(Photo: photographs: Joey L./Courtesy of lifetime (the red tent); Danny Feld/courtesy of The CW (Jane the Virgin); Courtesy of Rialto Pictures/BFI Stills/film forum (the passionate thief); Suzanne Tenner/courtesy of relativity media (beyond the lights); patrick mcmullan (carey))

Pop
1. See Mariah Carey
Return of the elusive chanteuse.
All respect to Nat “King” Cole, but “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the biggest holiday standard going, and Mariah’s Christmas show is coming to town for five nights. Multiple costume ­changes guaranteed. —Lindsay Zoladz
Beacon Theatre, December 15, 16, 18, 20, and 21.

Film
2. See Miss Julie
Class struggle and pain.
A sexy pair—Jessica Chastain and Colin ­Farrell—tackle Strindberg’s psychodrama under Liv Ullmann’s direction. The tempo is slow for my taste, but the simmering close-ups compensate. One of the most audacious duets ever ­written. —David Edelstein
In theaters December 5

Film
3 & 4. See The Hip Hop Nutcracker and Then The Nutcracker
Daring to be different.
These two Nuts part from tradition in meaningful ways. Jennifer Weber’s reinterpretation brings in a DJ and an MC to augment a live chamber orchestra and digital scenery. Alexei Ratmansky’s version for American Ballet Theatre may have the trappings of classical ballet, but twists on the ­story, like a dreamy look at grown-up Clara and her prince, make it fresh. —Rebecca Milzoff
United Palace Theater, December 7, and BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, December 12 through 21.

Books
5. Read The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
Punch in the gut.
For fans, this posthumous fruit of the pugilist-novelist’s letter-writing habit—716 out of almost 50,000—is indispensable. For anyone interested in the intellectual battles of the recent past, it’s highly informative. And for the rest, it’s a surprisingly subtle document of an unsubtle man’s wit and erudition. —Boris Kachka
Random House

TV
6. Watch Peter Pan Live!
Girl as boy.
The practiced theater-onscreen producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are in charge of this event, channeling the Mary Martin buzz of old. Christopher Walken plays Captain Hook, and Allison Williams of Girls is Peter. Must-see; train-wreck potential is great. —Matt Zoller Seitz
NBC, December 4, 8 p.m.

Art
7. See North American Mammals
Mad for plaid.
In Moby Dick (Merrilees), an epic 28-foot painting of a plaid-clad white whale, painter Sean Landers yields up the full volume of artistic angst, hubris, desire, and anxiety. Filling out this show are pictures of other enplaided mammals, plus a fantastic library touching on the unquenchable drive to make art. —Jerry Saltz
Petzel Gallery, through December 20.

Theater
8. See My Favorite Year
Your show of shows.
In 1992, between the successes of Once on This Island and Ragtime, songwriters Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens had a flop with their adaptation of the 1982 film comedy. Musicals in Mufti exhumes the show, with Douglas Sills as a drunk movie star, Adam Chanler-Berat as his awestruck young minder, and Leslie Kritzer as Alice Miller, the role that won Andrea Martin a Tony. —Jesse Green
York Theatre Company at St. Peter’s, December 5 through 7.

Theater
9. See The Ambassador
Gabriel Kahane loves L.A.
The singer-songwriter-composer-pianist takes a musical cruise around Los Angeles, stopping for architectural commentary, historical anecdotes, notes on movie locations, and a postapocalyptic reverie or two, all in his sweet-and-serrated conversational style. —Justin Davidson
BAM Harvey Theater, December 10 through 13.

TV
10. Watch The Red Tent
Getting biblical. Based on Anita Diamant’s best-selling novel, this mini-series tells the Old Testament story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah. The cast includes Minnie Driver, Morena Baccarin, Debra Winger, Iain Glen, and, as Dinah, The White Queen’s ­Rebecca Ferguson. —M.Z.S.
Lifetime, December 7 and 8 at 9 p.m.

Film
11. Watch The Sturgeon Queens
Would it kill you to see it?
A sweet documentary about Russ & Daughters and its place in Lower East Side history. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hall-of-fame-level Jewish grandmother, makes an appearance.
WLIW, December 3, 7:30 p.m.; Thirteen, December 7, 2:30 p.m.

Dance/TV
12. Watch the School of American Ballet on Live From Lincoln Center
Stars of tomorrow.
SAB’s Workshop Performances—the annual showcase for new graduates before they turn pro—are largely parents-only affairs, but for their 50th anniversary, PBS airs this year’s all-Balanchine program. —R.M.
Channel 13, December 14 at 12:30 p.m.

Theater
13. Join ShakesBeer
All my fame for a pot of ale.
The growing Bard-plus-booze genre stumbles forward with New York Shakespeare Exchange’s final pub crawl of 2014, featuring scenes from three plays (The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and Much Ado About Nothing) at three Upper East Side bars, then a mash-up of drunken wooing at a fourth. —J.G.
Starting at Bailey’s Corner Pub, December 6.

TV
14. Watch Jane the Virgin
Immaculate concept.
An English-language telenovela about a virgin who’s accidentally inseminated and impregnated is a tough sell; happily, there’s a decency to the genuinely optimistic characters, the love stories are darling, and the show puts a winky spin on its format.
The CW, Mondays, 9 p.m.

Classical/Music
15. See tears become …streams become …
Water music.
Artist Douglas Gordon can’t be the first to walk into the colossal Drill Hall and think how great it would be to flood the thing with water. Unlike the rest of us, he actually gets to do it. Pianist Hélène Grimaud turns the aquatic-architectural work into a multimedia installation with water-themed music, nightly for ten days. —J.D.
Park Avenue Armory, December 9.

Books
16. Read Smuggler’s Blues
High times.
Richard Stratton, ’70s ex-con leader of the drug-smuggling “hippie mafia” turned filmmaker and editor, tells his entertainingly compelling life story.
Serialized on quietlunch.com.

Film
17. See Beyond the Lights
True romance.
In Gina Prince-Bythewood’s deftly filmed love story, a pop superstar (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) falls for the hunky cop (Nate Parker) who saved her from a suicide attempt. That set-up could go in some obvious directions, but Prince-Bythewood keeps her characters and situations grounded in the real world, reminding us what a great romantic drama looks like. —Bilge Ebiri
In theaters.

Pop
18. See Parquet Courts
Brooklyn punk-poets. The prolific foursome released both the jangly, tuneful Sunbathing Animal, and—under disguise as Parkay Quarts—the slightly more sonically adventurous Content Nausea this year. They’ll likely play songs from both when they headline Webster Hall for the first time. —L.Z.
Webster Hall, December 11.

Art
19. See Thread Lines
Sewing as sketching.
Artists draw with needle, thread, or fabric, resulting in creations like Sam Moyer’s menacing Worry Rug made from distressed Ikea carpets dipped in black encaustic and Anne Wilson’s dizzying Day-Glo centerpiece.
The Drawing Center, through December 14.

Classical Music-Comedy
20. Hear Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy)
Always look on the bright side of life.
The Collegiate Chorale offers Eric Idle and John Du Prez’s comic oratorio, based on Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Ted Sperling leads the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with dignified solo contributions from Idle, Marc Kudisch, Victoria Clark, and Lauren Worsham. —J.G.
Carnegie Hall, December 15 and 16.

Pop
21. Hear Migos
A-Town trio.
These family members from Atlanta cracked the national radar with their 2013 mix tape, YRN, earning co-signs from Drake and Q-Tip. The group’s new mix tape, Rich Nigga Timeline, combines thumping beats, intricate wordplay, and timely ad-libs on 18 tracks.
Free download at DatPiff.

Film
22. See The Passionate Thief
In a restored print.
It’s a treat to see Mario Monicelli’s little-known 1960 romp in a theater; often regarded as a burlesque of La Dolce Vita—it’s certainly more fun—it has more emotional heft than the usual caper farce owing to a tinge of melancholy. —D.E.
Film Forum, December 5 through 11.

Opera
23. See El Gato Con Botas
Curling up for a week.
Gotham Chamber Opera is catlike: roving, lean, fiercely independent. In its production of Montsalvatge’s melodiously charming version of Puss in Boots, the cat has an entourage: an agile puppet silently mouthing the words, a singer to verbalize them, and a pair of black-clad puppeteers literally manipulating events. —J.D.
El Museo del Barrio, December 6 through 14.

Art
24. See Francesco Clemente
Set up camp.
I haven’t thought about this 1980s sensation much since the 1980s, and while this show isn’t a comeback exactly, it does find Clemente bringing the full quiver of his painterly gifts, gorgeous color, and washy touch in two full-size painted nomadic tents. We walk in and are whisked away to fantasylands, to other realities of life and ways of painting. —J.S.
Mary Boone Gallery, through December 20.

Books
25. Read Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?
To get into Andrew Lawler’s book.
The planet’s most populous and edible bird really does open a window on civilization, evolution, capitalism, and ethics. (Reading about it is lots of fun, too.) —B.K.
Atria