In case you didn’t know, recent Oscar-winner Jeff Bridges has a new album in stores. It’s been on shelves for two weeks now. I spotted this piece at CNN and thought it was worth passing along:
Tag: Jeff Bridges
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WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Twas the week before Oscar
• We made you wait for it this year, but finally: Kris’s Top 10 Shots of 2010, parts one and two.• This week’s Off the Carpet column surveyed where the season has brought us thus far, and began tying the loose ends…
• …culminating later in Kris’s final Oscar predictions of the 2010 season.
• Guy’s final Long Shot column of the season celebrated the season’s losers, while calling for a return to movie talk away from the subject of awards.
• Our Oscar Guide feature stepped it up, covering Best Director, Actor, Actress, Foreign Language Film and Film Editing.
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INTERVIEW: Talking westerns and only westerns with ‘True Grit’ actor Jeff Bridges
Last year was the best opportunity to do the career retrospective thing with Jeff Bridges, right at the starting gun of an Oscar-winning steamroll through the film awards season. This time around, the actor is nominated for his sixth Academy Award, for his work in the Coen brothers’ “True Grit,” and it seemed a conversation about westerns might be novel.So a little over a year after that hefty interview and roughly 10 months after he paid homage to his parents on the stage of the Kodak Theatre, we got together at the same restaurant to talk up the genre that sparks some of his earliest memories of the film business.
“I was always thrilled when my dad would be doing a western,” he says, “because I knew he’d be coming through that door after work, all dressed up like a cowboy. And I’d get to put all his stuff on and I’d be smelling the horses on his clothes, all of that stuff.”
Indeed, the actor remembers going to set and cracking up at the sight of actors sitting atop ladders and acting as if they were on horses for the camera, the veil of filmmaking totally lifted. But he also recalls an instance when his older brother and fellow actor, Beau, disrupted a take during the filming of “High Noon,” which starred their father, Lloyd Bridges.
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OSCAR GUIDE: Best Actor
The 2010 Best Actor race looks to end up exactly where it started, making it the most predictable category of the evening. In fact, as of late (save for the two Oscars Sean Penn won), this has consistently been one of the easier categories to call. Generally it seems that there is a clear favorite christened before the season is over.Having said that, this year’s crop of nominees is truly an exceptional one. The one “surprise” of the bunch couldn’t have been more welcome, while overall it’s a nice balance of seasoned veterans, the future of screen acting and those who fall in between. So chalk that up as a big win on the Academy’s part before even casting their winner ballots.
The nominees are:
Javier Bardem, “Biutiful”
Jeff Bridges, “True Grit”
Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
James Franco, “127 Hours” -
2/11 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Franco couldn’t care less, love letter to Annette Bening, Hammond polls voters
• James Franco: “If it’s the worst show in the history of the Oscars, who cares?” I love this guy. [Screening Room]• David Poland on how the Academy is missing a golden opportunity by essentially banning Banksy from the ceremony. Not that Banksy would even humor his suggestions, but still. [The Hot Blog]
• Nick Davis writes a big ole’ love letter to Annette Bening. (More on her in today’s Oscar Talk.) [Nick’s Flick Picks]
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2/9 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Stewart talks ‘Speech’ sets, McMurtry and Ossana on ‘True Grit,’ Nolan/Del Toro Q&A
• Steve Pond goes blue in the face trying to explain, again, the preferential ballot to people who just don’t get it. [The Odds]• Nathaniel Rogers chats with “The King’s Speech” production designer Eve Stewart. [The Film Experience]
• Jamie Bell: Oscar prognosticator. [Movieline]
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2/2 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Hurt Locker’ producers fire back, ‘Gasland’ smeared, Superstitious Harvey
• “The Hurt Locker” producers finally respond to last year’s law suit, and how. [Hollywood Reporter]• SMEAR ALERT: The oil and gas industry has the gall to send a letter to AMPAS urging them to steer clear of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland.” [New York Times]
• Lisa Schwarzbaum shallowly attributes the dramatic success of two scenes in “The King’s Speech” to classical composers, rather than Tom Hooper’s directorial choice to use them in said scenes. [Entertainment Weekly]
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1/31 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Aronofsky and Russell on sex scenes, Rudin v. Weinstein, Hammond on snubs
• Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell reveal a dislike for filming sex scenes. [Hollywood Reporter]• Krista Smith, meanwhile, sits down with Russell to talk “The Fighter.” [Little Gold Men]
• Rebecca Keegan and Nicole Sperling write up Scott Rudin vs. Harvey Weinstein. [The Envelope]
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1/24 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Rich’s two Americas, meet the foreign film exec committee, Jonze interviews Russell
• Frank Rich sees two Americas in “The Social Network” and “True Grit.” [New York Times]• David Poland sits down with the latter’s cinematographer, Roger Deakins. [The Hot Blog]
• Meet the executive committee charged with saving esoteric foreign films hopefuls. [The Odds]
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Bridges does Ferguson
He was off to film this Thursday after we had lunch, so I guess I can shed light on the Purell thing at the beginning. Jeff’s pretty sick right now. He’s been offering up elbow pounds in lieu of handshakes as a result. Here he does a chest bump and Purell shake. Part two after the jump.
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Bridges abides
Greg Ellwood has done a pretty solid job of summing up Saturday night’s event at The Paley Center in Beverly Hills. The evening featured the debut of “Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides,” a new installment in PBS’s “American Masters” documentary series, directed by Gail Levin.The film is incredibly in-depth. By the time the credits roll, even if you think you know most everything there is to know about the actor (seeing as his “Crazy Heart” push last year turned over just about every stone), you walk away feeling like part of the family.
The 90-minute film includes interviews from Bridges’s brother and sister, Beau and Lucinda, filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Terry Gilliam, actors John Goodman and Cybil Shepherd and many more. It digs in on his peripheral art (painting, pottery, music, etc.) and basically just keys you in to what makes the guy tick.
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1/10 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Bridges didn’t give a bleep, Reznor on ‘Tattoo,’ Is Portman overexposed?
• Joel Coen says Jeff Bridges didn’t give a BLEEP about living up to John Wayne’s legacy in “True Grit.” [The Race]• Trent Reznor discusses his next scoring gig: David Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” [The Playlist]
• Gregg Kilday writes up the Best Picture race as he sees it. [Hollywood Reporter]
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CINEJABBER: Where’s the exit?
Catch up with the idea behind these weekend posts here.A busy week that one was. And an even busier one on the way. DGA and VES Monday, ASC Tuesday, Critics’ Choice Movie Awards and ACE Friday, Golden Globes Sunday — whew! And today we’ll have the National Society of Film Critics put a bow on the critics awards circuit (well, save for the Iowa Film Critics, but…)
It’s almost like I’m ready for a vacation again already, though maybe that’s because the holiday “break” wasn’t much of a break for me at all this year. It’ll all be over in T-minus 50 days. (50!)
The Rudin/Steinfeld thread was a hit thanks to a lot of smart discussion from you guys yesterday. Props to you for that. And speaking of “True Grit,” Paramount has thrown together a preview screening of the PBS “American Masters” featuring Jeff bridges with a Q&A and reception to follow this evening. Yep, the circuit is officially creeping into my weekends.
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12/28 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Duke or Dude?, Jonsi’s music video, Karger sticks with his ‘King’s Speech’ guns
• The Duke or The Dude? Which Rooster has more true grit? [Entertainment Weekly]• Russ Fischer has the music video for Jonsi’s “Sticks & Stones” from “How to Train Your Dragon.” [/Film]
• Brendon Connelly runs down all of the “Toy Story 3” ads so far featuring the “Not since…” campaign. [Bleeding Cool]
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12/23 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Oscar’s age preferences, hear the King’s speech, ‘True Grit’ and ‘Winter’s Bone’ parallels
• Anne Thompson talks with “The Way Back” director Peter Weir. [Thompson on Hollywood]• Nathaniel Rogers charts Oscar’s age preferences. [The Film Experience]
• Melinda Newman sits down with “True Grit” and “TRON Legacy” star Jeff Bridges. [Awards Campaign]
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INTERVIEW: ‘True Grit’ writers, producers and directors Joel and Ethan Coen
Directors Joel and Ethan Coen have evolved into the quintessential American filmmakers of our time since charging onto the indie scene over 25 years ago. It was a trajectory hinted at in early depictions of Prohibition-era gangsterism (“Miller’s Crossing”), post-war Capitalism (“The Hudsucker Proxy”), Midwestern slice-of-life peculiarity (“Fargo”) and epic folk land adventurism (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”), but it was a trademark that snapped into clarity in 2007 with their thematically potent examination of a country at a crossroads, “No Country for Old Men.”It seemed only a matter of time before they turned their attention to the quintessential American genre: the western. But the word “western” didn’t really figure into their thinking when they set about re-adapting Charles Portis’s novel “True Grit” for the big screen.
“To us, in a weird way, if you were going to put it into a genre, it was just a young adventure story,” Joel says. “It takes place in America in Oklahoma in 1878, so yeah, it’s a western, but the other thing almost kind of preceded it in our thinking. So I guess it wasn’t consciously approaching it as a ‘western’ in quotation marks. It’s an adventure story with the trappings of the old west.”
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OSCAR TALK: Ep. 45 — Critics’ pick their frontrunner, HFPA speaks up with doosies, the guild circuit kicks off and the week of The Dude
Welcome to Oscar Talk.In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.
Going into the holidays and with the critics’ awards in full swing, we’ve brought In Contention’s own Guy Lodge on to discuss the goings-on of the season so far. After taking a break from the usual last week, the last 14 days have given us plenty to chew on. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…
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12/17 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Plea for Bardem, Swank’s potential parlay, HFPA and SAG by the numbers
• Scott Feinberg digs in to some exhaustive research on HFPA and SAG nominations history to help you navigate what it all means. [ScottFeinberg.com]• Steve Pond is begging someone to step up to the plate and recognize what an amazing performance Javier Bardem gives in “Biutiful,” and in so doing, NOMINATE HIM. [The Odds]
• The top 25 hottest girls from Christmas movies. [Ranker]