Film Friday: The Blind Side

Fall is a time to watch the boys of the gridiron and this month marks the 5-year anniversary of the theatrical release of The Blind Side. Based on the book by Michael Lewis, the film earned $255 million at the box office as well as a Best Picture Oscar nomination and netted Sandra Bullock an Academy Award for Best Actress. I remember finishing reading the book within a few days of seeing the movie opening night, hoping as all book fans do that the adaptation doesn't botch what was beloved about the original source material. Thankfully, director and screenwriter John Lee Hancock delivered.

In professional football, the game has become more dependent on the quarterback who captains the offense and often throws the ball. In order for the quarterback to get the proper amount of time to throw a pass or determine what he wants to do with the ball, he has to have a strong offensive line, particularly an all-world left tackle to protect his blind side from defensive pressure. Often, the left tackle is the second-highest paid player on the team besides the quarterback. Essentially, they're the QB's insurance policy.

Lewis' book delves into the history of the offensive lineman position and specifically, Michael Oher, a Memphis teen with a troubled childhood who gets taken in by the Tuohy family and discovers a talent for protecting the quarterback's blind side on the high school football team. The book's structure is set up to where the two key threads alternate, so one chapter is on the football specifics, then the next one is on Oher's story. At the time I read the book, I was more into the sports minutiae than the human interest side of the story, but there were moments where I wanted to blaze through the lineman history chapter and get to the next part of Michael's story. The book is well-paced and informative, but may not be the best for readers not interested in the football position details.

That's where the movie comes in, for better or for worse. The explanation of the offensive lineman position is limited to a brief opening sequence, but then focuses exclusively on Oher. Bullock was well-deserving of an Oscar for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy, who spearheads the effort to take Michael in. The film is firmly rooted in realism (there's a lot of cameos by college coaches, namely current University of Alabama head coach Nick Saban) and the film's final scene is archive footage from the NFL Network of Oher being drafted by the Baltimore Ravens. When I saw the movie with friends who had not read the book, they were able to guess the plot threads correctly, so there are few twists and turns for the average audience. Overall, Bullock's performance elevates what would otherwise be a very ordinary movie. Rating for both the movie and book: 4/5 stars.

When the film was released, Oher was in his debut season with the Ravens. He went on to a 5-year career in Baltimore, winning the Super Bowl in 2012. He currently plays for the Tennessee Titans. Meanwhile, Oher's alma mater, the Ole Miss Rebels, has an outside shot of competing for the national championship as of this writing. They were at one point this season the No. 3-ranked team in the country. The team is coached by Oher's high school coach, Hugh Freeze. The Tuohys have gone on to be featured on television and countless interviews (Leigh Anne is an interior designer, husband Sean owns dozens of restaurant franchises and previously worked as a broadcaster for the Memphis Grizzlies NBA basketball team).

When Oher won the Super Bowl, ABC News did a follow-up piece on the story. If you can't see the video below, click here.

Since the film's release, director John Lee Hancock earned acclaim for directing Saving Mr. Banks, one of my favorite movies of 2013. Sandra Bullock was terrific last year in Gravity and Tim McGraw (Sean Tuohy) will be in next year's sci-fi film Tomorrowland, but actor Quinton Aaron (Michael Oher) and actress Lily Collins (Leigh Anne and Sean's daughter Collins Tuohy) have not had the same level of success post-Blind Side despite receiving acclaim for their roles.

Have you seen or read The Blind Side? What did you think?

Film Friday: Moneyball

This weekend marks the final games of baseball's regular season, meaning the real season, the playoffs, will begin next week. Powerhouse teams like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will be watching at home with the rest of us while teams that have languished for years without seeing a drop of championship glory are about to end their drought.

Sports teams have searched for years for some formula to repeated success. Some sports like football and hockey have a blueprint while others like baseball do not have any real formula outside of the cliched pitching and defense. Baseball is a sport that has so many arbitrary effects, it's nearly impossible to calculate. Pitchers can have a stellar season then return the next season and not have as good of command or miss the strike zone so much, their earned run average rockets upward (typically, the lower the average, the better the pitcher). Statistics like ERA and the search for a success formula in baseball is the basis for Michael Lewis' Moneyball (W.W. Norton), considered by many to be one of the best sports books ever written.

The book centers on Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, who is consistently saddled with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, yet manages to field competitive teams in most years. After losing slugger Jason Giambi to the Yankees during the 2001 offseason, Beane resorted to using sabermetric statistics and acquired players that had high on base percentages as opposed to the traditional home runs and runs batted in. As a result, the 2002 A's went on an unlikely run before losing in the playoffs that year.

In 2011, a film version of the book directed by Bennett Miller and starring Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonah Hill made it to the big screen. Like the book, the movie was challenged in making a sports drama without much action and making statistics digestable. Frankly, the movie managed to do it better than the book. When reading the book, I felt it was mechanical at times, and I got lost in the statistics. There were memorable moments like when Billy addresses the scouting department that translated well to the film...

The screenplay, adapted by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, a favorite script writer of mine, was very good in terms of getting the key points without being bogged down in the statistics. Pitt, as Beane, and Hoffman, as manager Art Howe, square off like their counterparts did in real life and make for some of the better scenes in the film. Many of the players were profiled in the book, but the only one that really stuck out to me was first baseman Scott Hatteberg, played in the film by Chris Pratt. The book doesn't talk as much about Beane's present personal life, while the film has a whole subplot involving his daughter (mentioned briefly in the book) that was a highlight of the movie. Both the book and film delve into his past as a failed major league prospect.

My favorite scene in both the book and the film was showing how trades in baseball can be made. Sports fans salivate over trade rumors and it was cool to read and see how one goes down. Here's a clip where Beane and Peter Brand, played by Hill, try to get the team's owner to add to the payroll to acquire Ricardo Rincon, a pitcher for the bullpen...

Overall, I'd rate the book a 3/5 stars while the film I rated 5/5 stars and was my pick for Best Picture during the 2011 Oscars. It was nominated for six Academy Awards including the aforementioned Best Picture, Best Actor (Pitt) and Best Adapted Screenplay. Unfortunately, it struck out and went 0/6 in wins. It isn't my favorite baseball movie, but it is certainly in the top 5.

Do you have a favorite baseball or sports movie that was adapted from a book?