One reason I've avoided seeing The Blind Side is my suspicion that it was right-wing drivel disguised as a movie (go ahead and say that many movies are left-wing drivel disguised as movies, but I'm left-wing so if a movie has to be drivel it might as well be blue drivel). In this piece, written in advance of its March 12 opening in the UK, the writer connects all the dots about the real-life Tuohys being Evangelicals, about the film proselytizing and spewing "Bush-era conservative values" and about how Republicans are behind it. (The film's producers have brilliantly kept this info pouring into churches and underplayed in the mainstream media.)

So this movie, which has made something like a quarter billion dollars at the b.o., has greatly enriched an awful lot of people who might now be in fantastic positions to pour some of those dollars into anti-progressive causes, chief among them the Tuohys, who would be powerful spokespeople for just about anything...or anyone who runs for office.

It's a sticky kind of thing, deciding which products to support based on political ramifications, isn't it? Sometimes it's clear—I'd never support Domino's, not after that nut used every dime toward a Catholic utopia (even if the money isn't going there anymore). But in this case, Bullock—a Democrat—says she made this film only after having a heart-to-heart with Leigh Anne Tuohy in which she confessed she didn't like the idea of contributing to the banner mentality of religion, whereby people talk the talk and don't walk the walk. I'll take her word for it that she felt personally persuaded that the Tuohys are authentic people who are not about preaching, but I'm ambivalent as to the positivity of the final outcome. (Not having seen it makes it hard for me to decide whether the film itself is propaganda, dumb fun, a good movie with some messages I wouldn't like, or some combination of all of them; but once you've seen it in order to decide, you've already given over your money.)

Regardless, the rest of that article is interesting for pointing out how red the Oscars may well be this year; Bullock is nearing shoo-in status for her role, The Hurt Locker (a movie about the Iraq War that doesn't feel anti-war) might well trump the blatantly leftist Avatar and Jeff Bridges might win for playing a country singer on the road to redemption.

So much for out-of-touch Hollywood values.