Sandra Bullock makes history!
I opened my email this morning to see a dispatch from Variety with the headline: “SANDRA BULLOCK MAKES HISTORY.”
My mind raced: Did Sandra Bullock become the first woman to walk on the moon? Did she sneak into Pakistan and kill Osama bin Laden and now she’s flying home with his head in a box?
No.
Instead, Sandra Bullock put all of tinseltown on notice– her heartwarming film “The Blind Side” just topped $200 million in domestic box office sales! No woman-centered film has ever done that.
Basically, Sandra Bullock (who I’ve loved since that weird Sylvester Stallone sci-fi movie where Wesley Snipes is blonde) just dropped the hammer on all other actresses. Man, she’s even outgrossed Meryl Streep! She’s like a total stealth bomber.
I think this is inspirational for about twenty reasons, but the main reason is because Sandra Bullock is, like, the least movie-starrish movie star ever. She’s pretty, but she’s not otherworldly-pretty. She’s funny, but she’s not LOL-funny. I never read about her in the tabloids. I don’t think she adopts babies from far-flung lands. Is she even married? I don’t know. All I know is, she doesn’t drive around in an Escalade with no panties and her wee-wah hanging out. I highly doubt you’ll ever read the phrase, “Sandra Bullock was high on crack and she beat up a photographer while her tits fell out of her dress; concerned friends confirmed she’s a hot mess.” Sandra Bullock keeps her head down and does the work. And makes that money.
Also, I love that Sandra Bullock never seems to turn down a role. She was even in “Crash,” the dumbest movie ever made (“white folks confound racial expectations like THIS, but black people confound racial expectations like THIS“). And did you see that movie where she had a magic calendar that showed her when her husband was gonna be killed in a car accident(?). Or maybe it was, her husband had already been killed, and then he came back to life and warned her not to drive a car if time started moving backwards(?). (I watched this movie on a plane without headphones … not easy to follow. All I know is, she was definitely using a magic marker to scrawl stuff on a calendar like a complete maniac.)
Anyway, I’ve always liked Sandra Bullock and I’m glad she’s put Julia Roberts in her place!
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That was “Premonition” with Julian McMahon. Very nice movie. I enjoyed it, too.
Mr. Rees,
I am sorry but I do not see how it makes much sense to judge an actress by how much money the movie she stars in makes. By that standard McDonald’s makes the greatest food in the world. I will grant you that she has shown much wisdom in not allowing herself and personal life to be turned into a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder (Tiger (or as he is now known “Cheetah Lion”) could have taken notes). Her performances are all more than adequate and all of her movies above par but that is really damning her with faint praise. I have never seen her take a chance, every movie and performance is safe and non-threatening. By far her best performance was in the “Lake House”, where she played a quiet lonely physician. Near the end she is able show a dozen emotions in series without saying a word and hardly moving a muscle, you can see right into the heart of her character. Few performers can do this (Bette Davis could and did it more than once). As from this one performance, she has generally played it all rather safe.
If Jennifer Aniston, the blandest of movie stars, were a sandwich, she would be Kraft cheese on Weber white bread with mayonnaise (the only sandwich banned by the Geneva Conventions). Ms.Bullock would be bologna on wheat bread with Kraft mustard, not dull but nothing to write home about (“The Lake House” is a juicy and unexpected dill pickle on the side).
I agree, S. Bullock is not setting my world on fire. I like your sandwich analogies. What kind of sandwich would Angelina Jolie be? A slap in the face with whole-wheat toast?
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Rees,
Angelina Jolie? She was an actress wasn’t she? I had sort of forgotten, I have this thought in my head that she was a fictional character in a Harold Robbins novel. She would be a philly cheese steak sandwich with way too much of the wrong kind of Cheez-Whiz so that the bread is soaked in oil. In principle it sounds good but falls apart into a gooey mess in practice.
In response to another comment. See in context »The very best thing that can be said about Sandra Bullock is that she isn’t Julia Roberts. It’s not that I dislike Julia Roberts, it’s just that I’m frightened of her gigantic, horse-like teeth.
I was catching up on my reading of your stuff since I just tried to Facebook friend you (no response yet, btw — but I’m hopeful!!!) and had to log in to say you are so RIGHT about two things that are somewhat interconnected for me personally: 1) My husband and I (we just got married) bonded deeply over our hatred of “Crash,” which is so rare to find, it seems like, and 2) I think Sandra Bullock is just fine and I kind of even like her even though the only movie I can think of with her in it that I sort of can tolerate watching is “Speed” (I never thought about the Speed-Crash continuum before).
My husband disagrees with me on SB, but I’ll show him that you agree with him on the important thing (“Crash”), and then maybe he’ll change his opinion on SB since you’re an authority of sorts, to agree with you and, not incidentally, me.
BTW she’s married to that guy who makes motorcycles.
p.s. I hope you weren’t kidding about thinking that “Crash” is dumb. I might have to unfriend you (if you ever friend me). I hated it because it tried to universalize the experience of racism in this, “oh, black, white, brown — we ALL suffer from racism” – like power and privilege are minor issues.
Not joking about “Crash.” It was so bad, I literally got goosebumps at one point.
In response to another comment. See in context »Rees,
“Crash” was really bad in a way that only big budget, well-intended, star-studded movies can be. While Crash was definitely better than both “Vampires vs. Zombies” and “Troll 2″, you have to consider that both of those movies were made for less money that was spent on the catering for “Crash”. When you consider how much talent was assembled both in front of and behind the camera then divide that into how bad the movies was, on a per pound of talent basis it was the worst movie of the decade (you can do it on a per dollar basis but that would get to the same point). Using this formula “Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” is worst movie ever made, easily beating out “Heavens Gate” and “Plan 9 from Outer Space”.
In response to another comment. See in context »Oh, “Crash” I remember that film. I’d heard it would be some kind of American Anti-Racist thing. I was planning to go and see it but somebody must have mixed up my tickets because I ended up watching something called “Racism: It’s all True and NOT Superstition, Who the fuck told you that anyway?!”. It was about how it was a major bummer that mankind was divided into sub-categories called “races” (no matter what those pesky DNA researchers and “History of Ideas” professors say) and despite the fact that we are all SO DIFFERENT AND CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER we should really try not to hate each other. But conflict is probably inevitable anyway, on account of our completely accurate premisses about inherently different races and what not. All-in-all, I think “Birth of a Nation” made pretty much the same point but with better camera-work and funnier costumes. Glad I didn’t see “Crash” though, sounds like it sucked.
In response to another comment. See in context »