Thanksgiving delivers a box-office feast for area theaters

Arthur Christmas opens Nov. 23.

For many families the night before Thanksgiving is movie night. Whether it means pulling out the home movies and slides or a trip to the theater to see the newest holiday release, it’s a tradition that has been growing for years.

Among the holiday films opening tomorrow is “Arthur Christmas,” an action-adventure comedy set on Christmas eve, which reveals how Santa and his huge army of high-tech ‘combat elves’ can actually get round the whole world in one night.  Arthur Christmas is written by Oscar® nominated comedy writer Peter Baynham (Borat) and Britcom writer-producer-director Sarah Smith. At the heart of the film’s classic Christmas story is a family in a state of comic dysfunction and an unlikely hero: Santa’s youngest son, Arthur. When this amazing operation misses one child out of hundreds of millions of deliveries, he alone, must embark on a hilarious, exciting rogue mission against the clock with his politically incorrect grandfather Grandsanta and a gift-wrapping-obsessed elf named Bryony, to deliver the last gift before Christmas morning dawns.

To celebrate Arthur’s release and in anticipation of the holiday visits by families MJR Marketplace will present a special event featuring coloring and crafts, hot cocoa, gingerbread houses and more, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the theater located at 35400 Van Dyke Ave., in Sterling Heights.

Other family movies showing this week include: Jack and Jill (Rated: PG); Happy Feet Two (Rated: PG); Tower Heist (Rated: PG-13) and Puss in Boots (Rated: PG). Looking for great movies to rent? Check out this list of top classic holiday films:

•  It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

It's a Wonderful Life

• Miracle on 34^th Street (1947)

• White Christmas (1954)

• The Bishop’s Wife (1947

• A Christmas Carol (1951) or the version from (1984)

• A Christmas Story (1983)

• Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

• Babes in Toyland (1961)

• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

• The Polar Express (2004)

• Home Alone (1990)

• Elf (2003)

TODAY'S MUSE

Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?~ Clarence Oddbody, the angel from It's a Wonderful Life.