Best Bets

Family

TubaChristmas. A community concert featuring 100 regional tuba, sousaphone, and euphonium players performing carols, at noon today at the Kimmel Center.

Shopping for a Cause. At its Center City shop tomorrow, the nonprofit Ten Thousand Villages partners with Women in Transition to help women endangered by domestic violence and substance abuse. About 15 percent of the proceeds tomorrow will be donated to Women in Transition.

Film

New this week: Avatar ***1/2 A technological marvel, James Cameron's mega-expensive film is also a whole lot of fun: A gamer generation's Dances With Wolves, with a human soldier (and his avatar) falling in love with a blue-skinned alien from the planet Pandora. 2 hr. 41 PG-13 (violence, aggressive action, alien beasts, adult themes).

- Steven Rea