It struck me when I first saw the trailer for John Lee Hancock‘s The Blind Side (Warner Bros., 11.20), an adaptation of Michael Lewis‘s 2006 book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” that it seemed like a more affluent, white-middle-classy, economically upbeat version of Lee Daniels‘ Precious.

The rough shorthand is that both are about compassion and nurturing offered to a young African American — an obese female teen in Precious, a mountain-sized homeless teenaged male in the Hancock film — grappling with poverty and self-esteem issues that would choke a horse.

Based on a true story, The Blind Side is primarily about a good samaritan — a middle-aged Republican/Christian wife and mom named Leigh Anne Toulhy (Sandra Bullock) — who takes in the homeless Micheal Oher (Qunton Aaron) — 16 years old, 78 inches tall, weighing 350 pounds — and gets him enrolled in a Memphis-based Christian school, which quickly leads to opportunities to play college football. Oher is now an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens.

So Hancock’s film is mainly about goodness and charitableness shown by well-to-do white folk in a well-heeled environment, while Precious is set in modest, down-at-the-heels (in some cases squalid) Harlem locales, and is pretty much an African-American tale about African-American characters and culture. But they’re both about coming to the rescue of damaged youths, and good people extending a hand.

No one seems to have written about The Blind Side except L.A, Times columnist Patrick Goldstein, who called it a “wonderful new film” in a column posted yesterday. With the film opening in two and a half weeks and no one else saying anything just yet, it may be that Goldstein is himself being compassionate. I’m told it’s not Best Picture material, but that Bullock registers quite strongly and convincingly as Toulhy.

I do know that Hancock is a first-rate director (The Rookie being one of my all-time favorite G-rated films) and if it turns out to be a truly heartwarming thing…well, let’s see.

Here’s a video of Lewis talking about Oher’s story:

Fox Searchlight is suddenly screening Crazy Heart, the Jeff Bridges character drama that Hollywood Reporter columnist Steven Zeitchik has described as a country-music version of The Wrestler, and frequently — two showings today and a couple more tomorrow and/or Friday, a friend reports. But so far no screenings are slated for the New York crowd. Or so I’m concluding due to a lack of response after writing Fox Searchlight’s Manhattan p.r. crew this morning.

Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal in Jeff Cooper’s Crazy Heart.

L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein reported yesterday that the film, directed and written by Jeff Cooper, is opening limited in NY and LA on 12.11. FS is looking for reactions from key blogger/columnists to see if it has the heft and the chops to be an awards competitor. Look for posts later today from the usual online suspects.

I know if I was running the Fox Searchlight show I’d want to hear from the Manhattan crowd concurrently. I probably speak for many of us in expressing a feeling of being under-appreciated.

This episode underlines the unfortunate fact that New York-based handicappers are often at a distinct advantage at this time of year. If I could have swung it I would have bunked in Los Angeles all during November and into early December, because that’s where most of the action is during this awards-contention period. Bicoastal-ness is too often a myth in this respect. Apart from the long-lead monthly screenings for big-time editors and feature-profile writers, the New York pulsebeat crowd often seems to get sloppy seconds, certainly around this time of year.

Adapted from Thomas Cobb‘s 1989 book, the downbeat drama (country music, alcoholism, parenting, looking for closure) costars Bridges, Colin Farrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall.

The film was produced by Cooper, Duvall, Judy Cairo and Rob Carliner. The film has an original soundtrack by T-Bone Burnett.

Here’s a Library Journal summary of Cobb’s book, which may or may not have been strictly followed by Cooper’s script:

“Singer and guitarist Bad Blake (Bridges) was once a first-rate country-and-western star, but now he’s 57, an alcoholic, a failure at four marriages, and playing in third-rate clubs. The biggest gig he can get is opening for Tommy Sweet (Farrell), the kid Bad got started and whose career has now eclipsed Bad’s.

“Bad meets Jean Craddock (Gyllenhaal) when she comes to interview him and they fall in love. Her little boy, Buddy, inspires Bad to search for his own long-lost son, but there’s no happy ending there. And when Bad, hungry for a drink, loses Jean’s son, things take a downturn, despite Bad’s fling with AA.”

Envelope/Dish Rag columnist Elizabeth Snead suggested yesterday that Alec Baldwin’s m.c. performance at the 10.21 Elle Awards may have cinched his just-announced Oscar gig (i.e., co-hosting with Steve Martin). Especially with Oscar co-producer Adam Shankman in the audience that day.

Exit polls are reporting that a majority of voters in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates won tonight, say that President Obama wasn’t a factor in their voting. Obama is personally popular but people are feeling ornery. I get that. Tonight wasn’t that big a deal — certainly no national referendum.

I was seriously impressed with Tom Ford’s A Single Man in Toronto. It played even better early this evening. Gently moving, immaculate photography, elegant, understated. Ford’s script is concise and true. 11.3, 7:35 pm.

Screencrave’s Krystal Clark somehow snagged a high-quality, Russian-language trailer for Phillip Noyce‘s Salt, the Angelina Jolie actioner due next summer, and posted it earlier today. You never know how long this stuff will last before the lawyers jump in so click on it ASAP.

Angelina Jolie in Phillip Noyce’s Salt.

It looks to me like very high-throttle stuff in the action-plus tradition of Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger — nicely choreographed and cut, very handsomely lit and framed. In a role originally meant for Tom Cruise, Jolie is fine with the accent, leapings, kickings and whanot. And the wigs are cool.

I’m more than down with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin co-hosting the 82nd Academy Awards, which producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman announced a little while ago. In fact I’m almost excited. They’re both wordsmiths — the pithy, erudite, dry-witted Martin vs. the pugnacious, slightly testy, vaguely-angry-all-the-time Baldwin. So it’ll be a competition all the way. They’ll be on each other’s back and will call each other’s bluff. If Martin takes the humor or commentary in a certain direction that doesn’t quite pan out, Baldwin will immediately zap him and course-correct. And vice versa.

The elegant, 60ish, New Yorker-contributing Martin vs. the tanky, 50ish, anger-afflicted Baldwin.

So with all this snip-snipping going on there the show will be bullshit-free. I think this might turn into the best Oscar-host situation since Billy Crystal’s heyday in the mid ’90s. Or, you know, they could both blow it totally because of shitty writing and whatnot. But I’ll be very suprised if thi\s happens.

A longtime HE reader who works in the broker/trading sector dropped a couple of riffs into the box this afternoon. One argues that Kristen Stewart‘s Twilight/New Moon character Bella Swan is a pathetic female role model (matched only by Sarah Jessica Parker‘s Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City); the other wonders why Hollywood still isn’t offering new movies on a day-and-date, pay-per-view basis.

1. “Here we are on the verge of another Twilight film, and the scary thing is that it’s entirely based on low self-esteem among young females. It’s essentially the story of the ordinary girl drifting through her boring life until she meets a ‘special guy’ who finally sees her inner beauty. Sure, he has some problems, but he loves her, right? Haven’t a million girls with low self-esteem had one bad relationship after another due to chasing guys who didn’t care who they hurt? Now we’re glorifying a girl who’s so desperate for a real connection that she’ll fall for a guy who might actually kill her? And this is romantic? As the father of two small girls, this scares the crap out of me.”

“The two worst famale role models on this planet are Bella from Twilight and Carrie Bradshaw. Both are so desperate for what they can’t have they’re either depressed about it or burying themselves in artificial baubles. Neither can have any sort of existence without a man, whatever kind of guy he might be. Chris Rock said his first goal is to keep his girls off the pole; keeping them away from this other crap should be goal #2.”

2. “I have to reiterate the fact that the industry is completely missing the boat on a major revenue stream. You have no idea how much I would love to see A Serious Man or The Hurt Locker or The Men Who Stare at Goats. But I just don’t have time to go to the theater. In this economy you have to work long hours to keep your job, and there are so many other things that need doing that I simply can’t take the time to go to theatres. One person after another I’ve spoken to about this says the same thing.

“The studios are losing so much money to piracy, and on so many dud films…. why oh why cant they deliver the good films first run to my house? I would totally pay $20 or $30 to see A Serious Man if I was able to watch it at home, even just one time. That’s the price of two tickets plus popcorn, right?”

I’m repeating myself, yes, but I can’t help gnashing my teeth over how mushy and…well, Barack Obama-minded the thinking is right now among Best Picture prognosticators in the case of the Coen Bros.’ A Serious Man — easily one of their wittiest and most sharply cut films, and hands down one of the year’s best.

To my knowledge Serious still has only a handful of ardent supporters — myself, The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, The Wrap‘s Steve Pond, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers, legendary Oscar-watcher Robert Osborne, etc. Am I missing anyone?

Okay, that’s more than a handful, but this Focus Features release really should have legions behind it at this stage. The Movie Godz are appalled that it’s not locked down as one of the no-questions-asked contenders. I talk to them and I know. You wouldn’t believe the hand-wringing going on up there. Is this because the film says God doesn’t love or care, religion can’t help and we’re basically helpless before whatever dark fate may befall us? Well, that’s true, isn’t it? Shouldn’t at least one film out of the ten be allowed to feel this way?

The blockage is mainly about a perception in some (okay, most) quarters that the film is, at bottom, a chilly, misanthropic thing. This of course is seen as a demerit by the pulse-taskers because Best Picture contenders are required to provide a semblance of positive assurance. A Serious Man is very, very comforting to me because it’s so ruthlessly well shaped, perfectly performed, richly comedic and unstinting in its world view, which at the very least proves that vision lives in this industry. Vision and exactitude and making films that play just so without sanding the edges.

(Thanks to Sasha Stone for posting the above trade ad on Sunday.)

Every so often I need to shake my head and remind myself how completely off-the-reservation the tabloids have become in their reportings about alleged movie-star couplings. In the ’80s and ’90s they used to piece together tidbits from their sources and create speculative articles that may, from time to time, have contained shards of truth. But over the last decade they seem to have gotten into a habit of inventing stuff out of whole cloth. Which their equally divorced-from-reality readers apparently have no problem with.

I’m reacting to, on one hand, a just-published Vanity Fair profile of New Moon costar Robert Pattinson by Evgenia Peretz that includes presumably earnest denials from Pattinson and costar Kristen Stewart that they’re in any kind of relationship. And on the other a torrent of tab and gossip-site stories that they’re living together, breaking up, etc. All apparently driven by their readers wanting them to be in a relationship, and any semblance of verifiable facts be damned.

In the old days only the surrealistic Weekly World News subsisted on total invention; now the mainstream tabloid family seems to be doing this, at least as far as romantic-intrigue stories are concerned.

In Rouge/Universal’s MacGruber, a comedy about a screw-up secret agent (SNL’s Will Forte), Val Kilmer plays a character (presumably an edgy bad-guy type) named…Cunth. Ryan Phillippe, Kristen Wiig and Powers Boothe costar.

I don’t know why I was reluctant to play the trailer for Mike Newell and Jerry Bruckheimer‘s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (5.28). I guess it was because I knew it would deliver the same old deluge of grandiose CG that looks like nothing except grandiose CG, and the same sublime feeling of being soaked in Eloi-pandering oatmeal. And you know it’ll play like gangbusters when it opens a little more than six months hence.

I love the colloquial dialogue (“Don’t press your luck”), hunky Jake Gyllenhaal diving Batman-style from a great height (a mandatory bit in action epics for the last decade or so), Ben Kingsley conniving his heart out, Alfred Molina saving up for his retirement, etc. “Only the dagger can unlock the sands of time, and there are those who would use this power to destroy the world,” etc. The persistent spirit of Stephen Sommers — corporate factory candy for the toads.