Movie based on the story of Michael Oher

It stars Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw as the big names

Its Directed by John Lee Hancock who adapted the screenplay.

This is an interesting concept as this story is still on going. Michael Oher was drafted by the Ravens this past April in the 1st Round.

NC State has a connection as we were one of the schools that recruited him. The Previews look good.

11/11/2009 9:59:12 PM

a football movie even my girlfriend wants to see

11/11/2009 10:42:45 PM

I read the book. Looks like the movie will stick pretty close to it.

Oher's story is definitely interesting. He's not dominating on the ravens as the book would make you expect. He's young still, though.

Wonder if the NCAA figured out how to handle rich white boosters plucking kids out of the ghetto and convincing them to go to their alma mater.

Also according to the book, we never really had a chance at oher. The book also makes fun of noel mazzone for being an untalented idiot.

11/11/2009 10:47:49 PM

If only every poor black kid had a nice white lady to show him he can empower himself through football.

11/11/2009 11:30:58 PM

Movie probably will be ass but the book was good. The first chapter in particular was excellent with LT vs Theismann

11/12/2009 9:50:57 AM

The trailer looks like that standard uplifting "based-on-a-true-story" crap. Which is a shame. I figure they'll ignore all the really good parts of the book about the evolution of the left tackle position(also known as the overall point).

11/12/2009 10:09:33 AM

Quote :

"Wonder if the NCAA figured out how to handle rich white boosters plucking kids out of the ghetto and convincing them to go to their alma mater."

Is this a serious statement...I would tend to think that any sane people with a teenage daughter would put protecting their family much higher up on the totem pole than taking in a ghetto teen on the off chance he might be good at football and then convince him to go to their school.

^I'd say it was a 50/50 split to be honest...he jumped back and forth each chapter. The previews do seem to make the mother a much more central part of the story than she was in the book though.

[Edited on November 12, 2009 at 10:32 AM. Reason : a]

[Edited on November 12, 2009 at 10:55 AM. Reason : a]

11/12/2009 10:30:24 AM

What a racist movie.

11/12/2009 10:34:12 AM

I thought the black dude's name was Michael Moore.

11/12/2009 10:53:20 AM

Book > Movie

11/12/2009 2:14:38 PM

Is this like a magic negro film but backwards, or does the black kid's struggle make the white woman realize important things about her own life?

11/12/2009 6:41:07 PM

This movie really pinpoints the plight of the white (wo)man.

11/12/2009 6:56:15 PM

^^ It makes her realize important things like how shopping at Talbots and teaching black folk how to live their lives can go hand in hand.

11/12/2009 9:05:46 PM

Quote :

" Is this a serious statement...I would tend to think that any sane people with a teenage daughter would put protecting their family much higher up on the totem pole than taking in a ghetto teen on the off chance he might be good at football and then convince him to go to their school."

This is basically what happened to Reggie Bush, too. Boosters will go to extreme lengths to get players.

11/12/2009 9:09:06 PM

I hadn't heard that about Bush...can't find anything in a quick search either...you have any links? (not doubting, just being lazy)

11/13/2009 11:26:05 AM

i really enjoyed this book

i don't expect the movie to be very good, but i'll probably catch it at some point

11/13/2009 12:11:23 PM

I'll catch it when its on TBS/TNT heavy rotation

11/13/2009 1:39:20 PM

really enjoyed this movie

11/21/2009 12:20:01 PM

when its on TBS/TNT Lifetime heavy rotation

11/21/2009 2:13:04 PM

I loved the movie!!! I think it was amazing. Even got me teary eyed in a few scenes.

11/22/2009 10:20:06 PM

i really enjoyed the movie (aside from Tim McGraw's horrible toupee)

Now, I really want to read the book.

11/23/2009 8:37:21 PM

movie is really good, i havent heard any complaints from anyone who saw it.

11/23/2009 10:41:49 PM

i loved this movie

11/29/2009 7:45:08 PM

saw the movie wed night with the fam. great movie!! i didnt cry, even though i expected to. it was touching without bringing on the waterworks, which i prefer

11/29/2009 10:29:50 PM

as spookyjon said,

Quote :

"Rich white folks are always putting aside their daily concerns for the benefit of the African American community, it seems, though one had thought that the past fifty or so years would have put an end to such obvious cinematic condescension. Shockingly, and as if on cue, we have The Blind Side; a film that brushes aside the Civil Rights movement, decades of struggle and sacrifice, as well as the election of the nation’s first non-white president with such casual abandon that we can’t believe no one bothered to stop production. With so many of Hollywood’s liberals and do-gooder element scanning every conceivable horizon for the slightest hint of insensitivity, it boggles the mind to consider how this one got away. It’s perhaps the most casually racist movie released since Appomattox."

http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/9379/the-blind-side/

11/29/2009 10:41:34 PM

Is yours and spooky's point that it's a movie with misguided intentions or that the actual events were misguided?

I mean, I guess I agree...the world would have been much better off if the family had decided not to take the guy into their family.

11/30/2009 11:01:09 AM

I saw it tonight, great movie. Made me want to drive around the projects and adopt someone.

12/12/2009 11:31:13 PM

i'm not sure i entirely get spöokyjon's criticism of the movie. i, too, slightly question the motives of the family and their intentions, yet maintain the belief that few people would go to such extremes for no other reason than to have someone play football at their alma mater.

what exactly is "racist" about this film

12/14/2009 1:49:47 PM

^Here's a review that touches on some film history:

Quote :

"Hancock doesn’t exactly have a heavy touch. Following the arc of Lewis’s journalism, he delicately raises possibilities of cynicism, boosterism, and liberal guilt, and the movie grazes the idea of being afraid of certain black male stereotypes - long after they occur to us, but still. And it seems to anticipate our worry that Michael, gracious and pacific as he is and as good as Aaron is in the part, has too few thoughts of his own. Oher plays in the NFL for the Baltimore Ravens now, and you wonder how he feels about being represented as such a passive part of his own success. Commercial American movies seem interested in stories about young black men saved from God knows what by nice white people or sports. Here it’s both. That double jackpot happens occasionally in life. But it’s a staple in Hollywood, where large, kind black men are sometimes both a blessing and a threat (see “The Green Mile’’). Oher’s life is meant to make us feel good, and it mostly does. But how good we feel about his story is proportional to how blind we’re willing to be about how it’s told."

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2009/11/20/blind_side_sticks_to_the_playbook_on_race_and_renewal/

The preview made me cringe, but I love Sandra Bullock and Kathy Bates. Basically, I hope they made the preview the way they did just to agitate folks and get them talking. The movie will hopefully be not so offensive...?

Quote :

"[user][user]vinybandit[/user]: Is this like a magic negro film but backwards, or does the black kid's struggle make the white woman realize important things about her own life?"

Oh snaps! I never thought about it being magical negro. If that's the case, I'm all over this shit.

The cook from The Shining is pretty much my sole reason for living.

12/14/2009 4:33:34 PM

I'm not worried about what Oher or other people think about the movie or book not highlighting the effort he put in, that's not what it was about.

Hell, the worst part about the movie was the training montage. I take it as a given that to be drafted in the first round by the NFL you have to put in a lot of work. There are like 1700 players in the NFL who all put in a ton of effort, maybe even more than Oher. And guess what...if that's what sold books and movies there would be 1700 NFL biographies out there. But that's not what sells.

Interesting stories sell, and that's what this is. To call it racist because it only focuses on the white people helping the black people shows a complete lack of understanding of the situation.

12/14/2009 5:00:04 PM

12/14/2009 9:36:08 PM

i forget what review i read but they said this movie was basically about white people adopting black people as pets

obv the book and underlying story are very different, but that is how the movie turned out


here we go:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-blind-side,35586/

Quote :

"Sports movies have a long, troubled history of well-meaning white paternalism, with poor black athletes finding success through white charity. But The Blind Side, based on Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book, finds a new low. In the character of “Big Mike” (real life success story Michael Oher, played by Quinton Aaron), a poor, undereducated teenager later groomed into a top-tier offensive lineman, the film suggests a gentle, oversized puppy in need of adoption. (The family that takes him in literally picks him up from the streets during a rainstorm, like a stray. All that’s missing are the children pleading, “Mom, can we keep him?”) Given his background and 0.6 GPA, there’s no question that Oher was well behind his peers, but casting him as a big-hearted simpleton makes him seem subhuman, more mascot than man. Lewis’ book heads down two narrative tracks. One concerns the increased importance of the left tackle position in football to protect the “blind side” of right-handed quarterbacks; the other follows Oher, a former all-American Ole Miss left tackle and current Baltimore Ravens rookie, who was rescued from terrible poverty and put through a private Christian high school in Tennessee. Save for a prologue that forces viewers to relive the gruesome Joe Theismann injury from multiple angles, the film understandably discards the former thread in favor of the personal story. Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw star as the Tuohys, a wealthy couple who offer Oher a nice home, a tutor (Kathy Bates) to raise his grades, and a controversial pipeline to their alma mater, should his success on the field match his immense potential. The Blind Side paints Bullock’s Leigh Anne Tuohy as a tough-as-nails Southern belle who acts as Oher’s left tackle in life, shielding him from the racist whisperings of the country-club set and a dim high-school coach who doesn’t know how to communicate with him. (Aaron’s Oher looks lost on the field until she asks him to imagine the quarterback and running back as family members to protect from harm. As if anyone’s that dim.) There’s real ambiguity in the Oher case, but writer-director John Lee Hancock papers over it; it’s possible to see the Tuohys as generous, caring people without brushing off their less-altruistic reasons for sponsoring Oher. But true to a movie with a regrettably old-fashioned view of race relations, it’s all much simpler than common sense dictates."

[Edited on December 15, 2009 at 2:32 PM. Reason : .]

12/15/2009 2:30:43 PM

After reading that and a handful of other like reviews, I still don't understand what these writers would have liked to see in the book and/or movie.

The events happened, its a true story. You can view it as racist if you want to, but you don't have to. Yes, you can take the approach that when a rich white family helps a poor black kid it shows that only the white people can help the black people. OR you can view it as a story about rich people helping a poor person who has virtually no means to help himself, regardless of color.

If Michael Oher had been white they probably still would have stopped on the side of the road to give him a ride. But it just so happens that he was black...so that makes the whole thing racist?

12/15/2009 3:28:22 PM

You're right, we can choose not to acknowledge the racist connotations of a lot of things in life, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

12/15/2009 5:14:47 PM

So what would have been the right, non-racist thing for the Touhy's to do in this situation?

12/15/2009 6:38:17 PM

^^^exactly.

To address some of the points made in the above critique of the film I believe there was merit in the oher was portrayed. Clearly Oher was addressed as a lighthearted, shy, and gentle soul to give people an image to which they could relate. If he was portrayed as a brutish and unrefined thug the character would not have been as identifiable to the majority of the viewing audience. It was necessary to provide this contrast between background and being. Just because the character is black doesn't mean we should shy away from character development.

I understand those who question the true altruistic nature of those who adopted Michael, and as is to be expected, but I believe looking for this film to act as an expose on the true motivations behind the family in real life is a bit much.


^clearly they were supposed to let him starve and not graduate from high school and encourage him to act as a ne'er-do-well who has no control over actions as a result of his environment.

[Edited on December 15, 2009 at 6:40 PM. Reason : ^s]

12/15/2009 6:39:05 PM

Quote :

"Is yours and spooky's point that it's a movie with misguided intentions or that the actual events were misguided?"

i wasnt making a point, i havent seen the movie, i was posting someone else's opinion.

Quote :

"The events happened, its a true story."

no it isnt. it is BASED on a true story. which is a very different thing. again, i havent seen the movie, but i have very strong suspicions that a large part of the movie is fiction/conjecture.

nobody has said the EVENTS were racist and that taking a black man into your home is racist. they have said the way the movie portrays the event is racist, which may or may not be close to the way they actually happened.

Quote :

"Yes, you can take the approach that when a rich white family helps a poor black kid it shows that only the white people can help the black people. OR you can view it as a story about rich people helping a poor person who has virtually no means to help himself, regardless of color."

so if this movie had been about them picking up a large white man, an equal number of people would have found it uplifting?

Quote :

"Clearly Oher was addressed as a lighthearted, shy, and gentle soul to give people an image to which they could relate. If he was portrayed as a brutish and unrefined thug the character would not have been as identifiable to the majority of the viewing audience."

i have no idea how oher was in real life, but assuming he was at all different from his movie portrayal, you dont see anything wrong with them feeling the need to change him to a big, dumb half-mute who can barely figure out how to play football in order to make him more "identifiable"? identifiable with who?

Quote :

"clearly they were supposed to let him starve and not graduate from high school and encourage him to act as a ne'er-do-well who has no control over actions as a result of his environment."

12/15/2009 9:08:17 PM

Quote :

"no it isnt. it is BASED on a true story. which is a very different thing. again, i havent seen the movie, but i have very strong suspicions that a large part of the movie is fiction/conjecture. nobody has said the EVENTS were racist and that taking a black man into your home is racist. they have said the way the movie portrays the event is racist, which may or may not be close to the way they actually happened."

I apologize, the movie is based on a book, which is based on a true story, so here's the breakdown. Having read the book, I can say that the movie played Lewis' portrayal of the story and Oher's demeanor almost to a T. There were a couple combined scenes and even a couple things that didn't happen, but as far as movies based on books, I found myself saying, "that's not what happened in the book" FAR fewer times than I have in the vast majority of movies in this genre. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that Oher spoke MORE and appeared more socially adapted in the movie than the book.

So now onto the book. I've read Liar's Poker, Moneyball, and a bunch of other columns Lewis has written, and it's very obvious that he has no qualms telling the truth, including all the gritty details. There is no reason to believe his portrayal of Oher was any different than he is in real life, and that the story is just as it happened. To imagine that Lewis changed anything to further the value of the story is to be ignorant of his past work and demeanor.

Quote :

" i have no idea how oher was in real life, but assuming he was at all different from his movie portrayal, you dont see anything wrong with them feeling the need to change him to a big, dumb half-mute who can barely figure out how to play football in order to make him more "identifiable"? identifiable with who?"

So far I haven't seen any quotes or stories about people that actually know Oher, or Oher himself come out and say that this story was made up and that the portrayal was off base. How is it justifiable to make an argument of racism based on the assumption that the portrayal was incorrect? Until anyone makes a VALID claim that the true events are actually different than the portrayal, than you can't just go making arguments based on assumptions. That's like me saying, "RWOODY is a closet racist because I think he probably is just writing all of this stuff to cover up his real personality, even though I have no evidence to back this up". It's not a valid argument.

12/16/2009 9:01:32 AM

Lots of [words] in this thread.

Just rented this at Red Box today and we're watching it now.

I've said 'aww' entirely too many times in the first 30mins. I anticipate a good, long cry before the movie is over.

But Sandra Bullock's accent is driving me batshit.

4/20/2010 10:19:52 PM

I eventually got over that accent. And that was a really great movie!

4/20/2010 11:53:56 PM

Awesome movie... Guess I missed the racist part of the family.


III

4/21/2010 9:14:57 AM

Quote :

"Guess I missed the racist part of the family. "

You missed this scene?

Quote :

"(Answering machine message.) This is Bobby, Happy New Years. Listen I've had about five cold ones and, uh, I'm just going to go ahead and ask -- did you all know there's a colored boy on your Christmas card? "

4/21/2010 10:24:29 AM

LOL was talking more about the whole family stepping into help someone who needed help being portrayed as racist lol


III

4/21/2010 11:10:34 AM

See, I didn't read the book. So all I have to go on is the movie. And it seemed to me that the private school was all white, so there was a general sense of racism in the school. And a prominent white family bringing a 17yo black kid to live with them was obviously not generally accepted within their social circles. So there is a little racism being shown within the town and the "elite" types. But overall, I didn't get the racism vibe from the immediate family.

I also didn't read all the [words] in this thread before I posted. So I have no idea what they said

4/21/2010 11:14:22 AM

Saw this last night and I don't get why people said they liked it.

Should have been a lifetime special. It was cutesy, had a happy ending that gave me a warm fuzzy, but it also made me vomit a few times.

4/22/2010 9:45:04 AM

still doesn't seem like an oscar-winning performance for best actress to me, not that it matters or anything

4/22/2010 9:49:58 AM

waiting for the basketball version, and the poor kid being a white guy thug and the rich well groomed black family taking his goofy ass in to turn him into a NBA player...

4/22/2010 12:51:33 PM

Quote :

"Should have been a lifetime special."

4/22/2010 1:44:37 PM

Quote :

"But overall, I didn't get the racism vibe from the immediate family."

I know you said you didn't read the thread, but it's the movie, not the family.

The fourth post pretty much nails it:

Quote :

"If only every poor black kid had a nice white lady to show him he can empower himself through football. "

4/22/2010 2:42:39 PM

^I was replying to this post dawg.

Quote :

"Guess I missed the racist part of the family."

I was agreeing with him at that point, that it wasn't the family that was racist, but moreso the community as a whole.

And it's not a racist movie. It's a true story. That's what really went down.

4/22/2010 2:46:21 PM