It's the first Oscar for a sport movie since Million Dollar Baby won four (Best Picture, Best Actress for Hilary Swank, Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman and Best Director for Clint Eastwood) in 2005.
Bullock's win closes out a remarkable season of critical acclaim and Hollywood honours for the former Miss Congeniality. She tied Streep at the Critic's Choice Awards and won the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards. Every turn she took in the spotlight meant more eyeballs on The Blind Side, which has earned $250 million at the box office and will be a hot release on DVD March 23rd.
The sport movie Oscar for Bullock follows two nominations for The Wrestler last year (Mickey Rourke as best actor and Marisa Tomei as best supporting actress) in what appears to be the beginning of an upswing for the genre, which has been mostly Will Ferrell comedies and mostly dreck over the past half-decade.
Why The Blind Side might open the door to more and better scripts for sport movies in the coming years is as much about box office as it is about the critical acclaim and awards. Critics loved The Wrestler but it earned a relatively modest $44.7 million at the box office (but a solid ROI on a $6 million production budget).
Produced for $30 million, The Blind Side is the first sport movie since Million Dollar Baby (which also cost $30 million) to win both good reviews and good money (Eastwood's boxing film earned the four Oscars and $216 million worldwide). And in Hollywood, where as in most business sectors success breeds success, it's all about box office.
Yet the difference this year is that The Blind Side is two things: it's part of the best crop of sport movies since 2004 (which also featured Miracle and Friday Night Lights) and the deepest list in more than a decade (with more than 10 releases, not including the solid documentaries which are helping ESPN mark its 30th anniversary and others closer to home such as Facing Ali).
Better still: it's one of a series of real-life stories (along with rugby's Invictus and soccer's Damned United) adapted to the big screen this year.
That's the best sign of all for the genre because its true stories are its biggest strength. It's a big reason to expect studios will receive a lot of sport movie pitches this year and, more important, why they'll be more receptive.
For more on this year's sport movies and The Sport Market Movie Awards, click
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Viewers+blind+sided+best+years+sports+films+cinematic+history/2649573/story.html
http://www.thesportmarket.biz/
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