The Blind Side: Hollywood for the Holidays

I usually balk at happy-ending Hollywood concoctions, but "The Blind Side" is a nice story, told with a great deal of humor, and its uplifting qualities didn't put me off at all.

Sandra Bullock dominates this film, this is her movie-- as the believing Christian who tries and succeeds in turning a young rather hopeless black boy's life around.

Some people have complained that the movie is too much about her character to the detriment of everything else, but that didn't bother me--- nor did the happy ending. Also, I was relieved they didn't make a big deal of her religious beliefs.

The cast is uniformly good and includes Cathy Bates as an eccentric tutor ( you will remember her from "Misery") plus Tim McGraw as Sandra Bullock's husband. The violence in the story is all organic to the plot and is not overdone. Nice job of movie-making for the holidays!

November Song- November 15, 2009

We find ourselves at mid-November still enjoying a relatively mild Fall...

Produce markets, basketball players, ornamental kale all over the place, and the last of the flowers in bloom... a rather pleasant late autumn.

Taking a walk around Murray Hill on a nice Sunday like today, it is easy to forget all the world's problems.

Notice, of course, changes everywhere in neighborhood, some which have been there for a while-- like no more Maurice Villency furniture on Madison Avenue ( it is a Roche Bobois outlet now)--which was a fixture for so many years.

The old Roger Williams hotel has been gentrified into "The Roger" with a very swank lobby...

They closed down the Midtown tunnel today with no warning that I can remember and there is an immense traffic jam, which would be even worse if it weren't a Sunday.

Weatherman says real winter is still some time off...let's hope so, and hope nice weather continues. We need the sunshine.

Law Abiding Citizen: Don't Bother

I just saw part of "Law Abiding Citizen," and this is one of those times I'd wish I'd read reviews beforehand-- so I wouldn't have wasted my time.

One of the aspects of this movie that annoyed me the most was the endless KA-BOOMS on the sound track to underline anything dramatic/violent that happened.  This is the cheapest kind of film making.