Sandra Bullock Ahead of Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner

Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner trail Sandra Bullock at domestic box office

Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner took second place at the North American box office this past weekend, trailing another (and quite different) screen couple, Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron. With $20m, Bullock and Aaron’s The Blind Side, directed by John Lee Hancock and also featuring Tim McGraw, brought in nearly $5 million — or about 30% — more than the Stewart and Lautner fantasy romance The Twilight Saga: New Moon, co-starring Robert Pattinson and directed by Chris Weitz. The source for the above estimates is Box Office Mojo. (Photo: Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner New Moon.)

Box office: Brothers, Everybody’s Fine, Up in the Air

Among other box-office news, this past weekend Brothers did reasonably well with $9.5 million, but both Armored and Everybody’s Fine were major disappointments. The former earned $6.5 million, while the latter raked in a mere $3.8 million — or $1,806 per screen.

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, and Natalie Portman, Brothers features a love triangle that is an indirect consequence of the war in Afghanistan. Armored is a crime actioner starring Matt Dillon, Jean Reno, and Laurence Fishburne, while Everybody’s Fine is a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1990 melodrama, with Robert De Niro in the old Marcello Mastroianni role: a widower who travels cross-country to meet with his children. Drew Barrymore, Melissa Leo, and Kate Beckinsale co-star.

At no. 21 on the domestic box-office chart, Transylmania, in which a group of college students drink, party, and get murdered with equal ease, was a total disaster, grossing $263,000 or a horrendous $262 per screen.

Among the newcomers and relative newcomers, the weekend’s one real success story was Up in the Air, which pulled in more than $78,000 per screen at 15 venues. Jason Reitman’s socially conscious movie has George Clooney as a frequent-flying professional downsizer who falls in love with fellow frequent-flyer Vera Farmiga right when he’s about to get grounded. New Moon‘s Anna Kendrick co-stars.

Both Clooney and Up in the Air have already been chosen as Best of 2009 by the National Board of Review and the Washington, D.C., Film Critics.

Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner New Moon image: Kimberley French / Summit Entertainment.