Spot these California references in Barbenheimer. Some are closer than you think

Barbenheimer is upon us.

The highly marketed twin releases of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” land this week, with Thursday shows in Sacramento-area theaters. The movies about an iconic doll and the father of the atomic bomb have been linked so much as the big movies of the summer, they’re combined moniker has generated a Wikipedia entry.

They are not alike, of course. But they are linked in other ways, too.

They have driven talk about a Barbenheimer double feature and created a sense of competition — you can vote for your favorite, for example, via the tip jar at the Philz Coffee shop on R Street in midtown.

And they have California in common. Here’s a brief rundown of their geographic connections and roots.

Sacramento’s tie to ‘Barbie’

Greta Gerwig, the director of “Barbie,” “Little Women” and “Lady Bird,” was born and raised right here in California’s state capital. The Oscar-nominated film director is an alumna of St. Francis High School, an all-girls Catholic school located across the railroad tracks from Sacramento State.

Gerwig’s movie “Lady Bird,” her first cinematic feature as a solo director, was nominated for five Oscar categories in 2018 and was filmed in Sacramento, her hometown.

“It’s not literally autobiographical, but it’s close to my heart and it’s really personal,” Gerwig said during a 2017 special Sacramento screening, in an interview with Extra Butter.

The screening of “Lady Bird” was featured in Tower Theatre, Sacramento’s oldest running picture palace, which makes a small appearance in the coming-of-age film.

Although a majority of the filming for Gerwig’s “Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie, was at Watford Warner Bros. in England, the outdoor locations beyond the realms of Barbieland were filmed in Venice.

Set designs of Barbieland were also inspired by popular Palm Springs home designs, such as the Kaufmann House, originally designed by Richard Neutra in 1946. The sunny city of Los Angeles with its clear blue skies and waving palm trees has also been notorious for sporting a “Barbiecore aesthetic.”

‘Oppenheimer’ filmed in several California locales

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” starring Cillian Murphy, is a biopic which follows the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb during World War II. Oppenheimer joined UC Berkeley’s physics department in 1928 as an associate professor and was referred to as the “absentminded professor” in news accounts at the time.

Through UC Berkeley Oppenheimer was given the opportunity to join the Manhattan Project.

The Manhattan Project was a code name for the group of American scientists who designed and built the atomic bomb in the 1940s, and UC Berkeley was one of the few universities whose research contributed to the project.

Hollywood studios interrupted life on UC Berkeley’s campus in late May when they “transformed” the campus back to a style fit for the 1940s, according to Berkeley News. Kyle Gibson, director of communications for UC Berkeley’s Capital Strategies department, said it was a “pleasure” for the university to host “Oppenheimer” on their campus.

“Over the course of two days prior to filming, a set featuring vintage cars and costumes was built near prominent locations on the UC Berkeley campus, including Sather Tower and the Physics Building, the location of Robert Oppenheimer’s office during his time at UC Berkeley,” Gibson said in an email.

Other California filming locations for “Oppenheimer” are the UCLA campus, Sierra Madre and other various parts of Los Angeles.

If you go

Although advanced tickets are quickly selling out, select movie theaters still have tickets available for early screenings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” around the Sacramento area.

Cinemark Century DoCo and XD has “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” early showtime tickets for Thursday available for purchase through their website, or other services. For those willing to put in the drive to their nearest AMC theater (closest one in Brentwood), moviegoers can still look to purchase tickets for “Barbie Blowout Party: Early Screening Access” through the AMC website.

Tickets to see “Oppenheimer” at both cinematic and IMAX theaters around the Sacramento area can be found through showtimes.com.