Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. Photograph courtesy of MGM.

In February and March, the election season kicks into high gear, with 26 presidential primaries or caucuses, including Virginia’s—but it seems as if the 2012 election has been under way forever.

What’s the antidote to an overdose of political reality? How about some of Hollywood’s finest election-themed films? Pop the popcorn and enjoy the rides. Here are ten worth watching.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Only the original will do. Starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury, it’s a satire of campaigns and political marriages, with brainwashing and anti-Communism as the spice—not to mention the McCarthy era, vague recollections of failed presidential contender Richard Nixon, and Cold War paranoia.

It’s interesting to watch Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrive at a party. She slips in quietly. There’s no bombast. But suddenly the gravitational pull of the room shifts subtly in her direction. There’s a frisson, a buzz; you see the top of her head, the flip in her long blond hair; you see people move toward her but also make way. She has a wide, warm smile for friends, and it was mostly friends Tuesday evening at an A-list book party at the Georgetown home of Gahl Burt. Clinton dropped by on her way to the Capitol for the State of the Union.

The party was for Derek Chollet and Samantha Power’s new book, The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World—but it was, most of all, a gathering of his nearest and dearest, which means diverse Washington power players, many of them as complicated and beguiling as Holbrooke himself. Clinton, of course, but also Power, who co-edited the book. Power is now a special assistant to President Barack Obama, though during the last election she resigned from her adviser position after calling candidate Hillary Clinton a “monster,” a comment she thought was off the record.

Leslee Gilbert has joined Van Scoyoc Associates as a vice president. Photograph courtesy of Van Scoyoc Associates.

There are lots of moves out of the Justice Department to report this week, and one House staffer has crossed over to K Street.

Leslee Gilbert, most recently staff director and counsel for the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, is now a vice president at lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates, where she specializes in science and technology funding. After Republicans took control of the House in 2010, she became the leading staffer on the committee. She had previously been the committee’s Republican staff director.

Litigation boutique MoloLamken has welcomed Justin Shur from the Department of Justice, where he was deputy chief for the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division.

Monica Derbes Gibson, formerly a trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Environmental Defense Section, has joined Venable as of counsel in its environmental compliance group.

McDermott Will & Emery has welcomed back Warren Rosborough as a partner in its global antitrust and compliance practice. Rosborough was previously in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, where he was a trial attorney. He was an associate at McDermott from 2004 to 2007.

Baker Hostetler has picked up two partners from Morrison & Foerster. Barry Bretschneider and John“Jack” Corrado have joined the firm’s intellectual property group. Corrado was formerly the head of Morrison & Foerster’s Washington and Northern Virginia litigation groups

Reed Smith’s financial industry group has added W. Thomas Conner as a partner. He came from Sutherland Asbill and Brennan.

George Marcou, formerly a partner at King & Spalding, has become a Washington-based partner at virtual intellectual property law firm Johnson, Marcou & Isaacs. Based in Savannah, Georgia, the virtual firm has employees located throughout the United States, including in the District.

Dechert has hired Alvaro Galindo as international counsel. Galindo, who is admitted to practice in Ecuador but is based in the firm’s Washington office, advises on international arbitration matters. Prior to joining Dechert, he served as director of the International Affairs and Arbitration Unit for the Republic of Ecuador’s Office of the Attorney General.

Mayor Gray at his office. Photograph by Erik Uecke.

More than a year ago, just before he was inaugurated, I did a 45-minute interview with mayor-elect Vincent Gray. It covered all the usual bases but ended in a highly unusual way: He spun me around in a spontaneous demonstration of hand dancing, his favorite pastime. During that interview, Gray seemed just a bit defensive about the expectations loaded on him as the successor to Adrian Fenty, who was a charismatic leader but failed to connect with the voter base he needed—the very base who elected Gray. The year since has been a tough one for the mayor, though he won’t say so himself. Tuesday afternoon he invited me to his office for a “State of the Union of DC” interview. What struck me was his apparent self-confidence, polish, ease in the job. No defensiveness now. We did the interview with no handlers, no tape recorders—just the two of us and photographer Erik Uecke. 

We started with the day’s news of Flip Saunders being fired as the Wizards’ head coach, news we were breaking to the mayor.

As proof that the “sh*t some group of people say” meme apparently still isn’t dead, the SocialStudiesDC video “Shit People in DC Say” went viral. (Or perhaps DC viral, like DC famous?) For better or worse, we’ll admit we’ve heard or uttered most of the phrases in the video—including the opening line, “What do you do?”, which, in our defense, is used by basically all DC professionals at one point or another. Below, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite reactions to the video from local blogs.

Photograph by Flickr user Keith Allison.

Usually when you’re told you’ve been relieved of your duties, it’s just a nicer way of being told you’re fired. In this case, Flip Saunders should be truly relieved.

Relieved that he won’t have to listen to Andray Blatche complain about shooting the 17-foot jumpers for which he so readily settles. Relieved that he no longer has a front-row seat to the latest episode of the Nick and JaVale Show. Relieved that a “little league” mom won’t be able to question his abilities while anointing her son the future of the NBA. He’s free from this mess (although his son remains on the coaching staff), and he’s getting paid, to boot.

Saunders was never the right man for this job. That’s because this is not the team he was hired to coach. When he signed a four-year coaching contract in 2009, the Wizards were a veteran-laden team looking to get themselves back to the playoffs following a down year. Since then, Abe Pollin passed away, Ted Leonsis took over, and general manager Ernie Grunfeld was tasked with dismantling the roster. All of a sudden the Wizards were one of the youngest teams in the NBA, headed down a long road of rebuilding.

It’s hard to blame Saunders for what’s become of the Wizards, now the losingest team in the NBA, but it’s easy to see why he was let go. His message was lost on these players—a fact that one player openly admitted. Whether interim coach Randy Wittman fares any better is anyone’s guess. My money is on “not much.”

Wittman’s job is to stop the bleeding. If he can keep the team from doing anything too embarrassing from this point forward, it will be considered a job well done. Then he, too, will be sent on his way to make room for a new coach, who will be tasked with turning this franchise into a winner.

Idealistic (read: crazy) Wizards fans are already kicking around the idea of John Wall’s college coach, John Calipari, making his return to the NBA. I’d expect a far less splashy hire. Not a retread, but instead some experienced assistant who is ready to take the helm of a team and make it his own. Whoever he is, I wish him nothing but luck.

Photograph courtesy of Caplin & Drysdale.

It’s been a while since we last caught up with Trevor Potter, the Washington lawyer hired by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert to help the star form his super PAC. Since Potter’s first appearance on The Colbert Report last spring, what the former Federal Election Commission (FEC) chairman assumed would be a one-time thing has turned into a regular TV gig. And thanks to Colbert, Potter has landed another celebrity client: the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Jon Stewart. When Colbert decided to run for “President of the United States of South Carolina” leading up to the Republican primary in the state earlier this month, he had to give up control of his super PAC. Colbert handed the reins to Stewart, who then asked Potter to also represent him.

There is now a Facebook fan page dedicated to Potter—a Republican who has also advised Senator John McCain and former president George H.W. Bush. Potter even admits to occasionally getting recognized in public. He chats with us here about what the experience has been like. The interview has been edited for length.