The Blind Side (the movie)

Do you know what the term "the blind side" means?  If you don't, you still won't after seeing this movie.  It's never explained, which I think is kind of strange, because IT'S THE TITLE OF THE DAMN MOVIE!  I read this book about five years ago, which I know is a bad way to start a review of any movie, but i can't help it, it's true, the book is better.  Not a LOT better, but still better.  At least it explains what the blind side is. 
The movie is about a wealthy white southern family taking a poor, hulking, black teenage boy into their hearts and home.  Good formula, true story.  The kid starts out with a terrible grade point average, he barely speaks, and clearly has some kind of torrid past.  He acclimates with the family, they teach him to play football, (left tackle--protecting the blind side) his grades get better, and he goes on to play football at a great university.  If that sounds kind of terse, and if you like it, go to this movie. Because that's how they tell the story.  It's like a flat rock skipping on a lake.  Why does the mother suddenly pick the boy up from the side of the road?  Don't know.  Why doesn't the wealthy white family feel afraid of having a large black kid from the projects live in their home?  Don't know.  What motivates the black kid to get better grades and play football?  Don't know.  No matter what happens in this movie, you never get to know why it's happening.  No character development whatsoever.
And then there's the cast.  Sandra Bullock does a wonderful job in this role.  It's a departure from her ususal whimsical roles, and she does it well.  However, she looks terrible as a blonde. Which is too bad, because the only reason to see a movie with her in it is because she is usually pretty hot.  In a suburban mom kind of way, which my friends will tell you, I tend to like.  The worst cast member is the little boy who plays the young son.  I think they tried to cast a little nerdy boy who is supposed to come across as endearing.  That did not work.  The kid could not have been more irritating.  Weird crooked teeth, cowlick in his reddish hair, and WAY TOO MANY lines.  He is like a fly buzzing around your head while you are trying to eat a sandwich.  They made that boy more of a main character than the main character himself.  God, he was annoying.  (no offence to his parents, i'm sure he's a great kid in real life)  Then, randomly, Kathy Bates played the black kid's tutor.  Love her, right?  NO.  She looked dumpy and fat, and for some reason I just kept noticing that her forearms looked like overstuffed sausages.  I don't think that was the plan, but I could not look away.  The most interesting thing about this movie was the white watch that Sandra Bullock wore in most of her scenes. It looked just like the one my manager Megan at work got from her boyfriend for Christmas.  I kept trying to get a better look at it too see if it was the same one.  Blind side, indeed.  More like blindsided.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

About a year ago, my friend Kelly came back from a weekend in Miami, and was really excited to tell me about her trip.  "Tina, I spent the whole weekend lying on the bed with the patio doors open reading Duma Key, Stephen King's new book!  It was so good!"  It was December here, and I could think of a few better things to do in Miami than read ANY book inside, much less a Stephen King novel.  It had been years since I had picked up anything that he wrote, but I really do trust Kelly's book taste, so I tried it, and it was great.   I was so glad to have liked it, that I tried some other Stephen King books, and hated them.  So when "Under the Dome" came out, I was wary.  For one thing, the book is so thick I could drop it in the center of my dining room and serve lunch to my friends on it, and that scared me a bit.  I circled around the idea of the book cautiously, looking at it out of the corner of my eye when I was in a bookstore, or reading a review or two online.  Last week, I was in the Barnes and Noble at the Mall of America, and there was a display as high as my head of this book in the store.  I picked one up, and started to read.  I had to move to some chairs, because I couldn't put it down.  Forty-five minutes later, I forced myself to pay for the book and go home.  Three days and four hours of sleep later, I had done it.  I had read all 1,075 pages.  It was worth every minute.  I'll tell you a little bit about it.
An invisible dome clamps down around and over a small town in Maine (surprise, it's Maine!).  Before long, the people on the inside and the people on the outside figure out it's there, and the people on the inside soon realize that the dome isn't going anywhere for a while, if ever.  Things are not looking good for this town in Maine. The rest of the story is about human nature:  how people deal with themselves, with each other, with power, with greed, with fear, with hunger, with hope, with hopelessness, with death, with pets, and all kinds of other things that you normally don't have to think about every minute of every day under normal circumstances.  And, of course, good versus evil.  King peppers the story with catchy adages and with a million bible verses (who knew the bible would come in so handy for the bad guys), and some fun facts like how the chevrolet bowtie was born.  As long as it is, the book is fast paced, and it is imperative that you find out what happens next, page after page.  However, if you are going to Miami soon, I recommend leaving the book at home and reading it when you return.  It wasn't THAT good.