It has seemed a little tougher to muster up the holiday spirit this year. Reflecting on Christmas traditions and seasonal events may help to get us in the right frame of mind.
SpongeBob SquarePants just wants to be a big guy. For our bubble-blowing, Bikini Bottom resident, that means reaching the coveted height of 36 clams tall so that he can finally ride the big roller coaster at Captain Booty Beard’s Fun Park in “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.”
Make plans for multiple productions of “The Nutcracker,” Christmas concerts throughout the suburbs, holiday light shows, markets and craft fairs and more.
Sounds of the season fill the air, including “Mannheim Steamroller Christmas” at Chicago’s James M. Nederlander Theatre, Chicago Sinfonietta in Naperville, rockabilly musician Zachary Stevenson in Schaumburg and jazz quartet The Tom-Toms in Arlington Heights.
Stand-up comedian and Naperville native Vik Pandya comes home for the holidays to headline a show at Batavia’s Comedy Vault.
You can almost smell the sweat in “The Secret Agent,” a stylish, slow burn thriller about radicals and mercenaries in 1977 Brazil. Filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho begins his film with the note that it was “a time of mischief.”
“Avatar: Fire and Ash,” at well more than three hours, is our longest stay yet on Pandora, and the one most likely to make you ponder why you came here in the first place. You can feel James Cameron’s deep devotion to the dynamics of his central characters, even when his interest outstrips our own.