“Will Sandra Bullock get nominated?” asked my 13-year-old daughter, blown away like the rest of us by the feel-good Christmas movie of the season, The Blind Side.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but she should.”

Bullock clinched the Best Actress for me when her character stopped the family car to help a boy clad in a thin tee shirt, walking and shivering in the rain. She had seen him at her kids’ Christian private school, and asked him if he had a place to stay that night. “Don’t you dare lie to me,” she said to the teen, drawing on her maternal bravado. Then she took him home, tucked him in, and adopted him as her son.

The rags-to-riches tour de force is certainly Bullock’s film, but the saga based on a real life story (below) engages us in a way that makes it our film, too, and our story of redemption. We want to be part of the benevolent village that rescued gentle giant, Michael Oher, taking him out of the projects and into the world of private education and college football. Filling the Salvation Army cup at Christmas just isn’t enough, the film poignantly illustrates, leaving us awed by pure Christianity in action.

Most startling of all was how the Tuohy family of Memphis took a complete stranger into their own home, knowing nothing about him except that he was cold, hungry and had no place to sleep. In an interview with the family, members admitted that southern matriarch Leigh Anne just had it in her to take the homeless teen under her able wing.

“It was just mother’s intuition,” said the former Ole Miss cheerleader, who did everything a mother would do for her son: dress him, feed him, tutor him in school, and guide his athletic career.

“It was a turn over, and lately I’m just into that word, turn over,” says Leigh Ann. A turn over, indeed. How many of us have the courage to do what this woman did?

While Bullock infused the character with a Scarlett O’Hara spunk, she drew her inspiration from the real life heroine, who boldly marched into the rough projects to trace her adopted son’s roots, and then later to search for him after a family squabble returned him to his original home.

Her two other children, Collins and SJ, were good sports about Michael moving in and joining the family, as was Leigh Anne”s husband, Sean. A delightful scene is when the four pose for their traditional family holiday shot in their Sunday finest, adding Michael as an afterthought to the picture for fun. Naturally, that is the image the mother sends out – raising eyebrows among her Memphis society lunch pals.

“You are really changing that boy’s life,” one of them says over an $18 salad. “No, answers Leigh Anne, “he has changed mine.”

My own mother urged me to see this heartwarming film, and I’m glad I saw it with my two daughters, who volunteer at the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center. We need our children not to turn a blind eye to life on the other side of the tracks. This film is a first step for some, even if it is a dramatic reenaction starring the stunning Bullock.

We cried, we laughed, we flinched, but mostly, we rooted for the dignified Michael in this story of redemption. And then we asked ourselves, why just one?

One of a pair of food documentaries making the rounds this summer, Fresh, The Movie, in contrast to Food Inc. (reviewed here last week) presents a vision of the possible by profiling heroes all over the country who are changing the way we eat. If Food Inc. was your wake up call, Fresh, The Movie is your call to action.

Fresh’s strength is that it shows the incredible creativity of individuals who are devoting their lives to producing food differently. The success of these individuals shows how organic, ecological farming methods can be viable, in contrast to what the naysayers in conventional food say.

Another strength of the movie is that it profiles people all over the country, not just on the coasts. For those who think that the good food movement is all about Berkeley and Alice Waters, this movie proves that’s just not true.

The movie features a small chain of family-owned grocery stores in Kansas and Missouri. The owner, David Ball, partners with local farmers to sell food produced nearby. At first glance, the grocery stores look like regular grocery stores (not glossy specialty food markets) but alongside the usual national brands are lots of choices of locally-produced produce, honey, jam, and fresh meat, available to everyday people in the community who might not shop at specialty markets. Ball’s stores are successful and they contribute to the health of the local economy by supporting nearby farmers instead of cheaper international producers. Ball’s business, community and customers are all better off for it.

Joel Salatin, hero of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food, Inc., is also profiled. His operation is so efficient that he says he makes $3,000 an acre, in contrast to his conventional farming neighbor’s $50 an acre. His customers are not all wealthy foodies. They range from people in his local community (and hours away) to fast food chain Chipotle.

Will Allen, who we talked about here on EcoSalon recently, (and who was profiled in the New York Times just last week) is also lauded in the film for his work in urban farming in Milwaukee.

There’s a farmer in Missouri who once raised confinement pigs until he was gored and nearly died from the antibiotic resistant bacteria he contracted in the injury. When he got out of the hospital, he realized how dangerous it is to dose animals with antibiotics to keep them healthy. He slaughtered his entire herd, started from scratch raising pastured pigs and has never looked back.

The movie includes a conventional farmer growing corn and soy in Iowa to illustrate the struggles family farmers are up against in this country. George Naylor has fought Monsanto and other biotech companies against the negative impacts of genetically modified crops.

If you haven’t heard of Fresh, The Movie, that’s probably because it’s being distributed grassroots style in private and small public screenings. I attended a public screening that featured a panel of local food activists, the filmmaker ana Sofia joanes and George Naylor – who traveled from Iowa to California to be there – answering questions after the film.

What a brilliant form of distribution to get people talking and working together for a better food system. Anyone can host a screening. In contrast to walking out of the movie theater and wondering how to get involved, you’ll already be among your own community and you can start to make things happen right then and there. Think of the difference you can make by just hosting a screening in your home, workplace, or community center. You can reach 20 people for just $20. Or up to 50 for only $50. Click here to find out how.

As someone who lives and breathes food politics, agricultural sustainability and food justice on a daily basis, even I was surprised by some of the things I saw in this film. Food Inc. explosively details exactly how the food system serves the profit motives of just a few mega corporations, while failing to serve eaters, our health, the environment and the animals and workers trapped in the system.

In interviews, the filmmaker has said that he didn’t set out to make such a one-sided film but that the industries he profiled – Tyson, Monsanto, Smithfield, et al – wouldn’t agree to be interviewed or shown in the film. I don’t blame them. The information gathered from hidden cameras and interviews with brave individuals who don’t have a whole lot left to lose presents facts so damning and so incredible, it’s impossible to dispute them.

Anyone who agreed to talk on camera for this movie risked being sued. The mother who lost her young son to E. coli cannot say what she herself eats due to the risk of being sued for libel under the “veggie libel laws.”

Of all the food documentaries I’ve seen and food system exposés I’ve read, this film did a wonderful job of showing the human side of the injustices in our food system. Not just the environmental degradation or the lack of food safety, but the grinding human (and animal) oppression inherent in the system.

I was quite literally sick at the rampant and systemic injustices unleashed on farmers, farmworkers, animals, the environment and eaters as just a routine part of business-as-usual in the food industry.

If enough people see this film it could have the same impact that Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle had on the meat packing industry in the early part of the 20th century. I think there should be a campaign encouraging everyone who cares about food to take at least one person who doesn’t care about food to see this film: co-workers, mothers, fathers, friends and lovers”¦because if everyone sees it, nobody will stand for business-as-usual any longer.

In addition to the mother who lost her son due to tainted ground beef, the film profiles a variety of people, like ordinary working class citizens who would like to eat better than fast food, but cannot afford to; poultry house workers who toil under horrifying conditions and are utterly powerless (the industry recruits and buses workers from within Mexico); and farmers under contract to large corporations who have no say in how they run their businesses or treat their animals and who don’t even make a living wage.

A Tyson chicken farmer agreed to go on camera. She had her contract pulled because she refused to upgrade her chicken houses according to company specifications that would have prevented any light or air from getting into her already crowded, fetid and utterly nightmarish chicken houses. Chicken farmers make an average of only $18,000 a year as contract farmers for Tyson Corporation. If the chickens and the farmers are treated so poorly, can you imagine what the mostly undocumented immigrant processors are subjected to?

Then there’s the man who runs a seed cleaning business (which used to be common practice back when farmers saved seeds). Monsanto sued him. His crime? By cleaning seeds, he’s “encouraging farmers to violate Monsanto patents”.

Nevermind that these farmers are the last holdouts not using Monsanto’s seeds, and should have every right to clean and save the seeds they use. Scaring the hell out of any last resisters is this company’s way of ensuring complete and total ownership of the seed market. When the seed cleaner was sued, he lost most of his customers because they became fearful of being sued themselves. The man had only three acres of land to his name. He finally settled with Monsanto, rather than fight and risk losing what little he had.

There are many more stories like this, as well as enough examples of a different way of doing things, that you will leave the theater thinking more carefully about what you are actually buying when you buy food and inspired to support some of the mavericks out there who are doing it right.

At the end of the film, one farmer says that if the people start demanding better food, the farmers will step up and provide it. In fact, farmers would love to do so. Without the consumer’s support, the risk to farmers for switching to a healthier paradigm is too great. If farmers know they can make a living doing the right thing, they will. This is the one essentially hopeful fact about this film. We do have the power to change the system. It’s as simple as refusing to buy what the system is selling. Don’t know how? The film offers several easy ways to start as the credits roll. They’re also linked here.

Image: Senor Codo