I'm too A.D.D. today to blog coherently about one topic, so I thought I'd babble incoherently about many different topics at once. Here I go a'ramblin'...
Quick Review: The Blind Side
Directed and adapted for the screen by John Lee Hancock. Based on the best selling non-fiction book by Michael Lewis. Starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron and Kathy Bates.
My Grade: B+
The Blind Side is a legitimately heartwarming and moving true story about an orphaned, homeless Black teenager from the wrong side of the tracks named Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) who gets taken in by a well-to-do Memphis family headed by socialite Leigh Ann Tuohy (Sandra Bullock).
Years behind his peers both socially and developmentally, Oher nonetheless has three things going for him--he is massively oversized, yet a gifted athlete who immediately catches the attention of a high school football coach (played by Ray McKinnon); he has a gentle spirit and the one area of aptitude at which he tests well is "protective ability". World, meet the perfect left tackle in the making.
There's nothing groundbreaking about this story but it hits all of the expected emotional high points and Bullock's perfectly calibrated Oscar-nominated performance is tough, tender and sexy, providing a nice counterpoint to the football and "Dangerous Minds" parts of the story which tend to be a little more cliched and unremarkable. The Blind Side doesn't milk the melodrama though, which is nice and when both the cheers and the tears come they are both well-earned. Overall, this is that increasingly rare phenomenon at the movies: a good, intelligent, not overly whitewashed, populist drama that the whole family can enjoy.
My Super Bowl Prediction
Confession: I am a New Orleans Saints fan and I was one long before Hurricane Katrina, Drew Brees or even Sean Payton. They'll never be my number one team, but there's an awful lot I like about the Saints and their story.
That being said (and despite the good-natured taunting I've been doing to some of my Colts fan friends), an honest analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each team leads me to predict this score for today's game--
Indianapolis 27, New Orleans 17
Obviously, each team must avoid turnovers and the Saints explosive special teams can totally turn the game in their favor. But if I'm not picking with my heart, that's the score that makes the most sense to me. Peyton Manning is just too good and the Saints defense (when it's not ball hawking) is just a little too soft to get the job done today.
President Wimpy
I voted for Barack Obama and I still support Barack Obama but the President's approach to dealing with the Republican-engineered health care stalemate leaves me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. He correctly identified that the lack of affordable health care for all Americans was crippling any real chance of a sustained economic recovery--then he sent one mixed message after another and shrunk from leadership at the most crucial time allowing the Congress (and health care lobbyists) to eviscerate anything good that could come out of a government-run health care reorganization.
President Obama's tough talk since the State of the Union address is needed and welcomed, but I almost wonder if it is too little, too late. He's lost the American people (only African-American voters and die hard liberals were ever 100% in his corner anyway), his own party smells blood in the water and the Republicans will be content to stall, delay and defray until they inevitably take back dozens of Congressional seats in the midterms. All politics aside, the prospect of a "lame duck" President only a year into his term combined with an ineffective Congress, with the economy still in deep recession and two ongoing wars is not a scenario that fills me with much optimism for the immediate future. Am I wrong?
Kickoff is coming...PEACE!
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