By Steven Zeitchik

After missing a few of the early showings, we finally caught “Crazy Heart,” the last-minute Fox Searchlight awards hopeful, at a media screening. Comparisons to “The Wrestler” danced in our heads (and on the lips of bloggers) coming into the pic. And indeed, it’s hard to avoid the numerous similarities between the Mickey Rourke-Darren Aronofsky collaboration about a washed-up wrestler at a crossroads and the Jeff Bridges-toplined tale of a washed-up country singer at a crossroads.

Both pics feature a fading  performer whose addiction to the spotlight is rivaled only by his addiction to substances (alcohol for Bridges’ Bad Blake, steroids for Rourke’s Randy the Ram) — and who gets a harsh wake-up  after a medical close call, eventually finding salvation (or does he?) with the help of a beautiful but lost-soul single mother. There’s even the reaching out to an estranged child in both.

Bridges’ performance is almost custom-built for awards consideration. It’s not just that it’s strong; it’s that he’s playing someone who will remind viewers and voters of this timeless awards theme: perseverance as age and talent work against you.

But is the film a best-picture contender? Awards voters looking to fill out a ten-slot ballot may be tempted to consider it (especially as possibles like “The Lovely Bones” fall away, if a number of bloggers, including THR’s Roger Friedman, are to be believed). But it’s here that “The Wrestler” similarities could ding “Crazy Heart’s” chances. The pic has its effective moments and generally well-calibrates its backroad-blues mood. But director Scott Cooper is not (no fault of his own) half the helmer that Aronofsky is, and most people who make the comparison will likely come to the conclusion  that the movie feels less fully-realized than Aronofsky’s meisterwork (which itself wasn’t nommed).

By Steven Zeitchik

When art from Disney’s animated fable “The Princess and the Frog” surfaced last March (the pic seen here to the left), it created a bit of a stir. The studio had been earning praise for making the title princess a black character, deviating from the studio’s historically white princesses.

The prince, on the other hand, garnered heat for what some deemed a lighter skin tone. The studio was already facing criticism over what some said were stereotypical depictions in the film, including that of the main character — who at one time was to be called by the reputed slave name Maddy (she’s now Tiana) — and a practitioner of voodoo who’s black, among others.

That the black princess would be rescued from black villains (among others) by a possibly white prince struck some as offensive (an extended debate on the subject here, though, interestingly, the original BET post making the case is no longer live).

Cut to a few days before release, and the prince is looking a little different. The ultimate iteration of the character – as seen in this trailer - shows him to be noticeably darker than he was in the original art.

By Steven Zeitchik

People who get paid handsomely to watch boxoffice were surprised to see just how well “The Blind Side,” Sandra Bullock’s feel-good football pic, did this weekend.

The ode to all things American (or at least to all things Hollywood uplift) earned an impressive $35 million — and over a weekend when it seemed like everyone with a pulse was flocking to “New Moon.”

The conventional assumption to explain the numbers (”Blind Side” was expected to earn only in the mid-twenties) is that filmgoers who were sold out of “New Moon,” dressed for a night out but with nowhere to go, opted to pick up tickets to the pigskin-fest instead.

That would suggest a halo effect for movies that open wide opposite a juggernaut — even though the (other) conventional assumption about tentpole openings is that it’s better for rival studios and movies to get the heck out of the way.

By Steven Zeitchik

It’s hard for many avid film fans and industry insiders to know how to read the insanely successful  weekend of “New Moon” (unless you’re Summit, the Weitz family or a distant cousin of Taylor Lautner’s,  in which case the only thing you probably need to read at the moment is your bank statement).

On the one hand, it’s hard not to feel some validation at at the fact that a film is in the middle of the pop-cultural conversation — to again see proof that for all the advantages Oprah and Letterman and CNN and a host of other popular TV brands have by regularly entering our homes, there’s still nothing like a bigscreen phenomenon  to galvanize the masses.

By Steven Zeitchik

“Dark Void” will yield development matter.

Indian giant Reliance BIG Entertainment and Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle are developing a film version of the upcoming video game, and Pitt could well star as the lead combatant.

The two firms have acquired rights to the Capcom third-person shooter and will develop as a feature. The companies say that the project would be a “potential starring vehicle” for Pitt. No writers have been hired as yet.

“Void” centers on a a cargo pilot named Will (Pitt’s presumed character) who, after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle, ends up in a parallel universe where a band of humans must fight an alien threat they had long been thought extinct. Will and the other humans are outmanned but have a number of weapons and powers to help them beat back the alien incursion.

The game will be released for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January. CAA repped Plan B and Reliance in the deal; UTA-repped Capcom.

By Steven Zeitchik

One of the perks, or punishments, of this film blogging racket is the opportunity to see an obscene amount of documentaries. This was more of an issue when there were an obscene amount of documentaries being made, but if you’ve been to a film fest recently, you know that number is still high — if not Larry Flynt obscene, then maybe at least Robert Mapplethorpe obscene.

Given all that, we’d have to say that the flap over the omissions by the doc shortlist committee Wednesday is, like all flaps, with some merit and with some bloviation.

One of the reasons for the shortlist has always struck us as political. The doc category is rife with submissions, in part because it’s so damn cheap to make one. That means a higher level of chaff but also a higher level of  wheat, and part of the idea of revealing three times as many films as will actually be nominated is to show just how inclusive the Academy can be.

But that inclusiveness also creates a sense of entitlement. Everyone wonders why they can’t make the cut. if you actually look at the number of docs made every year relative to the fifteen slots (made, not qualified), it’s probably a higher ratio than the number of features relative to their slots. In other words, it’s harder to actually make the doc shortlist than it is to get nominated in other categories.

So we should probably treat the doc shortlist as slightly more elite than we do, and not be so in umbrage when films don’t make it.

We also shouldn’t be surprised for another reason: several of the supposedly glaring absences contain their share of  flaws. The omission of Toback’s “Tyson” is understandable. The film is essentially a single interview, and while revealing at points — Toback is never lacking for things provocative — you could make a case it’s a little too thin, given all the ambition out there, to make the list.

By Steven Zeitchik

Eddie Murphy could be feeling fluffy.

The A-lister is attached to produce and could potentially star in “The Misadventures of Fluffy,” a new buddy comedy that’s been set up at Paramount.

Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly sold the pitch for the R-rated comedy and will write the script. The project is described as a road trip pic through New York featuring talking animals, and with an element of social comedy reminiscent of Murphy’s 1980’s hit “Trading Places.”

Insiders emphasize that while Murphy is formally attached to produce, he is not formally attached to star at this point.

Pitman and Cole-Kelly, repped by WME and Management 360, came to prominence with a project called “The Diversification of Noah Miller,” a race-themed story about a man who tries to bring cultural enlightenment to his son by befriending people of another race. Tyler Perry is attached to produce and potentially star in that project.

By Steven Zeitchik

It’s almost impossible to watch “The Blind Side,” a story of race and the power of education to overcome life’s brutalities, and not think of “Precious,” a story of race and the power of education to overcome life’s brutalities.

Both settle on misunderstood, gentle-giant, inner-city teenagers, and give them ways to escape their past with the help of people who care for them after their real families don’t.

Of course that’s like saying “Goodfellas” and “Analyze This” are both mob movies. Where “Precious” director Lee Daniels uses extreme style to blunt the impact of the brutality, “The Blind Side” director John Lee Hancock uses extreme sentiment, and comedy, to give his dramatized true story of a white upper-middle class Memphis family that adopts a black teenager (he has a preternatural ability to protect the quarterback — hence the blind side) a kind of warm glow; no one, with one or two exceptions, really does much to try to bring down the feelgood (as THR’s review notes).

Still, it’s nice to see that a sports-themed movie as eager as this one to win the audience’s affections — there are moments in the Warners/Alcon pic that are genuinely heartfelt (and funny) and those so drippingly  sweet it would make a bumblebee gag — can have more on its mind than just a simple underdog story. Even with all of the storybook elements, it least tries to give a sense of race and the way parts of the South currently engage with it. If “Precious” (character and movie) finds its redemption amid the do-gooder volunteerism of liberal New York, “Blind Side” does it amid the college-football Republicanism of upper-middle-class Tennessee.

By Steven Zeitchik

“An Education” director Lone Scherfig recently lamented, good-naturedly, that she was tired of producers thinking of her for stereotypically female projects. “Everyone sends me scripts with these sweet stories,” she said. “I’ve done that already. I want to make a movie with chases and explosions. I want to blow things up.”

Scherfig might have a point about typecasting, but she also might consider herself lucky — at least she’s in a category in which women are finally getting their due. This awards season couldn’t be a happier time for female helmers — as many as three (Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion and Scherfig) could be nominated for best director. That would equal the total number of women nominated — can this be? — in the 73-year history of the award (Sofia Coppola, Lina Wertmuller and Campion, if you’re playing Trivial Pursuit).

And yet a look at a category specifically designed for women shows a different picture.

In the best actress field, there’s a single Oscar perennial (Meryl Streep, for “Julie & Julia”), some buzzed-about newcomers (Carey Mulligan and Gabourey Sidibe for “An Education” and “Precious,” respectively) and … that’s pretty much it .

By Steven Zeitchik

How — apart from the possibility that Roland Emmerich has secretly hypnotized us with an ancient Teutonic curse — can one explain the runaway success of the by-the-numbers snooze that is “2012″?

The of-quoted explanation for any disaster hit is Zeitgeist-ian, which in this case would mean that in the era of foreclosures, global warming and general end-of-the-world jitters, moviegoers see in the filmic apocalypse a mirror of their own fears. It’s a tempting theory — you know, catharsis, vicariousness, other things college-students write term papers about.

But does it hold up? Looking at the biggest apocalyptic blockbusters of the past couple decades, there’s some correlation between the state of the world and the stock of Roland Emmerich. But it’s hardly neat or simple.

Sure, one of Emmerich’s other big hits, the environmental disaster tale “The Day After Tomorrow,” earned a whopping $186m basically 2 1/2 years after 9/11, and as fears of global warming were beginning to take hold.