MUSIC

Guster and Jack's Mannequin are at Wolf Trap tonight with opener Lady Danville. Bring earplugs—for the screaming girls, at the very least. 7 p.m. $32 lawn, $40 in-house.

D.C. hardcore band The Mostly Dead plays the Black Cat Backstage with Canons and Voyage in Coma. 8 p.m. $8.

FILM

Screen on the Green wraps up another year tonight with Cool Hand Luke. Sundown on the National Mall between 12th and 14th streets. Free.

BOOKS

I was hoping Rory Stewart's book was a takedown of substance abuse intervention, but neigh, Can Intervention Work? is about U.S. military intervention in foreign conflicts. He speaks at Politics & Prose at 7:30 p.m. tonight. Free.

NON-ART

It's D.C. Beer Week. Check out our listings to find something strange and delicious to drink tonight. (Oh, and it's also Restaurant Week.)

THESE AREN'T THE DAYS

10,000 Maniacs has existed for 30 years. The band plays one of its 30-date, 30th-anniversary shows tonight at Birchmere... without Natalie Merchant. Huh. 7:30 p.m. $35.

THEATER

Tonight only, Taffety Punk Theatre Company will present another installment in its intentionally thrown-together Bootleg Shakespeare series. Tonight's show is King John—and while we can't guarantee "honest-to-Yoda lightsaber duel complete with telekinetic chokeholds" like last year's staging of The Two Noble Kingsmen, there is still high potential for greatness. Get your free tickets starting now at the Folger Theater. 7 p.m.

BOOKS

"The Dresden Files" series author Jim Butcher is at Barnes & Noble in Tysons Corner to read from his latest title in the series, Ghost Story. 7 p.m. Free.

Melanie Benjamin's second book, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, is not actually an autobiography, of course, but it imagines what life must have been like for the 32-inch woman (Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump), best known for marrying the 19th-century entertainer Tom Thumb. Benjamin speaks at 7 p.m. at Politics & Prose. Free.

MUSIC

More Fort Reno. Tonight: Caustic Casanova, Loose Lips, and one more band TBD. 7:15 p.m. Free.

FILM

Screen on the Green continues with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Sundown on the National Mall. Free.

Pictureplane,

MUSIC

The Hellmouth reopens when teen actress Miranda Cosgrove (from iCarly) plays Wolf Trap tonight with YouTube sensation Greyson Chance. As charming as the 18-year-old can be, Cosgrove's 2010 single "Dancing Crazy"—penned by Avril Lavigne—sounds like it was originally written in Japanese, translated into three other languages, and finally distilled into this pitch-adjusted English language version, a bizarre and disorienting onslaught of meaningless slogans. "I like you and you like me! We get together and we're happy!" "Hot! Hot! Keep it comin'!" "Everybody's ragin', ragin' crazy!" 7:30 p.m. at Wolf Trap Filene Center. $20-$100.

Local pop rock stars Title Tracks return to Fort Reno in a make-up date for their rained-out show a couple weeks back. Office of Future Plans and The Akoma Drummers are also on the bill. 7:15 p.m. at Fort Reno Park. Free.

Oh yeah, this is gonna back up traffic on 14th Street: Big Boi comes to the Park at 14th tonight in a concert sponsored by Crown Royal. 7 p.m. 21+. Admission price will be "based on capacity."

Indie folk group Mountain Man is at IOTA Club & Cafe, the best cafe/bar/music venue in Clarendon. (That's not really saying much, but it's still a cool venue!) Take a listen to the band. 8:30 p.m. $12. Correction: This show is on Tuesday night.

FILM

Screen on the Green, duh. The well-loved summer series kicks off tonight with In the Heat of the Night. 8:30 p.m. or so on the National Mall between 8th and 14th Streets NW. Free.

BOOKS

Sally Jacobs reads from her book The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of Obama's Father, at Politics & Prose. In a Washington Post review, David J. Garrow says Jacobs' astonishingly well-researched book unveils some critical facts about the president's father's life, but "the cumulative effect of her thoroughly researched biography is deeply depressing...her richly sourced account of how a promising young adulthood quickly descended into daily alcoholic binges and serial domestic violence paints an even more dramatically downbeat portrait than did Obama’s namesake son 16 years ago in Dreams From My Father." 7 p.m. Free.

It's hard to argue with this year's selections—they're all undisputed Hollywood classics. But those Porta-Potty lines can get long, so it's worth planning your bathroom breaks ahead of time. Below, our suggestions for when to pee at Screen on the Green.

JULY 25: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967)

In which two cops (Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger), one black and one white, investigate a murder in a racist Mississippi town.

Run to the bathroom...during the first 10 minutes, before Poitier shows up. We're shown a murder scene we don’t particularly care about and don’t have any frame of reference for—basically, a pre-credit scene worthy of Murder She Wrote or Monk.

But be around for...two iconic Poitier moments. When his character, Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs, is asked what he's called in his hometown, he says, “They call me Mr. Tibbs.” Later, he's slapped by a white suspect, and slaps him back.

AUGUST 1: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO's NEST (1975)

In which a convict (Jack Nicholson) thinks he can avoid hard labor by entering a psychiatric institution, and ends up becoming a metaphor for 1960s anti-authoritarianism.

Run to the bathroom...during the famous scene in which Jack Nicholson is electrocuted—if you're squeamish.

But be around for...when Nicholson hijacks a bus, picks up a prostitute, and takes his fellow inmates on a fishing trip.

AUGUST 8: GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953)

In which Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell play two attractive and highly available cruise-ship singers on the hunt for love.

Run to the bathroom...whenever you want, for the most part. Most of the other musical numbers are forgettable. There's a mystery about who stole what, and an ensuing courtroom scene, but basically the plot is dispensable. The point here is Monroe doing her thing.

But be around for...the Monroe number “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend," the film's only show-stopper. Also essential are lines like, "Excuse me, but what is the way to Europe, France?" Monroe's self-aware ditziness is utterly singular.

AUGUST 15: COOL HAND LUKE (1967):

In which, like a counter-cultural Christ, an inmate (Paul Newman) dies for his fellow prisoners' sins and is reborn in notoriety.

Run to the bathroom...during the second half of the iconic eating-contest scene, in which Luke's stomach is engorged from the consumption of 50 eggs.

But be around for...“What we've got here is...failure to communicate.” It's uttered twice, just in case.

Screen on the Green showings begin at dusk on the National Mall between 8th and 14th street.

Well, I have some advice for Screen on the Green, but it involves an entirely different kind of existential threat.

Disaster movies.

In other words: Is there any better way to enjoy the backdrop of the National Mall and the august government buildings surrounding it than simultaneously seeing them blown to pieces on the silver screen? The answer is no, there is not.

Below, my program of D.C. disaster movies that Screen on the Green ought to show next summer. Since money's tight, I'm happy to waive my curator's fee.

To start, a Roland Emmerich double-header, with Independence Day...

...and 2012.

Amazing old-school option: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.

Is there any better conduit for Congress-directed schadenfreude than Mars Attacks?

Deep Impact errs by not showing the effing-up of D.C. by a tidal wave, but around the 7-minute mark in this clip you see the end result:

W., possibly the ultimate D.C. disaster movie.

Baltimore bonus! The Sum of All Fears.

Look. Goldfinger is pretty great, sort of in the way Sticky Fingers is better than everything the Stones did post-'72 or so. That is: Not the best in the filmography, but miles ahead of what the Bond franchise became after Sean Connery gave up the tux.

For its iconic characters and set pieces, Goldfinger, which tonight opens the Screen on the Green series on the National Mall, is considered the greatest film in the James Bond franchise. I say bullshit.

It has what are probably the two most memorable images of any Bond film: The early scene where Bond discovers one Jill Masterson—his lover, the villain Goldfinger's assistant—asphyxiated by a coating of gold paint; and the later one where Goldfinger's laser inches toward Bond's more sensitive parts, and where, after Bond asks Goldfinger, "Do you expect me to talk?" the villain responds, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" Classic, no doubt.

But on the whole, and especially compared to the other early Connery films—Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Thunderball—Goldfinger is a let-down, containing little of the magic that makes Bond Bond.

My ishes, in bullet form:

• Bond's Beatles comment ("My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs") is woefully lame.

• So are the villains. Gert Fröbe's Auric Goldfinger is petty and not terribly villainous. Harold Sakata's Oddjob decapitates people with his hat, then draws his finger across his neck and makes a clicking sound. I want my bond villains to be sophisticated sociopaths, like Dr. No or Emilio Largo, not these bozos.
• The villains' plot is awful and unimaginative. Destabilizing U.S. currency by robbing it of its gold backing? Pretty quaint seen from a post-gold standard era, although one wonders how responsible Goldfinger is for the Nixon Shock, as well as the overall worldview of Ron Paul.
• In the early films, the SPECTER SPECTRE metaplot was pretty cool. Goldfinger doesn't have a trace of it.
• Goldfinger's death scene, in which the fat German fuck shoots a hole in a window and is sucked out, a fitting end that looks like it's been rendered with Playdo.
• That it's set in the States. Bond always does well in the tropics, so the early sequence in Miami works—that it involves cards and barely clad women and an insanely pricey hotel helps. Drop Bond in Kentucky—much of the action revolves around a break-in at Fort Knox—and he loses his luster. The last Connery film, Diamonds Are Forever, is set in Las Vegas and has the same problem.

I could probably go either way on Honor Blackman, who in Goldfinger stars as Pussy Galore.

The more important point is that I like a Bond who's either at home in England, doing what he does (flirting, gambling, cracking wise), or in some exotic locale, doing what he does (screwing, gambling, ass-kicking). He also can't be too humorous, although that's key to the franchise. Goldfinger's tone, on the whole, is light to point that it sacrifices Bond's erudition. The Austin Powers-ization of James Bond began here.

Films will screen Mondays at dusk between July 12 and August 2. Goldfinger will run on July 12, The Goodbye Girl on July 19, 12 Angry Men on July 26, and Bonnie and Clyde on August 2.

Screen on the Green is one of a number of outdoor film festivals in the area. Others include the Rosslyn Outdoor Film Festival, Fridays until September 3; NoMa Summer Screen, Wednesdays until July 28; Capitol Riverfront Summer Outdoor Movies, Thursdays from June 3 to August 5; Bethesda Outdoor Movies, nightly between July 27-31; the U Street Movie Series, June 8, July 13, August 10, and September 14; Crystal Screen: Star Trek, Mondays from June 7 to August 16; and National Harbor's Movies on the Potomac, Sundays until September 26.

The film chronicles Dylan's rise to superstardom, from being booed by Guthrie purists at the Newport Folk Festival to getting mauled by fans in London. Scorcese culls footage from Dylan's 1961-1966 performances and press conferences, and interviews the ever cryptic icon. What emerges, despite Dylan's best efforts at obfuscation, is a portrait of the artist broader than D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (1967), yet more focused than Todd Haynes' I'm Not There.

NoMa screenings are held Wednesdays, 7 p.m.-midnight, on the large grassy lot on L Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets NE, one block from the New York Avenue Metro station. Series highlights include I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (on July 8) and Dig! (July 29).