Protection Derail: London Has Fallen, reviewed.

Angela Bassett, Aaron Eckhardt, and Gerard Butler in the Olympus Has Fallen sequel no one demanded.

London Calling is a great album. London Has Fallen is a shitty movie. For NPR.

Pop Culture Happy Hour No. 283: Hail, Caesar! and Backstage Stories

George Clooney plays a pampered Capitol Pictures movie star in Hail, Caesar! (Universal)

I'm very happy to be on the panel for this week's Hail, Caesar!-focused Pop Culture Happy Hour, my first with my Washington City Paper pal Bob Mondello. In it, Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon tells Bob he "beat [him] to the Hamlet punch," which is a funny phrase, if you think about it. Earlier in this episode, G-Weld beat me to the Sullivan's Travels punch, but here's the clip I was going to play.

This episode also has some thematic crossover with the Top Five Movies About Movies segment in which I participated on an episode of WBEZ's Filmspotting from late 2011. My NPR review of Hail, Caesar! — wherein I may have underserved the film's philosophical payload, unless I didn't — is here. This was an especially enjoyable episode for me; I hope you all dig it.

The Meek Shall Inherit the Dearth: Guards at the Taj and You, or Whatever I Can Get, reviewed.

Kenneth De Abrew and Ethan Hova (Scott Suchman)

Suzanne Edgar, Farrell Parker, Vaughn Irving, and Doug Wilder (Ryan Maxwell Photography)

My reviews of Rajiv Joseph's marvelous 2015 Guards at the Taj, now at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and of Flying V's new musical comedy You, or Whatever I Can Get, are in this week's Washington City Paper. You are alerted.

Why Any Viewing of the 148-Minute SPECTRE Now Takes at Least Three Hours

I suppose if you haven't seen SPECTRE (or at least Skyfall) and Hail, Caesar! (or at least one of its trailers) this won't make much sense to you.

Friends, Coens, Countrymen: All Hail Hail, Caesar!

Josh Brolin as an Eddie Mannix who only superficially resembles the historical Eddie Mannix.

No one in the world can possibly appreciate the way the narrator of the new Coen Brothers picture, Sir Michael Gambon — the man who once declined the role of James Bond because, quoth he, "I've got tits like a woman" — says "in westerly Malibu" as much as I do. But just about everyone seems to like the movie. I do, too. My NPR review is here.

2 Midsummer 2 Dreamz

Daven Ralston as Puck with Alex Vernon's shadow puppets of Titania and Oberon in WSC Avant Bard's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I spent a midwinter day and evening taking in two, two, two big productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, from WSC Avant Bard and the Folger Theatre. I reviewed the experience for this week's unusually me-heavy Washington City Paper.

Aniello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

Vaughn Irving, Doug Wilder, Farrell Parker, and Suzanne Edgar perform their musical "You, or Whatever I Can Get" in the 2014 Capital Fringe Festival. 2015 Aniello Award winner Flying V will remount the show starting next week. (Paul Gillis)

After covering theater in DC on a regular basis for seven or eight years, it's clear to me that what I like and what Helen Hayes Awards judges like sometimes overlap but more often do not. But I very much appreciate that the Haysies created a new award eight years ago in the name of longtime DC theatre patron John Laurentzen Aniello Jr. to recognize outstanding start-up theatre companies, because making good art is difficult, difficult, lemon difficult and keeping a theatre company afloat ain't so easy, either.

I wrote a feature about the Aniello Award and its recent winners for the Washington City Paper. My sincere, red-faced apologies to The Welders and for Flying V Theatre Company for a couple of boneheaded reporting errors that I allowed to slip into the print version. (They've been corrected online.) Also, apologies to Matt Reckeweg, co-founder of Pointless Theatre Company, which won the Aniello in 2014. He gave me some helpful insights but his comments were regrettably cut from the story for space.

Hey, what happened to my 2014 FringeCasting Couch interview with the cast of Flying V's You, or Whatever I Can Get?

A Horse of a Different Color: Between Riverside and Crazy and Equus, reviewed.

Frankie R. Faison, Emily K. Townley, and David Bishins in Between Riverside and Crazy. (Allie Dearie/Studio Theatre)

Among my other inspired headline ideas was the immortal "Race, Horse." Washington City Paper editor-in-chief Steve Cavendish came up with the winning entry: "Crime Doesn't Neigh." Bravo, Steve. Herewith, my reviews of Studio's Between Riverside and Crazy, the 2015 Pulitzer winner from Stephen Adly Guirgis, and Constellation's new production of Peter Shaffer's Equus.