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.

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.

“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 .