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The Blind Side [Blue-ray]
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$ 17.89
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| Retail Value |
$ 19.98 |
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$ 2.09 (10%) |
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| Item Number |
1770383 |
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Item Description...
Product Description
Sandra Bullock takes the proverbial ball and runs with Leigh Anne Tuohy, the honey blond spitfire of a well-to-do Southern wife and mother who takes in a homeless black teenager in "The Blind Side."
She's an irrepressible hoot in writer-director John Lee Hancock's otherwise thoroughly conventional take on Michael Lewis' fact-based book The Blind Side: Evolution Of A Game. Sticking safely to proven inspirational sports-movie/fish-out-of-water formulas while holding the inherent sociological issues to the sidelines, the dramedy doesn't skimp on the crowd-pleasing stuff, but there also was room for more thought-provoking substance.
Bullock's feisty performance should ensure solid midrange numbers, driven by a decidedly larger female demographic than what is usually drawn to gridiron fare. Director Hancock, who added a thoughtful page to the sports-movie playbook with 2002's "The Rookie," goes for a decidedly broader attack here in his depiction of Tennessee's Tuohy family and their head-turning houseguest.
When we meet up with Michael Oher (nicely played by Quinton Aaron), he's a long way from becoming an All-American football star. In fact, the outsized, introverted teen never has even played the game before when crosses paths with Bullock's Tuohy one wet winter night as she and her family pass her son's schoolmate on the street, braving the elements in just a T-shirt and shorts. They take him in for the night and ultimately adopt the gentle giant, raising the meticulously plucked eyebrows of Tuohy's affluent, decidedly nondiverse circle of friends, while grooming Oher to become an indispensable left tackle.
--Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter
Community Description
Outline
The Blind Side takes the true story of a young man who went from abandonment to success as a pro-football player and treats it with respect. The movie doesn't oversell what is, on the face of it, already compelling. It's almost impossible to describe the plot without sounding painfully inspirational: Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron, Be Kind Rewind), a hulking but gentle African-American teen in Tennessee, gets taken in by a well-to-do white family; the mother, Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock), pushes and mothers the boy, who eventually wins a football scholarship to the University of Mississippi. In the wrong hands, this could have been maudlin, manipulative, and condescending. To the credit of writer-director John Lee Hancock, adapting Michael Lewis's acclaimed book, the result is intelligent, genuine, and alternately funny and moving. Leigh Anne could easily have been grandstanding and virtuous, but Bullock doesn't shy away from her vain and domineering side. The football scenes will be gripping even to non-sports fans because they've been so successfully grounded in Michael's emotional life. The all-around solid cast includes country music star Tim McGraw, pint-sized Jae Head (Hancock), and Kathy Bates as the tutor who guided Michael's academic success. Don't be surprised if you can't keep yourself from watching all the real-life photos of Michael, Leigh Anne, and the rest of the family that are featured in the credits; by the end of the movie, you will care about them all. --Bret Fetzer
Please Note, Community Descriptions and notes are submitted by our shoppers, and are not guaranteed for accuracy. |
Item Specifications...
Record Label Warner Home Video
Format AC-3 / Color / Dolby / DTS Surround Sou
Dimensions: Length: 5.4" Width: 7.5" Height: 0.7"
Weight: 0.4 lbs.
Binding BLU-Ray
Publisher Warner Home Video
Age 12
EAN 0883929087105
UPC 883929087105
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Availability 5 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 10:49.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Woodland, CA.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Avoids the hazard of pathos to tell a heartwarming story Jan 19, 2010 |
This is a film with a story that is perpetually on the brink of pathos and a sop to white guilt over the position of a huge number of African-Americans in American society. The phrase "white guilt" even comes up in the film. There is no question that you can't avoid thinking about these things when confronted by a film about a wealthy white family taking in an exceptionally poor, socially unsupported black kid and raising him through his high school years. Let's set all that aside for a second. The film tells a story about people caring about other people and those who can helping someone else who needs it. And we all can't help but love rags to riches stories. Especially if they have a basis in fact.
The political aspects of this film have generated a huge amount of controversy. The story of a white family helping a black kid is bound to stir controversy. There are so many issues raised by this that I won't even start to get into that. I think people will bring their own politics to a viewing of the film, so it will serve as a Rorschach test. I see it as an indictment of society at large and the almost complete lack of opportunity for a huge number of very poor blacks. I see Michael Oher as an exception, a kid who got very lucky because of the compassion of one family in a position to help. Conservatives will see this as a validation of private largess, while I see the opposite, with virtually no one willing to do what the Tuohy's did. Not many people will get breaks like Michael did.
I'm happy for Sandra Bullock. I've always liked her, but have watched her career with a sense of horror. She has turned down some roles in pictures that were successful, while she has been in a long string of clunkers. This was easily her best role since . . . SPEED? Many of her best roles actually came from before SPEED, in small supporting performances. Of the top box office actresses of her era, she may have the worst group of movies on her resume. I also like that she is another of an increasing number of actresses to continue to enjoy success after turning 40. It is great to see her have such great success after so many stinky movies.
As an Arkansas fan (and therefore an SEC fan) I got a kick out of seeing former Arkansas coaches Lou Holtz (who was fired for his awkward handling of racial tensions on the team, stupidly making a commercial endorsing racist North Carolina senator Jesse Helms when the Arkansas program was being torn apart by accusations of racial insensitivity on the team--and what could be racially less sensitive than making a commercial for that old hate monger) and Houston Nutt (fired due to stupidity of some Arkansas fans who created an untenable atmosphere -- not that I don't enjoy the current Arkansas coach). There is a funny moment where Houston Nutt, as the Arkansas head coach, notices that Leigh Anne is holding an Ole Miss cup. That is funny because when fan pressure drove Nutt out of his job at Arkansas, he became the head coach at Ole Miss. Speaking of Arkansas, Michael Oher should have gone there. Darren McFadden and Felix Jones might have been even more productive. Well, maybe not. I'm not sure how either of them could have done much more than they did. Oher did end up playing for Houston Nutt. Interestingly, I am pretty sure that all of the coaches who appeared in the film are now actually at other schools or out of football entirely.
I have to point out that a couple of actors from one of my all time favorite TV series, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, were in THE BLIND SIDE. The boy who played the irrepressible S.J., Jae Head, played the equally irrepressible Bo in Season One of FNL, a little boy who idolized Tim Riggins. And Kim Dickens, who played the teacher who first recognized that Michael Oher was smarter than many assumed, played Matt Saracen's Mom in Seasons Three and Four. | | |  | Sassy Sandra sours this one Jan 18, 2010 |
A huge and hugely inarticulate African American teen-ager from a broken family is adopted by a southern white couple, who help him become a football star and come out of his shell, and he winds up with a college scholarship.
Sounds heartwarming, inspiring, the kind that you want to get up and cheer at the end of, doesn't it? Well -- for me, anyway, the reality was a little different.
The young actor playing teen-ager Michael Oher, Quinton Aaron, may have only been playing the part the way he saw it -- but he seems to have as much acting ability as a huge block of coal. Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy, the husband and father in the white family, spends a lot of his time doing whatever his wife tells him and marveling at how lucky he was to get her.
But it is Sandra Bullock, the wife Leigh Anne Tuohy, who really spoils this movie for me. With long, flowing blonde hair (dyed for the part), and a series of fanny-flattering straight skirts and tight slacks, she is certainly pleasing to look at -- until she opens her mouth. To put it mildly, her nickname could fittingly have been "Momma Sass."
Momma orders her family around, tells football coaches how to do their job, does a "shamey-shamey" white guilt trip on her female friends when they suggest that having a young black man living with her family that includes a teen-age daughter might not be just the wisest thing to do, and is in general just too insufferably cocky and bumptious for my taste. She even talks trash to a group of black gang members in a public housing project where she has gone to look for the missing Michael -- and gets away with it. I'm amazed she was not shown doing a rap song she had improvised on the spot -- she can seemingly do everything else. The only person in the movie allowed to out-sass Momma and leave her without a snappy comeback is a fat, black female office manager at a license branch. Is anyone surprised?
Oher's scenes with the Tuohys' young son are mildly charming -- one of the few bright spots, in my estimation. But those bright spots are all too few.
Golden Globe for Bullock as best actress? OK -- that was their decision to make. To paraphrase something Harry Truman once said, "I didn't give it to her." Way, way too much cocksureness -- and practically none of the blowback she would get from the people she's ordering around and smart-mouthing, if this was real life. I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them for a good movie. But please, Mr. Hancock (the director and screenwriter): Don't tinkle on my shoes, then tell me it's raining. | | | | So heartfelt. 4.25 stars. Jan 10, 2010 |
January 10th, 2010
If you have a soul in you, then this movie should be able to stir it. Starring a 17-year old black kid that's in and out of foster homes, who's never really given a chance, a very considerate white woman comes into his life and changes it completely. She gives him a new chance at life with her family and he starts to turn things around...
It's about 25% football and 75% emotion.
A good watch, that sorta drags towards the end.
Nice for the older bulk of the family to enjoy. Has some language and brief drug use towards the end of the movie.
Watch it when it comes out to DVD!
4.25 stars. | | |  | Sometimes you just need to know there are people who take these kinds of chances. . . Jan 9, 2010 |
Don't get me wrong--I know this is a Hollywood version of Michael Oher's life during a particular timeframe. I know that certain real-life events have been tweaked in order to tug more effectively at my (and your) heartstrings. I also know that I can't assume that this movie is a perfect representation of this family and how Michael Oher came to be part of it.
That said, I must admit to having been a sniffling fool throughout much of the film. I am particularly sensitive to stories that show human beings stepping outside of typical comfort zones and taking risks to embrace others who need the attention or support. This story, for all that it's been Hollywood-ized, shows a young man and a family doing just that, and it's powerful in spite of those moments that just seem too good to be true.
I agree with other reviewers that Sandra Bullock has done an excellent job in this film. Her character might sound like a stereotype, but there's too much going on in her heart and head to keep her in a box that's easy to dismiss. She stands there in front of drug dealers who've been basically treating her like a piece of meat at the same time that they're sliding nasty, threatening looks over her designer-clad body, and she manages to hold her own. She enters territory that she likely hasn't ever encountered before, dangerous territory that must have struck fear into her heart and made her want to run in the opposite direction, but she enters and stays because she has something to accomplish, from finding Michael, to finding his drug addict mother, to ensuring that he doesn't meet a horrible end at the hands of those drug dealers leering at her. She does this, and then (I think) she spends however long it takes to fight back the emotions that these experiences bring out in her. The reviewer who said she basically hides when she is emotional is spot on, I think. She is all guts and sarcastic wit and in-your-face honesty because she has to be in order to get what she needs from others. But the soft side of her is reserved for very rare moments, either with her husband, or with Michael, who simply won't allow her finally to walk away and hide her feelings. Interesting that it seems at first that she is the one drawing him out, when ultimately they manage to pull the best from each other.
The acting is superb all-around. Quinton Aaron plays Michael, and he does it with such skill that it's easy to assume he is like Michael all the time, that he is simply playing himself. Instead, what we have is an actor who found the vulnerable core of his character and covered it with the flat, lumbering movements of someone barely connected to life and to other people. When we first meet Michael, it's hard to imagine that he will ever manage a full, genuine smile or even speak effectively to others. He begins to open up, and it's little moments where he reveals some of his past, or just simply tells us how his life is changing, that make him shine as a character. He's got a fair amount of anguish that he doesn't allow to come to mind very often, pain that has shaped him and led to that distance he seems to carry with him most of the time. Just an awesome acting job.
The story was my favorite part, though, and I did find myself crying as the family pictures came up on screen after the movie proper was done. Crying because, hey, here are the REAL moments, many of them part of the film version, too. Here are the pics that show this giant kid dwarfing his new family but also show a group of people finding their joy together. Just very sweet and very necessary at a time when we are likely spending more energy worrying about how crappy other human beings can be. It's nice to be reminded that human beings also contain within them a core of kindness and compassion that they sometimes extend out in truly amazing ways to people who not only need it but who have so much of their own to give back.
I will definitely get the DVD when it's released. | | | | Sandra Bullock's best film grabs you by the heart Jan 6, 2010 |
| I first saw this blockbuster film the first week it came out and I expected the theater to be partially filled. What a surprise to me when it was practically filled to the brim. I won't go too much into the plot of a white family who rescues a Black youth from poverty and crime except to say that if there are any negative reviews on this film, which are few, they reflect the cynicism of the reviewer rather than the film itself which is based on a true story. Michael Oher of course could've been saved by anyone but in this case it was a White Christian family who took him in which goes to show you that human heart knows no boundaries, racial or otherwise. Heartily recommended to all those who still believe there is some good in the world despite all the insanity has been going on in the news. And by the way, this may be Sandy's turn to cop the Oscar--you never know!! | | | Write your own review about The Blind Side [Blue-ray]
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