‘Soul Surfer’ makes waves

 Exit polls at this past weekend’s debut of "Soul Surfer" showed sales were helped by devoted Christians, fans of country music star Carrie Underwood, who played Bethany Hamilton’s youth pastor, and females, who accounted for 85 percent of the audiences.

Among wide releases of new movies over the weekend, the movie hit the waves and screens with the third-best revenue at $11.1 million, and the best per-theater average of $5,014. CinemaScore gave an A+ rating to the film version of Bethany Hamilton’s rebound from losing her left arm to a shark while surfing off Kauai in 2003.

It will be interesting to see how long Hamilton’s near tragedy-to-triumph story, which got much attention in Hawaii, can ride it out on screens nationwide.

There’s no avoiding The Donald

 Dr. Chiyome Fukino evidently hopes she can trump The Donald. Yesterday the former state health director during the Lingle administration was quoted by NBC correspondent Michael Isikoff as calling "ludicrous" Donald Trump’s doubts that the president was, in fact, born here. The original, long-form birth certificate is there, Fukino said, and she’s seen it twice.

What’s really ludicrous? That someone who’s left the job still has to take these phone calls. You can run, but you can’t hide.