Saturday with Steve

Steve drove up yesterday, just for the weekend before heading back to work, and we've had a busy day today. After a hugely optimistic trip to KFC to try and grab the new Krush'ems (known as Krushers in India, where we first discovered them over the summer), we discovered they weren't on sale yet and proceeded despondently to the cinema to see The Blind Side. We've both seen it before, but loved it, so we were quite looking forward to it. And yes, it's amazing. Whatever Steve says, Sandra Bullock completely deserved her Oscar win, and the supporting cast were fabulous too. It was one of those movies you get a little bit teary in, and laugh a lot in, and think aww and wow a lot. Now, I don't normally like American football films, with the exception of Remember the Titans. But this one won me over. The trailer. Oh, boy. Had me bawling first time I saw it. 

It was, actually, the trailer that got me to watch this. Steve, a football player, a Manchester United geek and an avid NFL/Indianapolis Colts fan for reasons I can't fathom, wanted to watch it a few weeks ago, and I refused. The words 'it's about an American football player...' did me in. But that trailer swayed me.

What surprises me, though, is that Sandra Bullock actually seized the win for this. In the last few years, the trend has inclined towards winners representing a deep, ethical, morally complex, historically hard-hitting, etc, etc kind of film. Think Kate Winslet winning for The Reader, which is outstanding, by the way. Or Charlize Theron some time ago, winning for Monster. As great as The Blind Side is, I don't think anyone could call it morally ambiguous, deeply philosophical, or historically painful. It was a great feel-good story, and how rare are Oscar winners in that category? Think about the Best Picture winner that trumped The Blind Side: The Hurt Locker, the very definition of the hard-hitting qualities listed above. I don't know, but in my opinion, it seems that you've got to be political, foreign, doubtful, morally shaky, extravagantly eccentric or sufficiently surprising to be an Oscar winner or nominee these days. It probably also helps if your plot's got something to do with a war or the Nazis.


Moving on...


After going to see the movie, Steve drove us to Asda, where we bought everything we needed to make a proper, tantalizingly wonderful roast dinner involving chicken, tarragon and lemon. If anyone's interested, we used the magnificent Delia Smith's recipe. Boy, was that an undertaking. It must have taken us about two and a half hours to put together the entire meal: roast chicken with its garlic/tarragon/lemon/chicken-juice/butter sauce, baby potatoes, and broccoli. And it was delicious. The very first roast dinner I've ever really made, and it was perfect. Plenty of leftovers too.


A Saturday to be proud of.