Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 December 2012 - 13 December 2012

So, uh, thanks for not opening much in the way of new movies in Boston while I'm overseas, American distributors. I'll just pick up where I left off on Sunday, then.

• I saw a preview for Playing for Keeps in a London cinema, and you know what? A lot more soccer than the one I saw back in America. Funny how that works, eh (just like how the "Playbook" in "Silver Linings Playbook" is almost invisible in UK posters, presumably to hide the American football fandom)? It's got Gerard Butler as a divorced former soccer star sort of marooned in America so he'll be close to his son, with all the local soccer moms lusting for him. It's at Boston Common, Fenway, and Fresh Pond.
  
  And... That's close to it. Boston Common has evening shows of The Art of Flight 3D, which has snowboarder Travis Rice and friends snowboarding in 3D (and, you know, for spectacle, that's probably not the worst way to spend money). The multiplexes also bring back End of Watch, which seems kind of random. Weekend late shows at Boston Common, a full screen at Fenway.
• It's pretty quiet at Kendall Square, too, as they stick with likely award front-runners. Well, mostly - the single new release there, Deadfall, is a thriller featuring Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde as criminal siblings who go separate ways after a heist-gone-wrong. Not a bad supporting cast, either (Kris Kristofferson, Sissy Spacek). It's booked for one week, while Bill W. is just there for one night - Tuesday the 11th. It's a documentary about William G. Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• The Brattle has two new indies booked Friday to Sunday. My Worst Nightmare is a French romantic comedy featuring Isabelle Huppert as an uptight gallery owner and Benôit Poelvoorde as the obnoxious working-class father of her son's best friend. Sparks will fly! It plays afternoons and evenings, with the 9:45pm shift taken by The Comedy, which features Tim Heidecker as "an aging hipster with a wealthy, dying father who aimlessly wanders Brooklyn looking for some kind of connection with life". Apparently not rally a comedy. There's more independent cinema on Monday night, as actress Beth Grant stops by to introduce CineCache selection Blues for Willadean, where she plays an abused housewife looking for "liberation", and take questions afterward.
  
  For the rest of the week, it's Cinemapocalypse 2012, as the Brattle celebrates the Mayans' "prophesied" end of the world with 2012 on Tuesday, 12 Monkeys on Wednesday, and Children of Men on Thursday.
• The Coolidge has their own "end of the world" series on Friday, with Zach Snyder's 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead kicking things off Friday and Saturday at midnight; more apocalyptic movies will follow all month long. Friday will also have the monthly midnight showing of The Room, which should not be confused with The Flat, which opens in the GoldScreen for the week.
  
  There's Christmas fun to be had Saturday morning with the Kids' Show, as The Muppet Christmas Carol plays Saturday at 10:30am. Michael Caine is Scrooge, Kermit is Cratchit, and Gonzo is Charles Dickens! There's movies Sunday morning, too, with Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut Quartet (about hijinks at a musicians' retirement home) the Talk Cinema selection at 10am and Barbara (about an East German surgeon exiled to a small village when she attempts to move west in the 1980s) is the Goethe-Institut selection at 11am. There's more special program on Monday at 7pm, as physicist Peter Fisher talks Tesla and wireless power before a Science on Screen presentation of The Prestige. They also appear to have a preview of Gus Van Sant's new film with Matt Damon, John Krasinski, and Frances McDormand, Promised Land, a relatively conventional-looking environmental drama.
• It's a short weekend at The Harvard Film Archive, with just the touring retrospective Jan Švankmajer, Conspirator of Pleasure on the schedule. It includes a collection of shorts (Saturday 7pm), Conspirators of Pleasure (Saturday 9pm), Alice (Sunday 5pm), and Little Otik (Sunday 7pm).
• The MFA finishes its run of Neighboring Sounds, with the Brazillian film showing once per day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at various times; on Wednesday, they switch it up for Wagner and Me, with Stephen Fry exploring his fondness for the German composer's music, despite its association with Nazism. It will be running once a day until the 16th.
• Bollywood action-comedy-musical Khiladi 786 opens at Fresh Pond with Akshay Kumar in a story that, if I read the synopsis right, involves a matchmaker arranging a marriage between a gangster's daughter and a cop, only to find out that the cop and his family are con-men. It shares the screen with held-over thriller Talaash.

My plans? Well, who knows? Sunday will probably involve trying to avoid falling asleep as I have five extra hours inserted into my day, so maybe something that involves explosions (checks schedule, notes it is really explosion-deficient). I've got Lincoln, Hitchcock, and plenty more to try and catch up on, and will probably try to make Blues for Willadean on Monday, depending how much has piled up on my desk after a week away from the office.