It was a magical snowfall, a too-long-deferred bliss. It was the kind of beautiful fib one finds only in a theater. Little white flakes were whipping around, then drifting down on the finale of onstage at the Buell Theatre.
Returning to an unseasonably balmy Denver evening afterward was confusing.
What a strange month, December. And not because the climate has been stingy with the stuff of Christmases past. No, this is a month that speaks to how different the worlds of movies and theater can be.
If you spend this time taking in local theater, you’re likely to have sugar plums, strings of popcorn and twinkly lights dancing in your head.
The movies’ idea of December fare is, to put it mildly, different. If you visit the arthouse — even the multiplex — you are in for the stuff, if not of nightmares, of burdened moods. I wouldn’t call this month’s films lumps of coal. Hardly. A number of them are Top 10 fodder. But they can, even intend to, put you in a mood.
Families flock to theaters during the holiday. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing them laughing and smiling at the and the Arvada Center’s “Miracle on 34th Street, the Musical.” Their wee ones have donned their finery for “White Christmas” but also the pleasing family standard “The Sound of Music” at .
In Colorado Springs, TheaterWorks is putting on a show with a revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s classic And Breckenridge’s Backstage Theatre is doing a puppet version of Let’s not forget the chestnut of all seasonal chestnuts:
Anyone who knows these shows — and almost all of us do, either as plays, though more likely as movies first — knows they come bearing messages. It’s only that they nudge you more kindly, more gently to reconsider lessons you’ve been hearing for years, but perhaps been ignoring in the stressful run-up to the holidays. I still make it a point to read Dickens’ holiday tale or listen to .
But December is also the final month to qualify for Oscar. The stretch from late September until New Year’s has seen a calender increasingly laden with films willing to engage the rough realities of the world. (Summer is Hollywood’s version of the family season.) It’s an odd month when the battle-bloated “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is the No. 1 family offering?
What’s opening Christmas Day? Tarantino and Christmas in the same sentence, who’da thunk it? The retribution tale follows a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) and the ex-slave he hires (Jamie Foxx) on a quest to find and free the former slave’s wife (Kerry Washington). Leonardo DiCaprio portrays a savvy plantation owner and Samuel L. Jackson his most trusted house slave.
Too dark for you? Well, there’s a sweet, little musical about the years directly following the French Revolution Hugh Jackman portrays Jean Valjean, the ex-prisoner who makes a new life for himself again and again as the overly righteous Javert (Russell Crowe) hounds him. Two days later Gus Van Sant and Matt Damon’s fracking drama .
Of course there are exceptions. The third film opening Christmas day will be the family-tilted comedy starring Billy Crystal and Bette Midler as grandparents in charge of their three grandkids.
And there are productions around town cheerily bent on gnawing some of the icing off the holiday cookie: “The SantaLand Diaries.” The winkingly titled comedy “Santa’s Big Red Sack” is .
Still, if not for the fact that movie studios need only to open their films in New York and Los Angeles before Jan. 1 for Academy Award consideration, the divide between theater and the moviehouse fare would be even more stark.
Among the chipper Oscar hopefuls that will have already opened — and will open locally in January: perfectly crafted, tenderly wrenching drama about an aging husband and wife facing her demise. as a couple vacationing in Thailand with their three young sons when the tsunami of 2004 hits. And then there’s this week’s front-runner for best picture, .
We Coloradans might want to express a little gratitude that these films come to us a little spaced out. Or just take advantage of our robust holiday options and mix movie’s djarring with theater’s djolly.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
