Paramount Has Naughty and Nice Movies This December

To celebrate the 2012 holiday season, Austin's Paramount Theatre will be showing four movies this month. These include three of our Holiday Favorites past! (But not new Paramount programmer Stephen Jannise's Holiday Favorite, sadly for him at least.)

On the naughty list are dark comedy Bad Santa and 1980's-era classic National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, playing Sunday, Dec. 9 and Monday, Dec. 10. Agnes Varnum chose Bad Santa as her holiday favorite last year, saying "If you ever feel like commercialism and sentimentality have overtaken the holiday, Bad Santa is the cure."  Local filmmaker David Hartstein wrote about Christmas Vacation; he loves how the film "manages to pull off the near impossible feat of maintaining traditional Christmas movie sentimentality while skewering it at the same time." 

White Christmas and Holiday Inn are on the nice list (although I'd argue there are some naughty things about Holiday Inn *cough*the blackface number*cough*). White Christmas (pictured at top) is as corny as all get out, but you can bet I watch it every year. Debbie admitted in her write-up last year that "the songs and comedic writing keep me coming back to this movie time and again." While Holiday Inn isn't a film I choose to watch very often, it is worth seeing for Fred Astaire's snappy firecracker dance. This Bing Crosby double-feature shows Wednesday, Dec. 12 and Thursday, Dec. 13.

Remember that these double feature screenings mean your ticket to the first movie lets you stay for the next one. You can choose your screening dates/times and buy tickets here.