed.