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Tonight: Planes, Trains & Automobiles at NoMa Summer Screen
There’s a long weekend coming up; lots of people will be jamming the roads en route to their holiday getaways. The travel tips featured in John Hughes‘ best film speak for themselves. If you’ve got travel plans this Independence Day, it’s not fireworks or barbecues you need—just four fucking wheels and a seat.
Screens at 9 p.m. at the NoMa Summer Screen, L Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets NE. Free. (202) 289-0111
Friday: Tron (70 millimeter print) at AFI Silver Theatre
Walt Disney Pictures might have trampled on one of the few great video-game films last year with Tron: Legacy—a 3-D spectacle of bad lighting and lazy Daft Punk tracks—but the original is still a visual marvel. Though “games” like Light Cycle are historical jokes compared with the flimsiest iPhone apps, Tron‘s adventure at the edge of the personal-computer revolution inspired plenty of real-world video games, electronic musicians led on by Wendy Carlos‘ soundtrack, and countless homages and parodies. But it’s also the film that showed that consumer electronics is as cutthroat an industry as any other, whether through corporate scheming or brawls on a digital plane. And in the long run, the Master Control Program has probably won.
Screens at 7 and 11:45 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $11. (301) 495-6700
Sunday: Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine at the National Gallery of Art
Nicknamed the Spiderwoman for “Maman,” her series of bronze arachnids standing as high as 30 feet outside museums around the world, Louise Bourgeois imbued her long career with childhood obsessions, explorations of sexuality, and emotional frailty stemming from her rocky Parisian childhood. Bourgeois, who died last year at 98, was the subject of Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine, a 2008 documentary shot over 14 years and delving into the roots of her creative processes. Though the version of “Maman” displayed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden left in May 2009, several of Bourgeois smaller works are still on display there and at the National Gallery of Art.
Screens at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art East Wing, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. (202) 842-6799