Let's All Go To The Lobby And Pay Some Taxes: Seeing movies in the theaters these days is an expensive proposition. There's the tickets themselves, which cost more than $10. There's the Metro fare to the theater. There's the $7 monthly payment to Netflix that meant you could have just held out a few months and seen the damn thing on your couch. And now, if a new proposal by Mayor Vince Gray becomes law, there's the concession tax. The additional 5 percent sales tax on popcorn and sodas would go to a dedicated fund that would either help lure a movie theater east of the Anacostia River or help lure movie productions to the District. Which means you could be paying for the next Transformers sequel. -2

Next on Fox, Schools Begging For Cash: In today's installment of "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire," we look at a sad tale of how major entertainment corporations have become the funder of last resort for cash-strapped schools. Not less than five D.C.-area elementary, middle, and high schools have entered a contest where Glee viewers can vote, in classic reality TV fashion, on which one of them should get a share of a $1 million prize. The prize would pay to keep the music education program at the school from being closed—something which, apparently, local governments can't manage on their own. -3

Ethics R Us: Various law enforcement agencies have spent an impressive amount of time lately looking into how members of the D.C. Council conduct their business. Which isn't exactly good news with an election year coming up. So the council today spent hours and hours talking about how to comport itself in a manner more befitting an august legislative body. We wonder how long it will take for the council to do like the feds do with issues they want to bury, and appoint a blue-ribbon panel to look into ethics reform. -1

Surrender, National Weather Service: The year has already brought heat waves, an earthquake, and a tropical storm to Washington. So chances are no one was particularly surprised to see a tornado warning issued for the area today. Except in this case, the impending weather doom was a hoax: the National Weather Service accidentally sent test warnings out as if they were real. You may now go back to worrying about whether it'll snow on Saturday. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 61 Today's score: -7 Today's Needle rating: 54

Let's All Overreact!: The best policy, when faced with some danger of a terrorist attacks, is to abandon any commitment to civil liberties or, really, rational thought. Or at least, that seems to be the theory Metro officials are now operating under. In response to the news that a guy who wanted (but hadn't actually gotten his hands on) some kind of explosive materials wound up working with FBI agents to plot an entirely imaginary attack on subway stations, Metro Transit Police want to implement random searches of bags within the system. Congratulations, terrorists! You win again. -4

Don't Drink and Trick or Treat: Halloween always seemed like more of a holiday for kids, but maybe that's just because we're not the biggest fans of sexy [inappropriate noun] costumes. Enough adults observe, though, that police are mounting an aggressive crackdown on drunk driving over the weekend. One fact that's far scarier than any flick Vincent Price ever appeared in: 58 percent of traffic fatalities during Halloween in 2008 were caused by drunk drivers. Boo! +2

Popcorn? Milk Duds? Cabernet?: Years ago, you used to be able to watch arthouse movies and hang out in the bar at Visions, the long-defunct theater in Dupont Circle (whose space on Florida Avenue NW still sits maddeningly untouched, taunting anyone who used to love the place). Well, happy days are here again—you'll be able to do just that at West End Cinema, a new movie theater/bar set to open tomorrow night. Even better for nostalgia purposes: The theater will occupy the former home of the long-closed Inner Circle on M Street NW. Next project for D.C. film buffs: Reclaim the likes of the Biograph and the Key from CVS. +3

Bike (Ironically) to Rally: An update on an earlier Needle item—the Washington Area Bicyclists Association now says you should ride your bike there. Comedy Central, not generally known for its protest-organizing abilities, had failed to work with WABA to set up a bike valet station, and the National Park Service hasn't seen fit to install much in the way of bike racks on the Mall. So it didn't seem like there would be any place to lock a bike if you did ride there. On first glance, it still doesn't seem like that fundamental problem has been solved, but hey! People have been riding their bikes to rallies and locking them to benches for years now. Surely even a bunch of faux protesters can manage that on a gorgeous fall day. +2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 46 Today's score: +3 Today's Needle rating: 49

Tour highlights include the steps where The Exorcist was filmed and the mall where True Lies and No Way Out were filmed.  The Exorcist stairs are one of DC's claims to movie fame, but the mall in Georgetown where Jamie Lee Curtis walked around?  Not so exciting, even if Nicole Richie does shop there.  And for other movies, the DC locations are the monuments and other places along the Mall, which are tourist-havens even without their movie connections.  Take the Reflecting Pool, for example. Martin Luther King and Marian Anderson inspired thousands of people there.  Oh, and Forrest Gump and Jenny reunited in the same location, hence the significance.

As for TV shows, the tour visits shooting locations from 24 and The West Wing, supposedly while singing the theme songs.  So they drive in a bus past the White House and look at the street where Jack Bauer and Jed Bartlett supposedly walked?  And, by the way, the theme songs have no words to sing along to.  It's all in good fun, but why not scenes from real DC movies like All the President's Men? The Watergate's good fun for all!

For movie buffs, seeing the Hollywood side of "Hollywood for Ugly People" offers a different insight into the city, but there's more to see than the stomping grounds of pretend politicians.  We've got the real stuff and we like to show it off.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user bog_king,  Creative Commons Attribution License.)