the blind side Tagged Articles at Cinematical

What major movie production features an interracial friendship that defies all the expected stereotypes? Hint: it's not the one starring Sandra Bullock.

On its own merits, The Blind Side is a heartwarming story of the modern South, in which a rich white 40-something woman (Bullock) befriends a poor black teenager (Quenton Aaron). Their relationship develops to the point that the young man feels a part of her family. I agree with our reviewer, Jette Kernion, who described it as "a very good example of a sports-related family film, with quality performances and writing." She also notes the "seeming visual message that the African-American community can't or won't care for their own, and that the saviors here are rich white conservatives." The film is based on a non-fiction account, but it still makes me wonder why, exactly, we needed another film depicting that particular racial dynamic -- beyond providing a great starring role for Bullock and the aforementioned heartwarming elements.

As finely-edged as a new razor blade, Ninja Assassin establishes itself as a contender for "CGI Fu Movie of the Decade" in its very first sequence, gleefully slicing off body parts with the abandon of an extreme gore flick that would satisfy most horror hounds. It rocks back and forth between ponderous philosophical pontifications and riotously preposterous action scenes like a ticking time bomb, exploding in geysers of blood at regular intervals. Our reviewer William Goss was much less taken with the film than I am -- I think it's fair to say he hated it -- so bear in mind that your mileage may vary wildly. However, I feel confident in saying that Ninja Assassin presents a rarely seen relationship: a friendship between two people that makes no mention of their racial differences.

Sometimes a movie will consume the internet for weeks before its release, and then turn out to be Snakes on a Plane. This is not one of those times. New Moon didn't set the all time opening weekend box office record, but it came uncomfortably close, and -- holy crap -- it now owns the record for the highest single-day gross ever, a $72 million Friday. Twilight opened to almost precisely half of New Moon's $140 million number, and went on to gross $192 million. The sequel should pass that mark by next weekend.

New Moon's staying power is a bit difficult to forecast. On one hand, its grosses may be frontloaded, as is typical when rabid fans of the source material rush out to pack midnight and opening-day showings. On the other, this might just be the kind of film that, even more so than its predecessor, generates repeat business. (Along these lines, I wonder if the egregious objectification of men in New Moon's marketing campaign is a victory for feminism. I vote yes.)

Getting somewhat lost in all the New Moon hoopla is the slightly less dramatic victory scored by the earnest, good-natured tearjerker The Blind Side, which took second place with nearly $35 million, which I suspect is another testament to the enduring box office draw of Sandra Bullock. (As a side note, the enduring box office draw of Sandra Bullock must be a testament to the awfulness of All About Steve, which topped out at $33 million despite her prominent presence.) It was also smart of Warner Bros. to deemphasize the sports angle -- a "football movie" would not have done this well.

More, and the top 10, after the jump.

The trailers for The Blind Side triggered my "oh geez, another sports-related Triumph of the Human Spirit" cynicism, and I might not have seen the film at all if I hadn't been assigned to review it. That would have been my loss, and I experienced the lovely surprise of having a movie turn out far more enjoyable than I expected. The Blind Side has no twists or gimmicks other than being a very good example of a sports-related family film, with quality performances and writing.

The movie's title is a football reference, which the voiceover of Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) explains at the beginning. Michael Oher (Quenton Aaron) is sweating out a tough but unspecified situation in an office, when we flash back a few years and meet him as Big Mike. An African-American staff member at a mostly white Christian private school is trying to get his athletic son into the school, and the school's coach also spots some athletic potential in Big Mike, granting him a scholarship. Big Mike has terrible trouble keeping up in school, and when his friend's family stops helping him out, he is virtually homeless -- sleeping in the school gym, eating popcorn left there after events, wearing the same thin clothes daily.

Despite what the critics thought, people flocked to the end of the world epic 2012 which pulled in $230 million globally. Precious expanded into a modest 174 theaters but still managed to land the number three position. Here's the top five:

1. 2012: $65.2 million
2. A Christmas Carol: $22.3 million
3. Precious: Based on the Novel: "Push" by Sapphire: $5.8 million
4. The Men Who Stare at Goats: $5.9 million
5. Michael Jackson's This Is It: $5 million

And moviegoers have three new releases to choose from this weekend.

The Twilight Saga: The New Moon
What's It All About: Do you really need to be told? This, of course, is the hotly anticipated sequel to 2008's Twilight. Bella's life continues down a dark path after Edward leaves her for her own safety. We've also got hunky bare-chested werewolves this time.
Why It Might Do Well: The first film had a $70 million opening weekend in 3,419 theaters. I suspect owning film rights to the Twilight series is like having a license to print money.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Some folks don't like their vampires to sparkle.
Number of Theaters: 4,000
Prediction: $86 million


The Blind Side
What's It All About: A homeless teen is adopted by a conservative family and matures into a football star with the potential to turn pro.
Why It Might Do Well: From a strictly personal standpoint, sports films don't really interest me, but this grabbed my attention. Also 67% at Rottentomatoes.com ain't bad.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Well, there is that vampire movie coming out this week.
Number of Theaters: 3,100
Prediction: $16 million

One thing you hear a lot about the great HBO series The Wire is some variation on "it ruined all other cop shows for me." And it's true. The Wire was so smart about policework, so painfully realistic without sacrificing drama, that it made damn near everything else, with the obligatory gun-and-badge-scene clichés and pat little whodunnits, seem downright silly; ridiculous. Creators and writers David Simon and Ed Burns called the bluff of an entire genre. They stripped away the Hollywood varnish and made their peers look goofy, clueless, like so many deer staring at headlights.

Michael Lewis's The Blind Side isn't quite like that, but it's close. Certainly I will henceforth have trouble restraining gales of laughter at the naiveté of football movies about scrappy underdog quarterbacks who overcome the odds and lead their teams to victory. Or about the glory of college football. Or about players who make it to the NFL through sheer pluck and determination.

Even more so than The Wire to lame cop dramas, The Blind Side is an explicit rebuke to such stories. Straight up, Lewis (who also wrote Moneyball) says: it doesn't work that way. First of all, the quarterback isn't even that important. A coach with a handle on strategy and talent elsewhere on the roster, can, within reason, make damn near anyone look good throwing the ball. Second: who makes it to the NFL is determined, 99% of the time, not by persistence and heart, but by genetics. Size. Much more than you might think, shape. Innate athleticism that cannot be taught or learned. Depressingly, the selection process for great football prospects often resembles a state fair where people admire the girth and gait of cattle and "hmm" and point thoughtfully.

The Lovely Bones
In this new film from Peter Jackson a young girl is murdered and watches from the afterlife as her family struggles to come to terms with her death and to find her killer. Based on a bestselling book and starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon, this one hits theaters on December 11.

The Boys Are Back
Clive Owen plays a man whose wife dies suddenly and he finds himself the single father of a young boy and a teenager from a previous marriage. This one gets a limited release on September 25.

The Blind Side
Sandra Bullock stars in this film based on a true story about a well to do white family that takes in an African-American teenage boy and helps him reach his potential as a football player. Watch for this one on November 20.

Let's get this out of the way: I'm no Sandra Bullock bully. I know, I gave her crap for looking all too perky in her long-delayed rom-com All About Steve (which is currently scheduled to bow on September 4th instead of last March, after The Proposal did well by her and The Hangover put co-star Bradley Cooper in a more recognizable realm). But she seems terribly content to play it safe, merely bantering with Hugh Grant or Benjamin Bratt or Ryan Reynolds, with diversions into dramatic territory either little-seen (Infamous, Loverboy) or little-loved (Premonition).

The most prominent exception to that streak would have to be Paul Haggis' Crash, and while I don't think that Bullock is so scheming as to put herself in another Oscar-baiting melodrama out of hopes of continuing that glory to more... individual ends, I hardly think it's coincidence that The Blind Side is the based-on-a-true-story tale of Bullock helping an oversized, undereducated minority teen who in turn makes her a better person. Yahoo! has the trailer; we've included it after the jump.

It seems that Renee Zellweger, the lady of quirky diaries and bunny creation seems to be quite interested in the pigskin lately. She's not doing Bridget Jones 3, or Bridget Jones Way Too Many, so she definitely has the time. In December, Erik Davis shared news that Zellweger would be joining The Office's John Krasinski in George Clooney's Leatherheads, which is a player - fiancee - coach football love triangle. Now, she is looking for a little football of the biopic variety.

According to The Guardian, Zellweger is going to play a foster mother of current pro football prospect Michael Oher -- a left tackle prominently featured in the popular book by Michael Lewis -- The Blind Side - Evolution of the Game, which the film is based on. It's one of those feel-good success stories, much more than the likes of Rudy. Oher was a large, poorly-educated African-American teen who was brought into a wealthy, white Republican family. It seems that she'll pick up the role of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the woman who, along with her husband, steers Oher into football. He got an education, and is now thought to be one of the leading pics for pro football.

What should make the movie a little more interesting than Zellweger being motherly, or yet another story about solid white folk inspiring a poor, down-trodden African-American kid is Oher himself. The Guardian ends with a story about how Oher handled once being insulted during a school match -- he picked the player up, carried him off the field and when asked, he explained that he "was going to put him back on the bus."

Are you ready for MORE football? 20th Century Fox thinks you are, as they've gone and snatched up the rights to Michael Lewis' (Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game) latest book, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. Released yesterday, the book garnered interest from a few other players including New Line and Mandalay. In the end, Fox won out with a deal for $200,000 against $1.5 million.

Blind Side, which revolves around the growing race for bigger (and when I say bigger, I mean BIGGER) football players, is one of several Lewis books that have been optioned over the years, with none of them moving ahead to production. However, with football as popular as it is right now on the big screen, Lewis feels this one definitely has a shot. The main plot focuses on a 16-year-old African American whose father was murdered and whose mother turned to crack. Though, at 344 pounds, the boy knew how to move and, thus, was taken in by a wealthy white couple who groomed him to be one of the top high school football prospects in the country.

Lewis notes, "Of all the books I've written, this is by far the most likely to be made into a movie." Whaddya say folks, how about we throw Eddie Murphy in a fat suit and watch this sucker fly?