FRIDAY >> The legendary Patti Smith is at the 9:30 Club tonight, and tickets are incredibly still available for $25. Doors at 9, show at 10 p.m. >> The idea of attending a lighting display, particularly after Christmas, might sound a bit cheesy. But the Garden of Lights in Wheaton might just change your mind. The designer tours the county gardens each year for inspiration for his display; this year, it invokes the four seasons.......

Last April I sold my elderly car for a few hundred dollars. I was tired of the expense of repairs, gas and insurance, no longer needed a vehicle for work, and the wide availability of car-sharing services in the D.C. metro area made the switch to no longer owning my own car seem easy and obvious. I hadn't regretted my decision for a minute -- until I got the following press release in my inbox......

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......

>> "Japanese Action Comic Punk" band PEELANDER-Z hits DC9 tonight, along with Massachusetts power-poppers My So-Called Friend, Lights Resolve and up and coming locals The City Veins. $8. >> The Lisner Auditorium is hosting Malian traditional guitarist Vieux Farka Toure (son of the late great Ali Farka Toure) and Tinariwen, a band of musicians from the Sahara who meld North Malian guitar stylings with blues, middle–eastern, reggae and rock influences. 8 p.m., $15-$45. >>......

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......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Control Live fast, die young. The two most important rules to follow for rock 'n' roll immortality. We suppose having great music probably helps, too. Ian Curtis followed those rules, and enjoys a massive cult following nearly three decades after his death. Maybe "enjoys" is the wrong word. As the years have passed and Joy......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: The Darjeeling Limited By now, five features into his career, it's likely you already have a strong opinion on Wes Anderson. Despite his tendency to borrow liberally from his own film and literary heroes, from Kubrick to Fitzgerald to the entire French New Wave, a Wes Anderson film feels like a Wes Anderson film from......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Into the Wild Annandale native Chris McCandless had just graduated from Emory University in 1990 when he donated his substantial life's savings to charity and set out on the road under the name of "Alexander Supertramp." His highly publicized disappearance ended two years later when his body was found in the Alaskan wilderness, and the......

>> 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......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Foreign: Stalker Revered in his prime as perhaps one of the best filmmakers Russia ever produced, Andrei Tarkovsky built his reputation on just seven feature films. As is so often the case, some of the most poignant art comes from those artists who must fight to bring their vision to an audience. Tarkovsky's films, often restless......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Major Release: 3:10 to Yuma Mark your calendars. Labor Day is past, summer is over, and it's time for all the Oscar contenders to step into the ring. First out of the gate is 3:10 to Yuma, the second filmed version of an Elmore Leonard short story about a Civil War veteran (played here by Christian......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Repertory: Lawrence of Arabia David Lean's epic telling of the story of T.E. Lawrence's time in the Middle East, and leadership of the WWI Arab Revolt is regarded as one of the greatest achievements in cinema. The......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Repertory: Stranger Than Paradise "You go to some place new and everything just looks the same," says Eddie, one of the two hipster-slacker protagonists of Jim Jarmusch's wickedly funny second feature. Press materials made a big deal of the origin of the film, pointedly calling it "A New American Film by a New American Director." There's......

John G. Hanhardt has been working as a consulting curator on film and media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). He’s had an influential career as one of the pioneering curators of media art in North America, helping shape the way museums look at and receive new media within their galleries and collections -- all stemming from his perspective of film’s influence on art and culture in the 20th Century. Hanhardt grew up in......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Foreign: This is England After receiving accolades galore at a number of major film festivals, British director Shane Meadow's autobiographical film is receiving a limited one week run in D.C. starting on Friday. Based on his own experiences coming of age in the UK in the early 80's, This is England follows 12-year old Shaun, a......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Repertory: Labyrinth Jim Henson continued to indulge the darker doors of his mind that he'd thrown wide open with The Dark Crystal in this, regrettably his last feature film. How a film made by Jim Henson and George Lucas, and starring David Bowie managed to tank as badly as this did upon release is a mystery,......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Sunshine A group of astronauts are on a suicide mission to save a dying Sun, lest the earth perish as well. While it may sound like a plot suitable for Michael Bay's Armageddon 2: Bigger and Hotter, in the hands of director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) and his 28 Days Later screenwriter, Alex Garland, it may......

FRIDAY: >> Odds are good that you'll be able to happily dance the night away at Rock and Roll Hotel, no matter what kind of music you're in the mood for. Downstairs you've got Party Bros., a tongue-in-cheek tribute to party music by DJs Gavin Holland and Chris Burns, featuring tunes ranging from Black Sabbath to Taylor Dayne, 9:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., while upstairs is a free funk and soul session from Moneytown, also......

>> Must Love Trash, DJ Adrian Loving and DJ Gavin Holland have all volunteered their services at Wonderland tonight to benefit a group putting together a Columbia Heights Day festival. The party starts at 9 p.m. upstairs. Help these guys get their web site and street festival off the ground by having a good time. For more details about Columbia Heights Day, email ColumbiaHeightsDay (at) gmail.com >> The Hej Hej DJs, DJ Yum Yum......

Hope for a last minute hail mary. After the highs and lows of almost getting an installment of Live Earth in our town, then having Congress stomp all over it, Al Gore's figured things out in the final hour and is adding the District to the globe-crossing concert. Live Earth will take place tomorrow, from 9 locations around the world. The purpose of the massive undertaking is to raise worldwide awareness of climate change. Musical......

>> Head out to H Street tonight to catch a free, jam-packed line-up in the Captial Fringe Festival's first official preview. The festival itself kicks off July 19, but tonight at Palace of Wonders you can see 20 of the more than 200 productions that will be on offer during Cap Fringe. Performances will include The Lesbian and the Flying Pig, Speakeasy, Love and War: Bard's Broads, Cautionary Tales for Adults, Arts United, Pretty......

>> Two quality offerings from the Black Cat tonight: Japan's uber-weird noise outfit Melt-Banana take the mainstage with Hex Machine at 8:30 p.m., $13. Plus Falls Church native and now Richmond-based newgrass singer Josh Small is in the Backstage tonight, with Tim Barry and The Wading Girl, for a paltry $8 at 8 p.m. >> Campus Progress is calling all summer interns and other young folks to head over to Science Club tonight for......

Yesterday we attended the press preview for next month's 5th annual SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival and got a sneak peak at a few of the documentary films that will be making their Washington area (and in some cases World or North American) premieres at the Silver Spring festival in June. DCist will be covering the festival once again this year, but in the meantime we thought we'd share a handful of the 100 announced......

>> After bitching about extreme lack of tickets to Friday's sold out Arcade Fire show, our friends at Washingtonian Magazine alerted us to their ticket giveaway. Only one seat is up for grabs, you didn't want to bring your girlfriend anyway, right? Contest ends Thursday at noon. >> Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora Internet radio, hosts a meet up tonight at Be Bar. Open to listeners and non-listeners alike, guests can chat about the......

We're always trying to think of ways to offer you, our lovely readers, a shot at some free entertainment, and today we've got another great opportunity for you. We've paired up with Landslide Pictures to host a special preview screening of Civic Duty at the Landmark E Street Cinema on Tuesday, May 1 at 7 p.m.. Here's a brief synopsis of the story: Angry and depressed over losing his job, accountant Terry Allen begins to......

FRIDAY: >> It's Friday the 13th. Scaaary? Nah. We laugh in the face of danger. Or at least, you might if you swing by HR-57 tonight for all the DC Comedy Fest events happening on their stages. We gave you the rundown on the festival yesterday, and we'd especially recommend heading over later on to catch the 11 p.m. Leno-Letterman Audition Highlights, which features some of the fest's funnier comedians in longer sets than usual.......

Once upon a time, in a dirty and slightly sticky corner of the motion picture industry, there were films produced purely for the sake of feeding audiences' seemingly endless appetite for gaudy sex and near pornographic violence, often slathered with buckets of unnaturally red viscera and always with a splashy title and equally eye-catching poster. The rise of independent cinema in the 1970s made for an explosion of these low-budget features, and audiences hungry for......

Conventional wisdom, for many years, went that American audiences and British humour just didn't mix. Apart from legions of cultish fans who could quote Python chapter and verse, and PBS viewers glued to re-runs of Upstairs, Downstairs and Fawlty Towers, most American audiences seemed either to not get it, or just not care. But the recent pond-crossing successes of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais suggests that maybe tastes are changing on this side of......

FRIDAY: >> Friends 'o DCist Middle Distance Runner have had quite a ride since playing our special Unbuckled/Anniversary concert last September. Despite a few bumps on the road, they've gone from little band that could to having their first headlining slot at 9:30 club tonight. We'll say we knew them when. With The Dance Party. 10 p.m., $10. >> Akron/Family impressed the pants off of critics in 2005 with their self-titled neo-folk stylings. They'll be......