Arts & Entertainment
Calendar: Dec. 31
Events through Jan. 8
New Years Eve Parties
Ziegfeld’s/Secrets (1824 Half St., S.W.) New Years Eve party tonight will feature a cash balloon drop, party favors and a free split of champagne.
Lace Lounge’s (2214 Rhode Island Ave., N.E.) New Year’s Eve party “Midnight Kiss” is tonight from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. There will be a complimentary breakfast buffet and champagne and a cash drop at midnight. Pre-sale ticket holders will get express VIP entry. Pre-sale tickets are $12 and can be purchased at lacedc.com. Tickets at the door start at $20.
Apex (1415 22nd St., N.W.) presents New Years Eve tonight with two parties. DJ Melissa will be in the main arena with Michael Brandon with Caliente in the east wing lounge. There will be complimentary champagne and assorted party favors. Cover charge is $15 and doors open at 9 p.m.
Eatonville Restaurant (2121 14th St., N.W.) presents “A New Orleans New Year’s Eve” tonight with two dinners. The first beings at 6:30 and features a three-course dinner. The second seating begins at 10 p.m. with a four-course meal, champagne toast, party favors, live jazz and the official ball drop on the big screen. Tickets are $39 for the first seating and $59 for the second. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit eatonvillerestaurant.com.
Remington’s (639 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E.) New Year’s Eve Country Masquerade Ball will begin at 8 p.m. There will be dancing, party favors, a balloon drop, midnight champagne toast and more. Cover is $10. For more information, visit RemingtonsWDC.com.
Wicked Jezabel presents Wicked New Year’s Even Bash tonight starting at 9 p.m. at Second Chance Saloon (5888 Robert Oliver Place) in Columbia with an opening performance by Triple Goddess Tribal Middle Eastern Dance. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased at wickedjezabel.com. Ten percent of the ticket sales will be donated to the Mautner Project.
Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) will have a New Years Eve party starting at 10 p.m. Djs BacK2bACk will be counting down the top 10 video of 2010 and Tatianna of RuPaul’s Drag race will perform live in the drag show at 10:30 p.m. X-Faction and the Ladies of Town will also be performing live. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased in advanced at Universal Gear or online at groovetickets.com and at the door.
Ultrabar D.C. will having a New Year’s party tonight at 10 p.m. with six bars, four DJs, a champagne toast at midnight, buffet, midnight balloon drop, party favors and more. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased at ultrabardc.com.
The Lodge will have a New Year’s Eve party tonight from 7 to 2 a.m. There will be a best dressed contest with cash and bar tab prizes, champagne fountain, party favors and more. Tickets are $25 for two or $15 per person in advanced until Dec. 27., $30 for two or $20 per person at the door. and can be purchased at thelodgemd.com.
Little Miss Whiskey’s Golden Dollar (1104 H St., N.E.) and Jimmy Valentines Lonely Hearts Club (1103 Bladensburg Rd., N.E.) will be hosting a “Double Whammy,” with a sponsored shuttle service between the two bars every half hour and drop-offs at Union Station starting at 12:30 a.m. Attendees must be 25 or older. An open bar ticket with access to both bars is $90 and access to either one bar is $25. Tickets are limited.
A few of Andy Warhol's cheeky variations on 'The Last Supper' are on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of 'Warhol: the Last Decade.' (Image courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum)
Friday, Dec. 31
Special Agent Galactica with Christopher Wingert starring in “The Only Gal in Town,” will be at go mama go! (1809 14 St., N.W.) tonight at 8 p.m. The show will feature songs written by or made famous by Stephen Sondheim, Quincy Jones, Ray Stevens, Richard Rodgers, Ann-Margaret, Dust Springfield, Mary Rodgers, Cy Coleman and more. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or at ganymedearts.org.
BYT presents DJs and beer tonight from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. at the Bohemian Caverns entertainment/hospitality complex. DJs Chris Burns and friends will be on the second floor in LIV Nightclub. A dozen local bands will play cover songs on the first floor in Hominy and Homo Erectus DJs and friends will be in the Gay Jamboree Opium Den with Stalactights in the basement. Early bird tickets are $55. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit brightestyoungthings.com.
The American City Diner (5532 Connecticut Ave., N.W.) will be showing the film “Dr. Strangelove” starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott tonight. The movie starts at 8 p.m. The full menu will be available. Admission is free. For more information, visit americancitydiner.com.
The Baltimore Museum of Art (10 Art Museum Drive) is hosting “Warhol: the Last Decade,” an exhibit featuring more than 50 large-scale works that marked Andy Warhol’s last decade. This is the last stop of a national tour. Some of the works shown include fright wig self-portraits and three variations on Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and admission ranges from free for children 5 and younger to $15 for adults. For more information, visit warhol.artbma.org.
Four college football bowl games will be on today at Nellie’s (900 U St., N.W.) today: the Meineke Car Care Bowl with South Florida and Clemson starts at noon. The Hyundai Sun Bowl with Notre Dame and Miami starts at 2 p.m. The AutoZone Liberty Bowl with George and UCF starts at 3:30 p.m. and the Chick-fil-A Bowl ends the night with South Carolina and Florida State at 7:30 p.m. and DJ Wesley D will be playing music and videos all night.
Saturday, Jan. 1
Homo/Sonic is tonight at 9:30 p.m. at the Black Cat (1811 14th St., N.W.) featuring DJs Natty Boom and Zack and Michael of the New Gay. This is an event is all ages and has a $10 cover.
Johnny Vicious will be at Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) tonight. Doors open at 10 p.m. The cover charge is $8 before 11 p.m. and $12 after.
Refresh is tonight from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. at the Lodge (21614 National Pike) in Boonesboro. Drink specials include $1 Busch Light cans and $5 XXL ReFresher all night long. There’s a $5 cover before 11 p.m. and $8 after.
Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue will be performing at 9:30 Club (815 V St., N.W.) tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at 930.com.
Sunday, Jan. 2
The Kinsey Sicks will be performing “Oy Vey in a Manger” today at 3 p.m. and again at 7:30 p.m. at the Theater J in the Washington DCJCC’s Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater (1529 16th St., N.W.). Tickets range from $35 to $60 and can be purchased by calling 800-494-TIXS or visiting boxofficetickets.com.
The Baltimore Museum of Art (10 Art Museum Drive) will be holding its first free family Sunday of the year today from 2 to 5 p.m. This week’s activity is making “magical mobiles.” All materials are provided.
Monday, Jan. 3
The D.C. Center (1318 U St., N.W.) will have its volunteer night tonight from 6:30 to 8 p.m. For more information, visit thedccenter.org.
The National Portrait Gallery is showing an exhibit that focuses on sexual differences in the making of modern American portraiture. “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” is the first major museum exhibit of its kind. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and admission is free.
Tuesday, Jan. 4
Join Burgundy Crescent Volunteers to help pack safer sex kits from 7 to 9 p.m. tonight at FUK!T’s new packing location Green Lantern, 1335 Green Ct., N.W.
Nellie’s (800 U St., N.W.) will have drag bingo featuring Shi-Queeta-Lee tonight at 8 p.m. and Beat the Clock happy hour from 5 to 8 p.m.
Wednesday, Jan. 5
“Shear Madness,” a comedy whodunit, will be performed at the Kennedy Center Theater Lab (2700 F St., N.W.) at 8 p.m. “Madness” takes place in present-day Georgetown, in the Shear Madness Hair Styling Salon. Visit kennedy-center.org for more information and to purchase tickets.
The Baltimore Museum of Art (10 Art Museum Drive) will have a collection tour today at 2 p.m. showcasing art that inspires contemplation.
Thursday, Jan. 6
The Lincoln Center Theater presents Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” today at the Kennedy Center opera house (2700 F St., N.W.) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from $39 to $150 and can be purchased at kennedy-center.org.
Friday, Jan. 7
The Dance Party will be at 9:30 Club with Wallpaper, K-Flay, Ra Ra Rasputin and lowercaseletters at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at 930.com.
The D.C. Center will have its monthly open mic night tonight from 8 to 10 p.m. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and performer can sign up until 8. This night will feature the work of the Brother Tongue Poetry Workshop participants.
Saturday, Jan. 8
The NSO Teddy Bear Concert: “Fancy That!” will have three performances of a one-woman show with NSO violinist Marissa Regini today at 11 a.m., 1:30 and 5 p.m. in the Kennedy Center’s Family Theatre (2700 F St., N.W.).
The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop will hosts its fifth annual photography exhibit and reception tonight from 5 to 7 p.m. at CHAW (545 7th St., S.E.) featuring works from local and regional artists. Admission to the opening and exhibition is free and will continue until Feb. 4.
The Washington Blade’s second day of Pride on the Pier at The Wharf DC ended with a fireworks show on Saturday, June 7. The fireworks show was presented by the Leonard-Litz LGBTQ Foundation.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The new documentary “Lou’s Legacy: A Reporter’s Life at the ‘Washington Blade’” will make its broadcast TV premiere next week.
WETA will broadcast Lou’s Legacy on Saturday, June 21 at 8 p.m. and Monday, June 23 at 9:30 p.m. Maryland Public Television will feature it on June 28 at 10 p.m. People anywhere in the U.S. can livestream the film at WETA.org, PBS.org, the PBS App, and on YouTube TV, Hulu + Live, and Amazon Prime. After the June 21 broadcast, viewers can stream the documentary on-demand on the PBS App, PBS.org, or WETA.org.
The documentary from Emmy-nominated D.C. filmmaker Patrick Sammon tells the story of the legendary Blade news reporter, Lou Chibbaro Jr., as he works on an article about the return of drag icon Donnell Robinson – also known as Ella Fitzgerald — to the Capital Pride stage. Donnell and Chibbaro reflect on their careers and discuss the ongoing backlash against the LGBTQ community, including laws targeting drag performers.
Movies
20 years later, we still can’t quit ‘Brokeback Mountain’
Iconic love story returns to theaters and it’s better than you remember
When “Brokeback Mountain” was released in 2005, the world was a very different place.
Now, as it returns to the big screen (beginning June 20) in celebration of its 20th anniversary, it’s impossible not to look at it with a different pair of eyes. Since its release, marriage equality has become the law of the land; queer visibility has gained enough ground in our popular culture to allow for diverse queer stories to be told; openly queer actors are cast in blockbuster movies and ‘must-see’ TV, sometimes even playing queer characters. Yet, at the same time, the world in which the movie’s two “star-crossed” lovers live – a rural, unflinchingly conservative America that has neither place nor tolerance for any kind of love outside the conventional norm – once felt like a place that most of us wanted to believe was long gone; now, in a cultural atmosphere of resurgent, Trump-amplified stigma around all things diverse, it feels uncomfortably like a vision of things to come.
For those who have not yet seen it (and yes, there are many, but we’re not judging), it’s the epic-but-intimate tale of two down-on-their-luck cowboys – Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall) – who, in 1963 Wyoming, take a job herding sheep on the titular mountain. There’s an unmistakable spark between them, and during their months-long shared isolation in the beautiful-but-harsh wilderness, they become lovers. They part ways when the job ends and go on about their lives; Ennis resolutely settles into a hardscrabble life with a wife (Michelle Williams) and kids, while Jack struggles to make ends meet as a rodeo rider until eventually marrying the daughter (Anne Hathaway) of a wealthy Texas businessman. Yet even as they struggle to maintain their separate lives, they reconnect, escaping together for “fishing trips” to continue their forbidden affair across two decades, even as the inevitable pressures and consequences of living a double life begin to take their toll.
Adapted from a novella by Annie Proulx, (in an Oscar-winning screenplay by co-producer Diana Ossana and acclaimed novelist Larry McMurtry), and helmed by gifted Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee (also an Oscar winner), the acclaim it earned two decades ago seems as well-deserved as ever, if not more so. With Lee bringing an “outsider’s eye” to both its neo-western setting and its distinctly American story of stolen romance and cultural repression, “Brokeback” maintains an observational distance, uninfluenced by cultural assumptions, political narratives, or traditional biases. We experience Ennis and Jack’s relationship on their terms, with the purely visceral urgency of instinct; there are no labels, neither of them identifies as “queer” – in fact, they both deny it, though we know it’s likely a feint – nor do they ever mention words like “acceptance, “equality,” or “pride.” Indeed, they have no real vocabulary to describe what they are to each other, only a feeling they dare not name but cannot deny.
In the sweeping, pastoral, elegiac lens of Lee’s perceptive vision, that feeling becomes palpable. It informs everything that happens between them, and extends beyond them to impact the lives they are forced to maintain apart from each other. It’s a feeling that’s frequently tormented, sometimes violent, and always passionate; and while they never speak the word to each other, the movie’s famous advertising tagline defines it well enough: “Love is a force of nature.”
Yet to call “Brokeback” a love story is to ignore its shadow side, which is essential to its lasting power. Just as we see love flowing through the events and relationships we observe, we also witness the resistant force that opposes it, working in the shadows to twisting love against itself, compelling these men to hide themselves in fear and shame behind the safety of heterosexual marriage, wreaking emotional devastation on their wives, and eventually driving a wedge between them that will bring their story to a (spoiler alert, if one is required for a 20-year-old film) heartbreaking conclusion. That force, of course, is homophobia, and it’s the hidden – though far from invisible – villain of the story. Just as with Romeo and Juliet, it’s not love that creates the problem; it’s hate.
As for that ending, it’s undeniably a downer, and there are many gay men who have resisted watching the movie precisely because they fear its famously tragic outcome will hit a little too close to home. We can’t say we blame them.
For those who can take it, however, it’s a film of incandescent beauty, rendered not just through the breathtaking visual splendor of Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography, but through the synthesis of all its elements – especially the deceptively terse screenplay, which reveals vast chasms of feeling in the gaps between its homespun words, and the effectiveness of its cast in delivering it to performance. Doubtless the closeness between most of its principal players was a factor in their chemistry – Ledger and Gyllenhall were already friends, and Ledger and Williams began a romantic relationship during filming which would lead to the birth of their daughter. Both Williams and Hathaway bring out the truth of their characters, each of them earning our empathy and driving home the point that they are victims of homophobia, too.
As for the two stars, their chemistry is deservedly legendary. Ledger’s tightly strung, near-inarticulate Ennis is a masterclass in method acting on the screen, with Gyllenhall’s brighter, more open-hearted Jack serving in perfectly balanced contrast. They are yin and yang to each other, and when they finally consummate their desires in that infamous and visceral tent scene, what we remember is the intensity of their passion, not the prurient details of their coupling – which are, in truth, more suggested than shown. Later, when growing comfort allows them to be tender with each other, it feels just as authentic. Though neither Ledger nor Gyllenhall identified as gay or bisexual, their comfort and openness to the emotional truth of the love story they were cast to play is evident in every moment they spend on the screen, and it’s impossible to think of the movie being more perfect with anyone else but them.
What made “Brokeback” a milestone, apart from the integrity and commitment of its artistry, was that it emerged as a challenge to accepted Hollywood norms, simply by telling a sympathetic story about same-sex love without judgment, stereotype, identity politics, or any agenda beyond simple humanistic compassion. It was the most critically acclaimed film of the year, and one of the most financially successful; though it lost the Oscar for Best Picture (to “Crash,” widely regarded as one of the Academy’s most egregious errors), it hardly mattered. The precedent had been set, and the gates had been opened, and the history of queer cinema in mainstream Hollywood was forevermore divided into two eras – before and after “Brokeback Mountain.”
Still, its “importance” is not really the reason to revisit it all these years later. The reason is that, two decades later, it’s still a beautiful, deeply felt and emotionally authentic piece of cinema, and no matter how good you thought it was the first time, it’s even better than you remember it.
It’s just that kind of movie.
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