Five for Friday: Snow Day Movies

I love lists.I make lists about everything...even when it's completely unneccessary or fruitless.  I love organization, but practice procrastination.  Most of the time, my lists don't get completely finished and end up being a reminder of how lazy I am.  But, as I say in this UDress article, having tangible reminders of your shortcomings that you consistently see can light a fire under your ass.

Every Friday, I will end the week off with a list for you...no, I'm not going to give you a bunch of boring things to do.  These lists will be fun.

Given the weather predictions for the weekend (although both the Newark and Baltimore areas have horrible forecasts...Maryland, Delaware, and parts of Pennsylvania seem to be in this weather bubble where normal rules don't apply :P), my mind has been on my favorite snow day activity: watching movies.

Some movies are perfect for snow days, and some just don't work.  When you're stuck inside, cozy, vegging with your family or friends, longer movies are good.  A lot of great movies don't get watched often because of the time it takes to get through them.  Either you don't have the time or you don't have the patience to sit in front of the same characters for three or four hours.  But it's a whole different story when you have a fire, hot chocolate and other foods that are bad for your figure, and nothing else to do!

Even if you've seen these movies before, and even if you love them already, give them a try the next time you're snowed in...

1. Gone with the Wind--remember the days of VHS?  Ya, I don't really, either.  But I remember one gloomy afternoon finally agreeing to watch it after my mom had been trying to get me to forever.  She rented it from Blockbuster (another blast from the past), and it was one of those 2-tape sets.  Like Titanic.  The whole movie didn't fit on one (one of the glories of DVDs!  Now everything with more than one disc is either a TV show or series, or loaded with special features!).  This movie is really a long one...I think it's around 4 hours long!  So it will take up quite a bit of time; but after all, it is a classic, and tomorrow is another day! :)

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--I can't really explain why I put this one on the list.  Maybe because of the photo on the movie's poster...Jim Carrey's character looks freezing, while Kate Winslet's unique character, Clementine, doesn't look like she minds the cold at all.  This sort of describes parts of the relationship of their characters.  I don't want to say much about the plot, because it is so interesting.  I had no clue what it would be about when I watched it for the first time, and that may be one of the reasons I was so fascinated by it.  It would be perfect for a snow day, or any bad-weather, gloomy day for that matter.  It's sort of depressing and weird, coinciding with how gloomy weather tends to put everyone in that type of mood, anyway.

3. Garden State--Zach Braff's directorial debut is perfect on gloomy days.  I don't know why I'm associating sort of depressing movies and independent movies with snow days, but I know that on rainy and snowy days I don't want to get out of bed, and those movies just seem right.  The balance between Braff's detached character, who had been in a medicated trance for most of his life, and the vibrance of Natalie Portman's character bring a lot of interesting situations.  This was one of the movies that got me into independent films, and was definitely a movie that changed my life.

4. Say Anything--What girl doesn't love some John Cusack?  His characters always make me swoon.  But Lloyd Dobbler has my heart more than any of John's other portrayals.  I secretly wish my boyfriend would do one of Lloyd Dobbler's moves. I mean what girl wouldn't want this... To know Lloyd Dobbler is to love him!

Now this last one, I admit, is not a very good movie.  But it's one of my guilty pleasures and what better movie to watch on a snow day than...

5. Snow Day--This movie was HUGELY popular among kids my age when it came out.  It was like watching what we wanted to do every day of winter...stay home from school and play!  It also gave us some fresh ideas on how to spend a snow day.  Plus, at the time I was very into Hoku...who you have probably never heard of.  She was just another teenage girl, candy-pop one-hit wonder.  Her 2 singles are both in the movie and after seeing it I bought her single that included karaoke...  I feel obligated to put this movie in as a guilty pleasure!