There's a chill in the air at night out here in the middle of the Mojave Desert -- a little taste of winter. There will be no snow, of course -- no snow to speak of. Las Vegas gets a light dusting of it from time to time but it melts quickly and seems like some sort of mistake, like a FedEx delivery gone awry.
shahn, of the lovely web site six martinis and the seventh art, lives in San Francisco, which is also a snow-free city, and, missing the stuff, she's posting a series of images of snow from movies on her site. Images of snow in movies are almost always wonderful -- especially, to my mind, the ones tricked up in a studio, as in the "A Fine Romance" number from Swing Time (above), which I hope will be represented in shahn's series. There are so many other fine images of snow in movies -- from Way Down East (real) to Citizen Kane (tricked up in a studio.) One can watch them with a glass of egg nog in hand and feel cozy and warm, protected from the blizzard that's visible through the magic window.