‘CHRISTMAS ON MARS’
8 p.m., Malco Theater, Hot Springs. $5.
Wayne Coyne spent seven years making “Christmas on Mars” in his backyard in Oklahoma City. The lead singer of the psychedelic pop band the Flaming Lips, who once released a four-disc album meant to be played simultaneously, has long made bizarre theatrics a centerpiece of the group’s live shows. At the last Lips show I saw, Coyne wore a white suit, with fake blood smeared across his face, and presided over dancing people in stuffed animal costumes and giant weather balloons, while slow-mo video of topless women jogging down a beach was projected onto a screen. So it’s not surprising that critics have likened his DIY sci-fi film to a “thrift-shop ‘Solaris’” with “dashes of David Lynch” and “an echo of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” even as they’ve admitted to not quite grasping the plot particulars. Coyne stars as a green-horned Martian who dons a Santa suit. Steven Drozd, a multi-instrumentalist in the band, plays an astronaut, and Adam Goldberg, Fred Armisen and Isaac Brock make cameos. All proceeds from this one-time showing benefit the Valley of the Vapors music festival.