Holiday Season At The Cinema Arts Center – For Adults & Children

Cinema Meets Culture:  An Ongoing Series of Opera, Dance, and Concert Presentations

Monday & Wednesday, December 26 & 28 at 12 noon

SAN FRANCISCO BALLET’S THE NUTCRACKER  

Choreographed by the brilliant Helgi Tomasson, San Francisco Ballet’s magnificent production of Nutcracker is one of the world’s finest productions of the classic ballet, playing to unanimous critic acclaim and sold-out audiences each December. Set to the music of legendary great Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and conducted by one of the foremost conductors of ballet, Martin West, Nutcracker is a treasured holiday tradition for families everywhere. Watch the Nutcracker trailer

Tuesday & Friday, December 27 & 30 at 12 noon

BIRMINGHAM ROYAL BALLET’S CINDERELLA 

Beautiful, romantic and dramatic on an epic scale, a new version of the fairytale classic has been created for the Birmingham Royal Ballet as the highlight of its 20th anniversary season. Cinderella is a dazzling new visual experience from one of Britain’s leading dance talents, award winning choreographer David Bintley. Heaven meets hell when the clock strikes 12! Watch the Cinderella trailer

Children Under 12: $7.50 / Adult Public: $13 / Adult Members: $9.00 Tickets available at the Box Office, www.CinemaArtsCentre.org , or by calling 800-838-3006.

Thursday, December 29 at 12noon

SANTA’S COOL HOLIDAY FILM FESTIVAL

Featuring Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

Some holiday movies are just plain fun.   A bunch of the very rarest (and sometimes weird) Christmas filmic moments have been gathered together in Santa’s Cool Holiday Film Festival for what has to be the funkiest, silliest and least emotional movie experience you’ll have this holiday season.  Well, unless you count hysterical laughter as an emotion.

Packed with heart-warming memories, sing-a-longs, and all-around Christmas fun, this delightful two-hour show is chock-full of happy Christmas memories– vintage “Greetings From The Theater Management” ads from the 1950’s and 1960’s, two classic Max Fleischer Technicolor cartoons, wacky 1950’s shorts, a terrific bouncing ball animated sing-a-long to Jingle Bells and much more- culminates with the restored version of the hilarious 1965 retro-favorite SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS – In ‘Space Blazing’ Color!

This is a cinematic Christmas stocking, loaded with retro-cool presents of all kinds.  There are two vintage Technicolor cartoons from the brilliant Fleischer Brothers, Max and Dave – Christmas Comes But Once a Year (1936) and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1948), the first animated version of this classic tale about the outcast little deer who saves Christmas.  But there’s more! … including Christmas fun with Howdy Doody, Ozzie and Harriet, ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her hand puppet Lambchop, as well as a wonderful bunch of “Greetings From The Theater Management” trailers made for movie theatres.  It’s all sure to inspire a kind of unsettling nostalgia among Baby Boomers who’ll surely remember this when they were kids. For their kids and grandkids these mind-boggling artifacts will seem either surreal or cheesy – or both.  But that’s the real fun of this show.

The biggest, most brightly-wrapped gift under this gaudy and colorful Christmas tree is the unforgettable (even if you try) 1964 feature film, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  Kids will love it.  Of course, connoisseurs of bad B-movies consider this one of the worst, which means it’s one of the funniest.   Best known as the screen debut of famously inadequate actress/singer Pia Zadora, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a baffling mixture of sci-fi, Christmas cheer and childish slapstick, all filmed in garish (or as the poster says, “Space-Blazing”) color.  And you’ll see how important that color is when you find out that Pia plays the entire role with a bright green face. Everything in Santa’s Cool Holiday Film Festival was mastered from the best surviving prints.  These films haven’t been seen on the big screen in decades and the pictorial and sound quality are first rate.

Back when many of the movies in this amazing program were new, films were often advertised as “Fun For the Whole Family” – a perfect description for Santa’s Cool Holiday Film Festival.  Want to find out how much fun that is?  Instead of watching the same old Christmas movies on TV, hustle the whole clan down to your local theater for a delightful afternoon or evening of new Christmas memories.

Watch the trailer for Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

Children Under 12: $4.50; Adults: Members $6 /Public $10 Tickets can be purchased online, www.CinemaArtsCentre.org