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Medium Cool – All Things Snow!

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Medium Cool – All Things Snow!

I think we’ve already had more snow this year than in all of 2024 combined.  For me, snow is the only redeeming thing about winter, so I am definitely not complaining!

For the past week, when I’m at the computer I have a wall of windows in front of me that shows me snow, snow, snow.

So tonight, let’s talk about all things snow.  Books, movies, TV, poetry, even music – though I might personally argue that snow in holiday songs is kind of schlocky, anything goes.  I am not an opera person, but maybe there’s an opera out there where snow is part of the story?  (Not sure how you’d pull of the snow on stage, though, so maybe not?)

Since I love snow, I love it when snow is an integral to the plot line of books and shows.  In the written word, I love mysteries where everyone is snowed in and there’s something afoot.

Please don’t just list books or shows or whatever that are snow related.  If it’s a poem, share it if you can, but either way, please talk about it.  For books and TV and films, tell us how the snow fits into the plot line, why or how it’s effective, what you like about it, etc.

As always, with the suggestions above I’m not trying to limit what you talk about, just trying to share some ideas to help get things rolling.

Okay, let’s jump right in!

In case you are new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.

Reader Interactions

164Comments

  1. 1.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I just got inside from walking the hound through the flurries adding to the the several inches already on the ground.  It got me thinking about rewatching “The Shining” in its entirety.  One of my favorite movies and one of the creepiest snow scenes ever.

  2. 2.

    ArchTeryx

    I name The Thing and The Shining (book and movie) whose main events take place in snowy conditions (in both cases, a blizzard preventing the protagonists from escaping deadly foes, foes which could disguise themselves as protagonists. The end of The Thing is one of the greatest winter scenes of any horror movie.

    Two protagonists sitting and facing each other in the middle of an Antarctic winter.

    They are both going to freeze to death… And that’s the OPTIMISTIC ending.

    The other one is that one of them is a disguised Thing. And even if neither man is, neither could ever trust the other.

    So they sit in the snow, surrounded by the burning remains of their outpost, and the main just says, “Let’s just sit here a while. See what happens.” The other offers a bottle of vodka which they share.

    End of movie.

    I need not describe the intense, horrifying maze scene in the middle of the night after a monster snowstorm, with the protagonist and her kid trying desperately to outmaneuver a psychopath with an 🪓 hunting them in the maze.

    Zootopia 2 even had a giant honking reference to it, complete with psychopathic enemy. Then they completely subvert the whole scene in a brilliant way.

  3. 3.

    Trivia Man

    Influential childhood book for me – The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I lived in suburbia California, the book was set in a snowy inner city with all black characters. Nobody ever pointed out the race and i didn’t notice it. It was just a kid having a magical snow experience.

    It was 20 years later that i saw the book and realized it was all black people and recognized how unusual that was in my experiences. I had vivid and strong memories of the pictures, if asked to describe them i certainly would becable to identify them as african american. But at 5? He was a kid just like me except he had snow.

  4. 4.

    MagdaInBlack

    I love you, WaterGirl, but as I sit here looking out at the frozen wasteland of NW Chicagoland, I do not wish to talk of snow.

    I’ll just read along tho =-)

    ( I am happy it happened (again) on the weekend and not Monday morning)

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    @MagdaInBlack: I’m sorry, I guess that to say you don’t share my love of snow would be an understatement

    edit: If there’s a book or a movie or a song that you hate because of snow, talk about that!

    Surely you’re not fond of Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow?

  6. 6.

    MagdaInBlack

    @WaterGirl: I love it from a distance, and my theory is that were I well off enough to not HAVE to go out if I did not want to, I would love it more ;-)

  7. 7.

    Trivia Man

    Based on something I read on this very blog last week I went to see Hundreds of Beavers this week. Indie film, funny, filmed in Wisconsin, snow snow snow and bitter cold weather. More detailed review upon request. Recommended with qualifications.

  8. 8.

    eclare

    For American movies that feature snow, you can’t get better than Fargo.  The landscape in Minnesota is so bleak and ominous, plus the entirety of how one of the initial crimes went down is recorded because the footprints, etc are in the snow.

    I cannot resist:  the tan Sierra!

  9. 9.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MagdaInBlack:

    I love you, WaterGirl, but as I sit here looking out at the frozen wasteland of NW Chicagoland, I do not wish to talk of snow.

    I’ll just read along tho =-)

    No interest in NE Chicago either.

    Though the snowstorm during today’s Cincinnati-Buffalo game was great to watch.

  10. 10.

    Yet Another Haldane

    Peter Hoeg’s novel Smilla’s Sense of Snow is terrific.  (The movie is OK, I guess, but not in the same league, starting with the miscasting of Julia Ormond as Smilla.)  The title character is sympathetic, despite being very prickly.  The mystery is really weird but makes its own kind of sense.  And Smilla, originally from Greenland, really does know a lot about snow, despite having been displaced to Copenhagen.

    Demands patience and repays the effort of repeated reading.  I know because I just read it for the third time a couple of months ago.

    For movies, Fargo is, of course, unbeatable.  But downstream from Fargo and off the beaten path is Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter starring Rinko Kikuchi as a disaffected, lonely Japanese woman who decides that Fargo really is a documentary, and that suitcase of cash is out there somewhere for her to find.

  14. 14.

    Judas

    Snow discussions always remind me of two snowy things from the early 1980s: The Pretenders song “2000 Miles” (recommended) and cocaine (not recommended).

  15. 15.

    WaterGirl

    @Trivia Man: Qualifications?  Do we have to get certification before we can see it? :-)

    Seriously , I would be happy to hear why its’ a qualified recommendation.

  19. 19.

    piratedan

    as far as snow goes, when I was visiting my mother and her second husband in Oregon for the holidays, on our way back to Portland to catch our flight home, we had to pull over at Multinomah Falls National Park while they cleared I94 thru the Columbia River Gorge.  The park was pretty much deserted, the falls one huge icicle formation with the spray that way falling from the river crystalizing into ice from the observation points.  The boys managed to start a snowball fight in the parking lot.  Took a few minutes inside the lodge to hit them up for some hot chocolate by the fire.  Felt like everything at that moment was just like it was out of a Hallmark Holiday movie.

    as for a piece of music coupled with an image, I’ve always favored this using a work from Enya…

    youtube.com/watch?v=iMyo8I8AKmY

    as for snow as a literary character, I like Jo Nesbo’s books set in Norway, Nordic Noir is a thing.

  20. 20.

    BellaPea

    For some reason, I have had a Steely Dan soundtrack running through my mind today and the song that came up in relation to this topic was Snowbound on Donald Fagin’s solo album. I also thought about the New Year’s Eve scene in the first Sex and the City movie where Carrie is trying to get across town to Miranda to comfort her. Boo on me, I know, but SATC was good while it lasted.

  21. 21.

    JetsamPool

    Did someone say opera?  As far as I know, Catalani’s La Wally, set in the Tyrolean Alps, is the only opera to feature death by avalanche.

    In Mussorgsky’s song cycle Songs and Dances of Death, the song Trepak is about freezing to death in a blizzard.

    I’m sensing a theme here.

    The snow we got last week was melting over the weekend, leaving everything wet or muddy, then icy when it cooled off again.

  22. 22.

    eclare

    I googled about movies with snow, yes I cheated, and the results tell me that Winter’s Bone qualifies.  I don’t remember snow so much as a cold bleakness, which permeated every scene.  But what a performance by Jennifer Lawrence.

    I also saw the author who wrote the book that the script was based upon died this week.

  23. 23.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    One of Agatha Christie’s masterpiece murders is Murder on the Orient Express, which has snow as a major plot point. The train is stopped for three days after the murder, because of major snow blocking the tracks, which gives Poirot time to solve the murder with Christie’s patented closed circle of suspects.

    Also her endlessly running London play The Mousetrap is set in a rural manor house, with once again a closed circle of suspects snow-bound, although a detective does arrive vis skis!

  24. 24.

    Kristine

    @MagdaInBlack: @mrmoshpotato:

    More NE Illinois when will  it stop here.

    I honestly can deal if I don’t have to drive in it. But we’ve had a little too much a little too quickly.

    A few years ago, I listened to a BBC radio version of The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Classic YA fantasy. Really good. Lots of snow, since it takes place during the Christmas season.

    Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies was the first Discworld book I read. I thought the character who spoke IN ALL CAPS was just some wizard.

    Anyway, there’s snow. And elves. Not the Santa kind.

    Also looking forward to my annual viewing of “Scrooge” with Alastair Sim in the title role. The best version of A Christmas Carol afaic.

  26. 26.

    eclare

    For a happy, somewhat, movie with snow and ice fishing, I give you Beautiful Girls.  It’s set somewhere upstate NY around a college reunion, although why that would be in the winter is bizarre.

    The snow doesn’t play much of a part except when Michael Rappoport plows the snow against his ex’s garage door.

    Amazing cast:  Timothy Hutton, Uma Thurmon, Michael Rappoport, Matt Dillon, Mira Sorvino, and a very, very young Natalie Portman, who stole every scene.

  27. 27.

    Nelle

    My husband is reading The Great Alone aloud to me (I’ve got a lot of crocheting to do).  Has anyone else read it.  It takes place in what we thought of as southern Alaska (we lived in Kaktovik and Fairbanks).  I sure remember seeing the summer frenzy to get ready for winter).

  29. 29.

    HopefullynotCassandra

    @Yet Another Haldane: Absolutely agree on Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, the novel.  There is a new series too starting Fillipa Costar-Waldau that I am hoping will come soon to a streaming service I can use.

  30. 30.

    kalakal

     

    @ArchTeryx:

    I name The Thing and The Shining (book and movie) whose main events take place in snowy conditions (in both cases, a blizzard preventing the protagonists from escaping deadly foes, foes which could disguise themselves as protagonists 

    It’s also a staple of classic English Murder Mysteries. Country house/tiny village cut off by snowstorm etc…

    Christie used it a few times notably in The Mousetrap the longest running play in history – it opened in 1952 and is still going.

    It’s great fun to go and see, everyone gets really into it

  32. 32.

    RSA

    @Yet Another Haldane:  Peter Hoeg’s novel Smilla’s Sense of Snow is terrific.

    Agreed. That was the first novel that came to my mind for this theme. Another in the same genre of mystery/detective story/(maybe thriller?) was Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park, set during winter in Moscow. I got a sense of bitter coldness throughout.

  34. 34.

    Scout211

    One of my all-time favorite books:

    The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

    A review:

    In her haunting, evocative debut, Eowyn Ivey stakes her claim to a Russian fairy tale, daring the reader–and the characters–to be lulled into thinking they know the ending. But, as with the Alaskan wilderness, there’s far more here than meets the eye. On the surface it’s the story of a childless pioneer couple running from their East Coast lives and struggling to survive in the harshest of climates while also attempting to reconnect with each other; but it’s also the story of the spring of hope that bubbles out of new friendships, of the slow realization of love for a surrogate child, of the ties between man and nature. Ivey spares no words in describing the beauty and the danger of her native Alaska, bringing the sheer magnitude of the wilderness alive on every page. With the transparent prose of a fairy tale and descriptions to put most nature writing to shame, The Snow Child immerses readers in a 1920s Alaska that will draw them back again and again.

  36. 36.

    kalakal

    As a kid I loved the film Ice Station Zebra – Patrick McGoohan, Rock Hudson investigating muderous Cold War antics around the North Pole

  37. 37.

    MagdaInBlack

    @WaterGirl: In a past life, when my husband and his brother were doing snowplowing “Let It Snow” was their theme song .

    I sent you a “proof of pretty snow” picture.

  40. 40.

    Albatrossity

    I have never been a fan of snow, and as I age, less of a fan every year. I spent a sabbatical semester at the University of Utah, and lived up in Park City with a former student and her family and the cats and dogs. I am pretty sure that it snowed every day I was there; I know for certain that it was snowing when I arrived in January and snowing on the day that I left in mid-May. Nope, nope, and nope. Sorry, WaterGirl, but I’m glad you got your snow in abundance there!

    But I do agree with ArchTeryx that the snow scene at the end of The Thing is cinema gold!

  42. 42.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    One of my favorite movie quotes from “Better off Dead.”    “This is pure now!  It’s everywhere!  Do have any idea what the street value of this mountain is?”

  43. 43.

    coin operated

    I cannot ski anymore (knees are shot) but I still live for the Warren Miller ski prOn films that come out every winter. He’s gone, but his legacy lives on through his production company.

  45. 45.

    Just look at that parking lot

    There is a originalTwilight Zone episode titled Night of the Meek. It stars Art Carney as a department store Santa who gets fired for drinking of the job. Walking thru an alley he comes across a magical bag that contains whatever gift someone asks for. Most of it takes place in what’s made to look like a very poor part of town, with everyone looking kinda ragtag. They’re the meek that in the title. Lots of snow falling the whole episode.
    It might seems a bit gooey for a Twilight Zone, but it’s an excellent episode. I wish they’d show this on a continuous loop some holiday time. Give that A Christmas Story  a break for a while. Sorry Ralphie.

  46. 46.

    currants

    @Yet Another Haldane:

    YES! I loved that book and I am not a mystery/suspense book person at ALL; really enjoyed how deeply integral language was to … all of it.

    Another one I loved was Snow Falling on Cedars.. I think the movie wasn’t bad, but the book was wonderful.  Echoes of…who am I kidding, no echoes at all, we’re still here.

  48. 48.

    Scamp Dog

    This is a video I made in 2007 with my first phone that had a camera. It has my border collie running around the dog park with a boxer and a German shepherd. Since it was a 2007 phone, it’s 176 by 144 pixels, at 12 frames a second. But I like to see her running around and hear her bark now and again, so I watch it every so often.

  49. 49.

    NeenerNeener

    The latest season of True Detective was all about weird things going on in a town called Ennis in Alaska. Being snowed in is used pretty much the same as in The Thing.

  52. 52.

    currants

    @Nelle: ​
      Yes, I’ve read it. Highly recommended by my 80-something aunt at the time, and I found it very difficult to get through. Not just the sense of isolation, but the domestic violence that compounds that isolation is overwhelming at times. (Your mileage may vary…)

  54. 54.

    UncleEbeneezer

    The most recent season of True Detective took place in Alaska so the snow/cold was a pretty big character in the show.  It wasn’t the best TD season and had it’s flaws, but the dark, snowy vibe was excellent.

    The Terror (Season One) was another gripping series that plays out in the Arctic Circle so the snow/cold is really well used for tension/fear.

    We just rewatched Force Majeure (the foreign film) and it is not only one of the best dark comedies (to the point where you will get VERY uncomfortable) in recent years but the snow is absolutely essential to the plot, suspense and tension.

    For Nordic Noir, the series Rebecka Martinsson was really excellent and I remember the snow playing a big part of it.  Also, Beartown which is a Swedish hockey drama (TW: about sexual assault) and the almost suffocating dark/cold is really well used.

    And finally on a much lighter note, the comedy series Letterkenny is a hilarious and weird comedy set in rural Canada so hockey and snow are prominent.  Warning: you will probably need a translator or to use closed captions because they use all kinds of Canuck slang that can be tough to decipher.

  57. 57.

    currants

    @eclare: ​
      “although why that would be in the winter is bizarre.” Well, I don’t know the school, but some of them have a cohort that begins in January, and those folks might have winter reunion (Middlebury VT is one)

  61. 61.

    stinger

    Not a fan of snow (especially the 5 inches we got last night, on top of the previous 14), but lots of movies and books with great snow scenes.

    Movies:

    The Bodyguard: one of my guilty favorites, Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, neither of whom I care for, but also Ralph Waite and Bill Cobbs, whom I do — and the singing is great.

    Iceman: Timothy Hutton thaws the remains of a Neanderthal, who turns out to be still alive and trying to communicate with people from a culture 40,000 years later than his own.

    Remember the Night [waves at zhena): Petty thief Barbara Stanwyck tries to stay out of jail over the holidays, and ends up spending them with assistant DA Fred MacMurray and his family. Beulah Bondi and Elizabeth Patterson just make this film.

    Books:

    Anne of Green Gables, many wonderful snow scenes

    All the Three Pines/Inspector Gamache books, set in Quebec so plenty of snow

  63. 63.

    Splitting Image

    Spellbound, by Alfred Hitchcock, hinges around an extended scene at a ski lodge. Great performances by Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, and a stunning last scene.

    The Gold Rush, by Chaplin, obviously qualifies, as it is set in the Alaska Gold Rush. Among many other scenes, the movie depicts Chaplin and another miner trapped in a cabin during a blizzard and hanging precariously over a cliff.

    Snow was always a great inspiration for Calvin and Hobbes, even though Calvin’s snowmen had a tendency to come to life and attack him. “You don’t like my ‘Snowman House of Horrors’?” he says innocently to his mother.

  66. 66.

    MikeInOly

    @Trivia Man:
    How funny to come across your comment. I just saw Hundreds Of Beavers a few weeks ago as our local art house cinema had a special showing of it. I had never heard of it before, but it sounded fun and I found it available on Amazon for rent. It was amazing! We enjoyed it so much. Did not stop laughing the whole time. What a romp! And it all takes place in snow. If you haven’t seen it, it is absurdist comedy in the style of old Warner Bros. cartoons or crazy silent film comedies. It is surreal and crazy and so much fun. I am not a fan of snow (hence why I fled central Illinois for the warm climes of WA), but I do enjoy seeing it up in the mountains. It was well sued in this film to set scene, tone and brighten an otherwise black and white world.

  67. 67.

    trollhattan

    Can’t talk snow and skip Yellowjackets.

    There was this Altman movie Quintet. Bergman’s Winter Light. Any film/novel involving Battle of the Bulge. Helprin’s Winter’s Tale. Various Jack London pieces.

    Where’s our damn sun??? [editor]

  68. 68.

    stinger

    @stinger: ​
     Also a wonderful 1991 Norwegian film, The Polar Bear King: some elements of King Lear and The Snow Queen.
    For the matter of that, The Snow Queen (Hans Christian Andersen).

  69. 69.

    dnfree

    Ursula K Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” has one of the most harrowing snow journeys I’ve ever read.

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    @MikeInOly:

    Stumbled across it on whatever streaming service. Holy cow, okay, no cows, was that quirky.

    Fargo has probably been cited. But Fargo. Okay then.

  73. 73.

    pluky

    @dnfree: Well the alternative name for Gethen is Winter.

    This book kept me company on the long flight from California to my dad’s next duty station in Japan.

  74. 74.

    frosty

    @trollhattan: ​ Battle of the Bulge. I remember seeing Walter Cronkite’s Twentieth Century when I was very young and watching the scenes in the snow. For quite awhile I thought that was what people were talking about when they mentioned the Cold War.

  77. 77.

    Miss Bianca

    @Trivia Man: I loved that about A Snowy Day, because so few of the kids’ books I read at that time had Black characters. And it was just so understated and matter-of-fact in the pictorial presentations that, like you, I never really thought about it at all in a conscious way till years later.

  81. 81.

    RandyG

    The outro to Simon & Garfunkel’s “A Hazy Shade of Winter”:

    I look around, leaves are brown
    And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

    Look around, leaves are brown
    There’s a patch of snow on the ground

    Look around, leaves are brown
    There’s a patch of snow on the ground

  82. 82.

    PSQ

    May I suggest some movies.

    Whiteout with Kate Beckinsale.  Murder in Antarctica.  No holding back on severe conditions.

    Into the White, survival by co-operation and based on a real story.  Also shows Rupert Grint can act.

    Arctic, with Mads Mikkelsen.

    The Mountain Between Us, another survival movie (anyone else catch the airplanes and winter theme yet?)

    Avoid The Grey if you can.  Beautiful scenery, but complete BS as far as wolves, or survival is concerned.

    You can tell Robin Williams film The Big White is filmed in cold weather, but not one of his best.

    No coincidence 4 of the above were filmed in Canada, whole or in parts.  Yet all portray other regions (Alaska twice, Norway, Greenland and Antarctica).

    For books, Alistair MacLean’s Night Without End hit the right tone when I was young.  Greenland again.

    But for the season, Manhatten Transfer’s Snowfall is always my first Christmas song, even though it isn’t a Christmas song.

    SNOWFALL – MANHATTAN TRANSFER

  83. 83.

    pajaro

    Snow indoors.

    One of the things that top shelf opera houses will do is have snow fall during important scenes set in Winter.  There was a Zeferelli staing of La Boheme, set in Paris in the Winter, that included snow falling for a whole scene.  There was also a staging of Boris Godunov, set in part during a Moscow winter, where the staging called for snow during a crowd scene.

  84. 84.

    Miss Bianca

    So, I just watched White Christmas for the first time ever a week or so ago, and as it happens (because I was previewing it for my theater, we were showing it as a free movie for our Small Town Saturday event), I ended up seeing it twice.

    For anyone who *doesn’t* know, one of the major plot points is that the gang is up in Vermont in the winter and there’s NO SNOW, gasp! It’s 68 degrees in December!

    But now *this* damn ode to snow from that movie is stuck in my head!

  85. 85.

    kalakal

    McCabe and Mrs. Miller looked amazing with the snowed in mining town, it’s a good film too, with Julie Christie and Warren Beatty.

    Julie Christie also  had several great snowy scenes in Dr Zhivago, espescially the frozen lodge, with David Lean filming it as an ice palace.

    Scott of the Antarctic (1948) is, if you can get past the stiff upper lip, “We’re British, dammit!” actually a rather good film. first rate cinematography, an excellent cast – John Mills, Derek Bond, Diana Churchill, Kenneth More, James Robertson Justice – and score by Vaughn Williams. It’s also pretty accurate.

    If you really want to know what it was like read The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard who was on the expedition. It really is incredible, IMHO the best travel book ever written. It’s astonishing  what humans can survive

  87. 87.

    RandyG

    @RandyG: And I just realized that Si & Gar’s “I Am a Rock” also mentions snow:

    A winter’s day
    In a deep and dark December
    I am alone
    Gazing from my window
    To the streets below
    On a freshly fallen, silent shroud of snow

  89. 89.

    CliosFanboy

    1. Was anyone else bored watching “Frozen”??

    2. When i think of ice and snow in movies, you can’t beat The Great Race.

  90. 90.

    RandyG

    @kalakal: I just might give Scott of the Antarctic another try on your recommendation. I started watching it a few months ago and couldn’t get past about 10 minutes. Vaughan Williams score…. I’ll have to pay more attention to that!

  91. 91.

    Netto

    @kalakal: I was going to mention Ice Station Zebra.  I was a huge fan of Alastair MacLean novels in junior high school, although I’d hesitate to say so in my real name now.  But speaking of winter-themed MacLean movies… Where Eagles Dare.

  95. 95.

    Scout211

    @kalakal: McCabe and Mrs. Miller looked amazing with the snowed in mining town, it’s a good film too, with Julie Christie and Warren Beatty.

    I really loved that movie when it first came out. I remember the snow and the rain and the mud were so real and so obviously cold you could feel it.

    So many movies with weather had been filmed on film sets during that time and earlier that experiencing all that weather filmed outdoors in that nasty weather was powerful and fit the mood of the movie.

    And the Leonard Cohen music for the film turned me into a Leonard Cohen fan.  I went right out and bought his album at the time.

  96. 96.

    kalakal

    @RandyG: It’s very much of its time – 1948 – and very much pushing a certain line. If you can get past that it’s actually pretty good.

    @Netto:

    Where Eagles Dare is a blast

    I was a huge Alistair Maclean fan, I strongly suspect I’d find them hard to read now. I’d find

    HMS Ulysses hard to read for different reasons, it’s so tragic, based on Maclean’s own RN wartime experience on the Russian convoys

  98. 98.

    RevRick

    Christina Rossetti’s poem turned hymn by Holst, In the Bleak Midwinter

    Jack London’s Call of the Wild

  99. 99.

    Rusty

    I’m thinking of Jack London’s To Build A Fire.  The cold is the main protagonist,  but just as he finally gets a fire lit and you think he may survive, snow falls from a tree branch and extinguishs all his work and you now sense his doom.

  100. 100.

    Scout211

    @mrmoshpotato: Is that why they’re dreaming of a white Christmas?

    Ha! Yes. That song was first performed by Bing Crosby in the movie Holiday Inn.

    Then the song became so popular they made a whole movie about it. 

  101. 101.

    Miss Bianca

    @MagdaInBlack: I was thinking about that one!

     

    @RevRick: Seems to me like I never hear that carol on this side of the ocean, but that I literally cannot watch or hear any British Christmas movie or production that doesn’t feature it!

  105. 105.

    Just look at that parking lot

    The 1968 Japanese movie ,The Snow Woman is very good. It’s a horror/fantasy story based on Japanese folklore. Has lots of snow, though it’s the man made kind. Streaming on Tubi. It even has subtitles if that helps you get thru the night.

  107. 107.

    eclare

    @CliosFanboy:

    Yeah.  I saw Frozen with my young cousins, and I thought meh.  I later told some coworkers, you would have thought I would have set the stars on fire on a pyre.  Elsa?

  108. 108.

    Rusty

    Touching the Void by Joe Simpson, an incredible story of survival in the Andeas.  The two climbers are fighting snow and ice, one falls into a crevass in the glacier and has to extract himself and then climb down the mountain solo while severly injured.  There are also the various books on Shackelton’s odyssey to escape the Antarctic after their ship is crushed in the ice.  They live for months on the ice, escape to an island.  A small group then sails a small boat across the roughest seas in the world, navigating to a tiny island that if they missed would have guaranteed death.  Climbed over mountains on the island, and when they realized they would freeze to death, slid down the ice and snow of the mountain to where they could survive and finally make it to a whaling station for rescue.   Snow and ice are near ubiquitous during the entire ordeal, the sliding bit being the only time sledding wasn’t for fun in a book but to preserve life.

  110. 110.

    Trivia Man

    @WaterGirl: It has funny parts, but keep in mind it is a very low budget film made for less than $150k. In a theater of about 700 there was a lot of laughter that helps the enjoyment, alone at home probably less funny.

    Cartoonish violence, plot armor for the “hero”, lots of animals killed, very obvious homemade special effects, shallow plot. But I’d watch it again.

    Very few words in the movie, several silent movie type exposition cards to advance the plot. Several plot twists including a dance scene you will never see coming. If you like Looney Tunes and silent movies – unqualified endorsement.

  111. 111.

    munira

    Here’s the perfect winter poem by Wallace Stevens:

    The Snow Man

    One must have a mind of winter
    To regard the frost and the boughs
    Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

    And have been cold a long time
    To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
    The spruces rough in the distant glitter

    Of the January sun; and not to think
    Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
    In the sound of a few leaves,

    Which is the sound of the land
    Full of the same wind
    That is blowing in the same bare place

    For the listener, who listens in the snow,
    And, nothing himself, beholds
    Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

  114. 114.

    Netto

    @Rusty: I was hesitant to mention anything from the vast genre of mountaineering survival stories, but Touching the Void is indeed memorable.  Another is Doug Scott’s descent of The Ogre with two broken legs.  A short account can be found here.

  115. 115.

    Tehanu

    @dnfree: ​
    Yes, The Left Hand of Darkness, such a wonderful book, set on a planet called Winter.

    First Snow
    by Linda Pastan

    The clouds dissolve in snow –
    a simple act of physics
    or the urge to just let go?

    On hills, on frozen lakes
    all definition fades
    before the rush of flakes

    until, bereft of light,
    the moon gives up
    her sovereign claim to white.

    *********************************

    Also what about “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”?

  116. 116.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Scamp Dog: that’s very sweet.

    A local friend has a new puppy, as companion to get older dog. She says the two of them frolicked outside in the falling snow all day Wednesday when we had that first snow around here.

  117. 117.

    there go two miscreants

    Loreena McKennitt wrote original music for the poem Snow by Canadian poet Archibald Lampman. She kept the poem verbatim as the lyrics. It’s one of my favorites.​

  118. 118.

    Ramalama

    @lowtechcyclist: I fcking LOVE Fleet Foxes’ White Winter Hymnal.

    It’s got so many great pieces of sound to it, reminding me of scenes a la beachy, Elvis background singer-y from the 60s, and Balinese Gamelan, though I’m guessing it’s just a modern rock band kit. The lyrics go somewhere incredibly vivid and weird. The tune has that thing ABBA talked about, the cheerful melancholy, though different words might have been used. And I know nothing about the songwriters who wrote that elegant song, nor anything about WWH, but I remember where I was when I first heard it. Driving at Christmastime in my brother’s cigarette and ash laden car, his music blaring, a little of every and who are Fleet Fo…and me trying to see a high school friend living in Arlington IL. Winter at its sharpest. I was starving but she didn’t do dinner or meals and finally saw I needed so so offered me toast with jelly. Like we were still in high school. We sat and gossiped about people still causing trouble, saying nothing about ourselves, so much easier that way. The night ride back to my parents’ house, they were still alive, and my brother Michael .. “and Michael you will fall and turn the white snow red like strawberries in the summertime. “

  119. 119.

    Trivia Man

    @MikeInOly: I was a volunteer usher so I talked to lots of patrons, One said, “it’s my third time seeing it in a theater. It changed my life.” I didn’t get to hear him expand on that, but my impression was that participating in a live audience laughing that hard and that hard gave him an incomparable feeling of community with strangers.

    It was fun, I laughed, but I couldn’t in clear conscience give it an unqualified YES! I want to maintain my credibility as a reviewer and it is not for everybody.

  121. 121.

    Trivia Man

    Groundhog Day. Put on your booties, it’s COOOLD outside! Without the blizzard, Phil gets back to Pittsburgh and continues a miserable life. Not the rodent Phil, the other one.

  123. 123.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Rusty: I had a reading streak that followed all things Arctic. I even used to browse the library call number that had those books.

    I don’t remember the titles, but good stuff.

    In one, nonfiction, a couple decides to dogsled across the Yukon in winter. They spend time learning how to care for the dogs, how to build an igloo. Many native people’s taught them what they needed to know. Their who process of Leary, a d then their adventure winter travelogue, was engrossing.

    Another, nonfiction, retold the story of a ship locked in the Arctic ice for two years, waiting for a break up so the shop could move again. Finally the men all decide to set out walking, to to get to land. One lone woman, indigenous, stayed behind, got to an island, maybe Franz Joseph Land, where she survived on eggs and animals she caught, and after a year or more, the ice thawed enough, a ship came through, and carried her with them to mainland.

    Farley Mowat has a book where he travels around Siberia. That might be the title. The coldest cold varies, and it’s a fascinating tour of eastern Russia.

    There was a children’s book that came to me, a table of free books, cover turn off, in which a man is stuck in a shipwreck and an orphan polar bear baby somehow entered where he was, and they wintered together. I couldn’t ascertain if it was fiction, tho it seemed highly unlikely.

    I am sure these books can be found at a library, with the right call #, or the help of a librarian

    In the young adult section, I have a title, an actual title. “The golden compass”.  By Pullman. A great bunch of the story takes place in snowy northern places. The book was a good read. The movie was good too. Dakota Fanning, Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman.

  128. 128.

    Spanish Moss

    I love the animated short film The Snowman, based on Raymond Briggs’ storybook. No words except for a few sentences at the beginning and end, it is just gorgeous music and beautiful “moving” illustrations. The Walking in the Air song as the boy and the snowman fly over the world is so beautiful, and I love the visuals (breaching whales, etc.). I watch it a few times every winter to relax and be in the moment.

  129. 129.

    Trivia Man

    @Miss Bianca: ​
      A few years ago my Unitarian choir did a whole program around the theme “Darkness”. We did Bleak Midwinter and I fell in love with it.

  130. 130.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Has no one mentioned the movie Dr Zhivago, with Julie Christie ans Omar Sharif ?

    Also, the song “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”. I can hear it in my head, sung by Bing Crosby, or Frank Sinatra, not sure which.

    My central heating is working, otherwise this topic would be too chilly for me.

  132. 132.

    Trivia Man

    @Rusty: ​
      A kids book about WWII was a favorite of mine, Snow Treasure. Allegedly true story about Norwegian kids saving the town gold by sledding past the Nazis one or two bars at a time. Fun story, sledding for fun AND patriotism!

  133. 133.

    Jackie

    @Scout211:

    @mrmoshpotato: Is that why they’re dreaming of a white Christmas?

    Ha! Yes. That song was first performed by Bing Crosby in the movie Holiday Inn.

    Then the song became so popular they made a whole movie about it.

    You mean they’re TWO separate movies? I apparently blended the two into one! I haven’t seen either in decades LOL

  136. 136.

    Gloria DryGarden

    I love that song, in the bleak midwinter. Also, “the holly and the ivy.” I missed a chance to sing it one holiday at a Unitarian service, because I’d lost my voice. (Sure it was nice to hear my pal and the whole congregation sing it. But I wanted to. I’m still waiting for it. I guess they don’t sing it every year.)

  139. 139.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @RevRick: holy moly!

    You’ve reminded me of a story Robert graves tells in one of the world wars, where on Christmas day, at the front where he was, the soldiers of the opposing sides put down their guns and got up a soccer game. I hope it’s a true story, it was very heart warming, and graves, a good storyteller.

  140. 140.

    Another Scott

    @mrmoshpotato: I heard the story that Irving Berlin wrote it during a heat wave.  But, still, made me look… Wikipedia:

    Irving Berlin’s opening verse, contrasting the sunshine and warmth of Christmas in California with the narrator’s desire for a traditional holiday setting of winter snow, is often dropped in recordings. It is included on A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, sung by Darlene Love; on Barbra Streisand’s A Christmas Album; on the Carpenters’ Christmas Portrait, sung by Karen Carpenter; on Neil Diamond’s The Christmas Album; on Bette Midler’s Cool Yule; on Libera’s Christmas Album; and on Crash Test Dummies’ Jingle All the Way.[10]

    The sun is shining, the grass is green,
    The orange and palm trees sway.
    There’s never been such a day
    in Beverly Hills, L.A.
    But it’s December the twenty-fourth,—
    And I am longing to be up North—[38]

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  141. 141.

    Jackie

    @Scout211: And I found this on the Google:

    White Christmas was intentionally designed as a successor, riding the success of Holiday Inn, using similar themes and even sets.

    I know my childhood years, mom had musical movies on TV every Sunday morning for years during the ’60s. These were part of the playlist. Same era we kiddos were introduced to Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, James Cagney and sooo many others. I’ve loved musicals all my life because of those Sunday mornings.

  142. 142.

    Gloria DryGarden

    I watch YouTube a lot. There are tons of camping in the snow videos..building a shelter in the woods, hiking to a shelter hut, building a dugout, driving up and using a fancy-schmancy inflatable two story three room tent with clear sides, with fold out wood stove, and then it snows, hot tents with wood stoves and a place to put a chimney through, or testing a backpacking tent in a blizzard. Sometimes it’s a guy with a dog. And usually the people cook some amazing meal on their fire/ tiny cook stove/ wood stove.

    Also, driving across Alaska in snow, in a fitted camper w stove. One of these guys has a dog with him too. Practicing banjo while cookies bake. And so on. Great YouTubes.

    No idea why I love these, but I do. Fast forward through any slow or dull parts.

  143. 143.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Another Scott: if we’re talking about Christmas in warm spots, I’m immediately mind-travelling to my Christmas a block from the beach, in The east suburbs of Montevideo, in South America. What a marvel, the opposing seasons in the tropics, and in the southern hemisphere.

  145. 145.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @RandyG: I love them. Si and gar

    … How could I have forgotten that?  It’s not one of their songs that I had memorized or ran around singing

    You must have all their albums ..

  148. 148.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Stephen Colbert did a pre holiday skit where he bemoaned that so many holiday movies seemed to involve accidentally bumping into a prince. In set, trees with white stuff all over it. And when an actual prince came out, and they continued their bit, there was white “snow” falling on them. It was cute.

    (Rumors are the title prince may be stripped off at some point.)

  149. 149.

    Jager

    In real life, when I got back from Vietnam, I spent Christmas and New Year’s with my family. The holidays over, I drove an ancient Chevy 4-wheel drive pickup to our lake place in northern Minnesota. The weather was great for early January. I shoveled off the ice in front of the cabin, dragged a homemade hockey goal down to the ice, and skated my ass off for a couple of days.  A storm warning forecast sent me to town (20 miles away) for supplies. By the time I finished at the grocery store, the butcher shop, and the liquor store, the storm was starting. I headed back to the lake place in 4-high. 5 miles from town, I saw a shit box Ford sedan in the ditch. It was dead as a doornail, and a young woman was half frozen on the front seat. I got her in the warm pickup, dragged her bags into the bed of the pickup, and took her to the lakehouse. When she warmed up, I found out she was a junior at the Minneapolis School of Art and Design, headed back to school after her Christmas break. Once she warmed up, we warmed up, and for the next three days, she made me forget all about the Thai whore I’d spent a week with on my R and R in Bangkok. When the storm was over, I got her back on the road and headed back to school. I saw Jeanie a few times after that in the Twin Cities; she never said what her fiancé thought about the storm.

  150. 150.

    Trivia Man

    @Gloria DryGarden: ​
    @Gloria DryGarden: ​  I heard a traditionl Australian Christmas meal might be a BBQ at the beach for some. Santa in a budgie smuggler is always fresh.​
     I just love the relationship between the main characters and feel great sympathy as they try to find a way to stay together.

  151. 151.

    Glidwrith

    The comedy Grumpy Old Men is set in winter. Several high jinx with snow, ice fishing and diving into snow banks from a sauna.

  152. 152.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @eclare: I liked Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter a lot.  It had a very low budget, but was well written, with a solid sense of places (both Japan and Minnesota).  Rinko Kikuchi is a marvelous perfomer (maybe best known for Pacific Rim).

    Recommended!

  153. 153.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @HopefullynotCassandra: Ooooh, thanks for the tip!  After the okay-but-meh adaptation with weird casting choices (Gabriel Byrne?  Robert Loggia?!), it would be great to see a better-grounded version.

  154. 154.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @RSA: Gorky Park has been somewhere on the periphery of my consciousness for too long.  I’ll add it to the list.  Thanks!

  155. 155.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @kalakal: Me too!  First-rate Alistair MacLean cold war thriller nonsense.  “We operate on a first-name basis.  My first name is ‘Captain.'”

  156. 156.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @Kristine: I don’t swing that way, but he had me at, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.  My life is my own.”  The Prisoner is massively off-topic but what a bizarre, durable joy it is!

  157. 157.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @currants: Snow Falling on Cedars is on the list, time to bump it forward a bit.

    More written word:  there’s a longish short story by David Quammen called “Walking Out,” with a man and his son, out deer hunting, are caught in a snowstorm.  It’s, um, intense.

    I think of Quammen as a very good essayist, but holy shit does “Walking Out” hit hard.

  158. 158.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @UncleEbeneezer: _Force Majeure_ is an excellent film, yes!  I need to rewatch to appreciate the layering, but the way the entire family dynamic pivots in a few seconds is beautifully (painfully) rendered.

  159. 159.

    Yet Another Haldane

    @dnfree: Smilla is very disconcerting on the page and would be much more so in person.  She doesn’t need you, doesn’t want to be your friend, isn’t going to waste breath on small talk.  And yet, she goes on a long, dangerous (metaphorical and literal) journey for the sake of a kid in her apartment building.  She’s an intense personality.

  160. 160.

    MikeInOly

    @Trivia Man: I agree, not for everyone. I would have loved to see it at our theater but their seating is still a relic from 1950s era. That was fine in my thirties. Not so much now.

  162. 162.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gloria DryGarden: you didn’t like books two and three as much because Pullman uses them to go into a straight-on hate boner for CS Lewis and thus makes them overtly anti-Christian polemics.

    Now, I don’t call myself a Christian anymore and I have my own problems with the Narnia series as a grownup, but I don’t care for Pullman grinding his axe and then burying it in my skull while I’m reading a kids’ book. (Hell, even Lewis managed to be more subtle with his polemics, and subtle he ain’t, exactly.)

    First book was one of the best fantasy stories I’ve ever read. The other two were hot garbage. Never been so disappointed in a series finish in my entire life.

  163. 163.

    Chat Noir

    “The Long Winter” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She originally titled it “The Hard Winter” because the story really does impart the dire situation the family and town of DeSmet, Dakota Territory, was back in the winter of 1880-1881. Very harrowing.

  164. 164.

    Nelson

    @Kristine:  100% with you on Alastair Sim’s Christmas Carol. One of my favorite scenes in any movie is when, near the end of the story,  Scrooge shows up at his nephew’s house and then hesitates before entering the party. The maid who met him at the door gives him a shy nod of encouragement and Scrooge gratefully proceeds. A quiet moment of kindness and connection that warms my heart every time..

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