Happy Birthday, Sandra Bullock!
Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 12:21PM Robert Balkovich here! I'd like to take a moment today to wish a happy solar return to the Queen of Rom Coms, Grand Dame of '90s Action Movies Marketed Toward Women, Empress of Perfect Foils for Melissa McCarthy: the one and only Sandra Bullock. In an effort to encourage everyone to take their own personal journey and reflect on what Sandra Bullock means to them, after the jump I'm going to share some of my favorite moments that I've spent with Sandra.
Join me, won't you?
• Most recently I had the best time ever watching Our Brand Is Crisis on a flight from Mexico City to New York. The movie is extremely not good, and yet I enjoyed pretty much every minute of Sandra having altitude sickness, reckless bus driving, bowl clutching, inappropriately partying with teens, and realizations that the monster she helped elect was, in fact, a monster as everyone had previously told her. The plane's entertainment system had no less than fifty movies available to watch, and yet I could see three other people watching it along with me.
• I have almost never laughed so hard as I did when I saw The Heat, a movie for which my expectations were basically in the sewer, in theaters on a blazing summer day.
• Similarly The Proposal is the perfect Netflix movie, which I watched one Saturday night after four glasses of wine hiding in my tiny bedroom from my awful Craigslist roommates.
• I have a friend from Nashville who is very sensitive to Southern stereotyping and was particularly aghast after The Blindside came out. I used the opportunity to tease her mercilessly, which was not a necessarily a nice thing to do, but it was funny.
• When I was a kid there was a HUGE to-do when Sandra went to a pizza parlor in my hometown of Springfield, Oregon (s/o to Roaring Rapids Pizza) because she was there with her former husband, notable Celebrity Apprentice loser Jesse James, whose ex lived in the next town over.
• When I was in elementary school my next door neighbors had a huge chest full of VHS tapes and I would always look at the one for Speed because it looked like the most thrilling thing I'd ever seen in my young life. I still have not seen the movie Speed.
• Oh and also one time I showed up to a baby-sitting gig and when I arrived it was onto the set of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which was filming in the apartment using the kids as extras. After a few minutes of being there Sandra (or "Sandy" as everyone calls her) showed up to film her scene. I chatted with her briefly between takes and she was as nice as you can imagine.
What are your favorite Sandra Bullock related memories? Fill us in in the comments!
Reader Comments (22)
*Second to the throne. As it was Julia Roberts who delivered three classic romantic comedies from the '90s (Pretty Woman, My Best Friend's Wedding, Notting Hill)
DID YOU REALLY MEET SANDY?! WOW
Still not over on how on mother earth is Extremely Loud a best picture nominee.
The Heat is the freaking greatest tho
Craver she's gr8 in it though,that phone call scene should have earned at least a nomination in 2011 over the weak line up.
Sandy is of course forever a star and an Oscar winning one who'd of thought that when seeing her in Demolition Man or Speed but she had and still has masses of charisma and the spanx scene in The Heat is side splitting 4 years later,Julia and she ruled the 90's never liked Meg and Stone and Moore were too cold.
Top 3 Sandra Lead performances
1 - Gravity - anchors this with gr8 feeling
2 - Hope Floats - v underrated she and Gena Rowlands are gr8 together
3 - While You Were Sleeping efforlessly charming and relatable
Top 3 SUpporting performances
1 - Speed - Goldie Hawn with bells on
2 - Crash - seething with anger yet vulnerable at the end
3 - EL & IC - THE PHONE CALL SCENE
SEE SPEED!!!
I was not a fan for the longest time. But finally in 2013, the force awakened. The one-two punch of Gravity and The Heat really hit me hard. Now that's fucking range. Happy Birthday, Sandy!
(Now I'm humming the score of Annie)
The Queen of Velveeta. What happened to Ocean's 8?
She has oodles of on-screen charisma. Even when her movies are ridiculous or downright bad, she is ever watchable.
Confession–I have never seen While You Were Sleeping.
The Net is the perfect trashy 90s thriller - a glorious ode to the horrors of dial-up modems, floppy disks and Jeremy Northam. It's a must view after a few glasses of wine
The Fucking "Heat" might fucking have been fucking funnier if fucking they hadn't fucking relied on the fucking "F" fucking word for every fucking joke fucking.
She is always good, even if the material ("Premonition", "Murder by Numbers") isn't.
Best: While You Were Sleeping
Hope Floats
Speed
And I really liked, though don't remember anything, about "The Thing Called Love".
I try to avoid any movie w/Bullock. She is always so mediocre!!
Listen Bullock haters - while I by no means agree with her win or nomination, she is a treasure. I'd have nominated her all the way back for While You Were Sleeping
IanO - god yes I just rewatched it (it's on Hulu, friends!) and it is so deliciously dated
Speed was my first R-rated movie in the theater. A friend's dad got us all in and promptly left. It was a great time, and the movie is still crazy enjoyable. See it sometime!
DID YOU REALLY MEET SANDY?! WOW
Still not over on how on mother earth is Extremely Loud a best picture nominee.
The Heat is the freaking greatest tho
Happy b-day, Sandy B.!
I remember her (first?) from the silly Love Potion No. 9, and then as Kiefer Sutherland's doomed other half in The Vanishing (from theaters—it was a bomb).
She really anchored Speed, While You Were Sleeping, The Net, Hope Floats, Miss Congeniality, The Lake House (no joke), The Heat, and Gravity. And while I'm not a huge fan of her broad-strokes work in The Blind Side or similarly charicatured The Proposal, I do kind of love that she had two HUGE hits in 2009. It's nice to see our beloved rom-com queens regain bankability and respect in this god-forsaken industry.
P.S. Her phone scene with Tom Hanks in Extremely [Dull] and Incredibly [Boring] was quite moving, I'll admit.
I remember the time when I was hating on Bullock for her Oscar win. Then Gravity and The Heat happened. We evolve, people.
I've seen 22 Sandra Bullock movies. But then, haven't we all?
Her movies are television staples, which is why we've all seen Demolition Man years after it's original release, and marvel that Sandy was at the top of her game even then.
My least favourite that I've seen is Forces of Nature, but there's at least 10 that I've seen multiple times.
She is a really durable star. It might have something to do with her being so practical and straightforward. She's matter of factly technically proficient, so you take for granted her excellent timing and solid range.
What drives me crazy about Sandra Bullock is the awful costumes she's given. She's gorgeous, why is she so often dressed in boring awful unflattering clothes?
Saw a lot of early Sandra Bullock movies: Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, The Vanishing, While You Were Sleeping, The Net, Two If By Sea, In Love and War, Practical Magic, Speed, 28 Days and a few others. I think her métier is comedy like the ones she showed in Miss Congeniality, While You Were Sleeping and The Proposal. She was quite good in a few scenes in Crash and especially in the much vilified (at least in my immediate circles) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. She went to school in my neck of the woods, too.
Probably one of the extremely few who have not seen her Oscar-winning performance in The Blind Side, I nevertheless lean towards liking her. I must admit that she did several cringe-worthy scenes in Forces of Nature that stuck with me longer than necessary. But that film was quite a mess even if I salute it for it's attempt to deconstruct a romantic adventure (either that, or the film's just a total mess).
I wonder what new layers from her acting arsenal can be tapped if she works with the likes of Abel Ferrara, Kelly Reichardt, Wong Kar-Wai or Olivier Assayas.
She is such a part of my childhood because my father always wanted to go to the movies but always let me pick, so we always saw the "classics": Miss Congeniality, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, Two Weeks Notice .... I remember after 28 Days he noted that she was a hell of an actress.
LOL that she should work with auteur film directors. I like her but the range is not unlimited. Who's her girlfriend?
i don't care what anyone says - I like her. I've always liked her. And, I am thrilled she won an Oscar for "The Blind Side." I am also thrilled Cher won her much-deserved Oscar.
"Your first time you had your own room?" "No, the first time I had a bed." OMG - Sandra. Heart You / Mean it. Come on everyone.....get over yourselves. She is sublime. And she appears to be a very nice & no bullshit kind of gal.
Haha I love Miss Congeniality and The Net and Gravity.
The Net goes well with Copycat, I think lol.