25GoC: Erin Dionne + Contest

Erin Dionne’s Five Fave Christmas Movies

Okay, I love Christmas movies—but they’re not always the ones that you expect. Yeah, Elf was funny, and It’s A Wonderful Life is touching, but I like my holiday fare to be a little…darker (for the most part). Here are my top five Christmas movies, in order. You can find these playing at my house any time after Thanksgiving. Come on over and bring the popcorn!

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas. Watch as the residents of Halloweentown kidnap Santa and take over Christmas in an effort to cheer up their leader, Jack Skellington. It’s Tim Burton at his best—dark, funny, and suitable for TWO holidays!

4. Die Hard. Yep. The original takes place at Christmastime. You get Bruce Willis, an LA skyscraper filled with terrorists and hostages, explosions and gunfights. Makes arguments with relatives and your annoying Aunt Margaret seem easy to deal with by comparison. Yipee-ki-yay!

3. Love, Actually. Okay, a no-brainer, and probably (on the surface) the sweetest one of the bunch. But there’s more to this film than Hugh Grant’s awkward charm or Colin Firth’s smile. Look a little closer--Billy Mack singing nude on New Year’s Eve? The Naked Couple? Or how about poor, sad, Laura Linney and her inability to find love because of her obsession with her brother? Oh, Love, Actually. You are funny, sweet, and dark. Cheers!

2. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. This is a Dionne family tradition. My parents, sister and I—and now our families--have been watching this movie on Thanksgiving for upwards of 20 years. Chevy Chase is at his bumbling best putting up the external house lights and dealing with his brother-in-law. But it’s Todd and Margot, played by Nicholas Guest and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, that put this film over the top.

1.      Better Off Dead. Lane literally wants to kill himself when his hot girlfriend Beth dumps him for a ski god in this John Hughes classic. Don’t think this is a Christmas movie? Ah-ha! Check out the Christmas morning scene, when Lane’s family opens frozen dinners as gifts and gets fashionable aardvark fur coats. HYSTERICAL. My husband and I watch this classic every year as we decorate the tree.

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Erin Dionne’s debut novel, Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies, published by Dial Books for Young Readers, was selected as a Featured Title for Scholastic Book Fairs and was nominated to the 2010 American Library Association Popular Paperbacks list. PEN/New England’s Children’s Book Caucus named an early version of the Models manuscript as one of its 2006 Susan P. Bloom Discovery Night award winners.  Her second book, The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, will be released January 7, 2010. It is also a Scholastic Book Fairs Featured Title. Erin lives outside of Boston with her husband, daughter and dog, and teaches English at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA.

Website: www.erindionne.com

Blog: bostonerin.livejournal.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/erindionne

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those are some great choices but I tend to stick to the classics----ya know, Santa Claus is Coming To Town, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, A Christmas Story, etc.--- but to each their own...

Comment below to win a bookmark!

closes Dec. 25th

U.S. only

thanks so much and happy holidays!

Jill