SANTA DAY, 2011 >>>
1. My Week with Marilyn playing at The Grand Cinema is not about hanging out with the mayor of Tacoma. The film is based on the diaries of a young man named Colin Clark, who talked his way into a lowly job on a Marilyn Monroe movie. For one troubled week, while her husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, was absent in Paris, she asked the worshipful 23-year-old kid to join her at a hideaway cottage. She was 30. Roger Ebert says of the film, "It was about her gift of her wonderfulness to a kid who stirred her sympathy. Michelle Williams evokes all the Marilyns, public and private, real and make-believe. We're probably looking at one of this year's Oscar nominees." Ebert gave it three and a halfout of four stars. Catch it at The Grand at 11:30 a.m., 1:45, 4, 6:15 and 8:35 p.m.
2. After you work your way through the Christmas tree, you can ditch the Claus-induced calories and that extra side of grits at the Franciscan Polar Plaza, which is open from noon to 6 p.m. The 40 by 100 square feet of ice is sure to be full of skate crews demonstrating their mad skillz and test-driving their recently unwrapped winter garb.
3. As the sun starts to sink on Christmas, prepare yourself for an untamed night at ZooLights Tacoma, where thousands of twinkling, animated light sculptures illuminate the nocturnal paths of the animal kingdom. Peddlers offer hot cocoa, while you ride the carousel or camels.
4. Fiddler on the Roof - back again this year at the annual Dec. 25 sing-along at the Capitol Theater - was released in 1971 and is set in 1905, but some of its themes have never felt more topical. In one scene, Perchik, the student revolutionary (played by the late Bert Convy, probably best-known as a staple on TV game shows), says to Tevye: "In this world, it is the rich who are the criminals. Someday, their wealth will be ours." The sing-along, a project of the Olympia Film Society and Temple Beth Hatfiloh, is in its eighth year, and Fiddler has been the film of choice for six of those years. Sing along at 6:30 p.m. inside the Capitol Theater.
5, Arrendadores will fill El Tenampa's large back room will various Mexican dance music beginning at 10 p.m.