Hacker Cinema
The Blind Side
2009 · Film · 129 min
Directed by John Lee Hancock
The story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football player and first round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.
2 positive1 negative5 neutralfrom 8 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
8 comments on Hacker News
Agreed, that this book was written with a target audience in mind. (People who loved the blind side movie)
But, I also wonder how much of this is Lewis trying to avoid legal culpability. If he knew that the whole thing was a total scam and he didn't warn anyone but is now making millions of dollars of the story, the people who lost money in FTX may want to sue?
I feel like you're really not giving credit where it is due.
Yes, the trope is that football consists entirely of meatheads. The infamous movie The Blind Side comes to mind where they falsely treat Michael Oher like moron in spite of his capability does nothing to put this to rest. However there is a lot of strategy from the coach picking the play to the individual match-up right on the field.
And to say that it is low skill - that's just a plain insult. Find me a 6'5", 325 lbs person who can deftly keep someone of equal or larger size from encroaching upon the quarterback's territory. Find me an Average Joe capable of consistently catching passes against two defenders. Find me another Average Joe capable of ball placement when their receiver has two defenders guarding them.
Extremely good essay.
Here's the thing.
A left tackle ( using "The Blind Side" here ) has a particular set of physical properties. If suddenly, for nutritional or environmental reasons, there are 10x of the number of people who can qualify physically as a left tackle, then the locus of competition will move elsewhere.
This, IMO, is what we see now. Paul's not advocating it ( again, IMO ) he's commenting on it. We are without the massive corporations of the 1950s to absorb people of "ordinary" ability[1]. Then again, I get stories of how those jobs slowly killed people.
[1]Yes, I hate that sentence but that's how the story goes...
Investing in inner city kids is a great idea, but it's hard to do. Using yet another sports film as a source, "The Street Stops Here" talks about Bob Hurley.
You don't find a Bob Hurley every day. Bob Hurley is a retired parole officer. It's clear from the film that he'd do nearly anything to keep kids out of prison. This is his white whale; he doesn't play fair and he doesn't care who objects to it.
Money will not help with that. Finding what can be done is a profoundly difficult problem.
Check out the movie "The Blind Side" (2009) or the book by the same name. Its explores this very issue.
You don't need to rate movies or even have a Netflix account to get this data. For this particular example, go here (found by googling 'the social network netflix'):
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Social-Network/70132721
You'll see they suggest {Beyond the Sea, Into the Wild, The Blind Side, Good Will Hunting, and Prefontaine}.
I posted this on the site, posting it here too:
I would say a better metric would be "How much did you enjoy this film?" vs "How good is this movie?"
I've been grappling with this problem since subscribing to Netflix, wondering how I should rate a movie I personally did not enjoy that I also felt was incredibly well made. For example, "A Clockwork Orange" is an incredible movie by all means and I would give it 97 stars out of a hundred.... but I hated every single second of it. It's gruesome, sadistic, dark, miserable, and disgusting. But it was undeniably well made.
Rewatchability sucks in the aspect because many movies can't be rewatched, while still being both splendidly produced and enjoyable. Let me make this clearer with examples: "The Sixth Sense," "Rear Window," "The Accused," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "12 Angry Men," "Apollo 13..." The list goes on and on. There are great movies that just don't rank so highly because they're SUSPENSEFUL and that suspense doesn't translate will into rewatches. Rewatching suspenseful movies will make them seem boring and long-drawn.
Rewatching feel-good movies ("Seven Pounds," "How To Train Your Dragon," "Blind Side," etc.) however, is just as good the second time if not better.
tl;dr the rewatchability index will be heavily skewed towards feel-good favorites and epics, and away from dark, gritty, mysterious, and suspenseful. Not a good index.
I think it's a rule in Hollywood that sports movies must be inspirational. In addition to Any Given Sunday, you've got:
* Invictus * The Blind Side * Rudy * Remember the Titans * Miracle * Rocky * Karate Kid
And that's just a few of the genre.
I'd highly recommend The Blind Side. Its nothing like the movie which seems to be targeted to middle-aged housewives.