Things I've Learned From the Internet, Bookmark & Blind Side Edition

It's been a crazy couple of days- my sister was in town, we hung out with my aunt, a great deal of wine was consumed and I started a new project about a Doomed Arctic Expedition, but, more importantly, I finally saw The Blind Side!

No joke, I was prepared to not like it, since it is a clear-cut manipulative tearjerker that doesn't even try to hide the formula and, dammit, I'm an INTELLECTUAL. But no! Sandra Bullock was adorable, as usual, and though her performance wasn't necessarily Oscar-worthy, who actually deserves their Oscar anymore? Jennifer Connelly beat out Helen Mirren the year she won for A Beautiful Mind, to which I say if you did not cry during Helen Mirren's scene at the end in Gosford Park you have no heart. For cripes sake, Crash won Best Picture. (Come to think of it, wasn't Sandra Bullock in that, too? Oh well.)

Anyway, I thought it was sweet, and the guy who played Michael was adorable, and the kid who played the younger brother was just-this-side of annoying. I found it impossible to believe that Tim McGraw (Mr. Sandra Bullock) would be that easygoing about bringing some random-ass person into their house on a semi-permanent basis, no matter how deserving, but hey! it happened In Real Life, so clearly he didn't mind that much! The nicest touch was all the family photos at the end over the credit sequence. All in all, my Heart Was Warmed.

There's not really a lot coming out this week that I'm interested in seeing, although I haven't seen Toy Story 3 yet. I think I'm avoiding it because I know I'm going to cry my face off. If you don't believe me, please come to my house sometime when we are all watching Steel Magnolias. We are giant cliches of Southern ladies. Even my dad gets in on the weepy action (although I think the last time he cried during a movie was when we caught a rerun of Deep Impact a few years back. I AM CRYING THINKING ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW.)

Anyway, linkage:

• Speaking of crying, if you don't weep while reading this story of two DC-area men who got married after being together for sixty-two years then there is something wrong with you.
• Celebs: they are just like you, pretending to read smart books. Is there some kind of Hollywood conspiracy against "genre" fiction? Why isn't there a mystery novel ANYWHERE ON THESE LISTS? Does anyone actually sit around and read Tolstoy and Graham Greene exclusively? Don't any of these people just want a potboiler in their lives occasionally?
  
• In other News About Reading, this great bookstore my family and I visited in Toronto called This Ain't Rosedale Library might be closing. Visit them & throw them some support, if you can. When we were there I picked up a copy of Nicola Barker's whackadoo, intricate novel Darkmans and a copy of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's The Fire Engine That Disappeared, an awesome novel if you are into sad Swedish policemen investigating crimes in places where it is cold and people have casual and detached attitudes towards sex. (Which I am.)
  
• Gawker asked if nepotism should always annoy us, and I said yes, yes it should, but then I calmed down when The Awl pointed out exactly how many books the nepotist (nepotee?) had sold, but then my rage came back when I remembered that this kid got a job at SNL ten minutes after graduating.
  

That's all for now. And since my friend Meg has been torturing me with stories of dead baby pelicans in the Gulf all morning (Seriously, BP, light a controlled burn and then throw yourself into it) here is a picture of a non-oily creature:

Kitteh! via cuteoverload