In Contention

Tag: Jeff Bridges

  • December winner predictions

    Meryl Streep in Julie & JuliaI gave this an initial stab nearly two months ago.  I thought I might as well re-visit things.  (And hopefully there won’t be anyone getting their panties in a twist over something as harmless as this.  You know who you are.)

    Best Picture: “Avatar”
    Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
    Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”
    Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
    Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
    Best Adapted Screenplay: “Up in the Air”
    Best Original Screenplay: “Inglourious Basterds”

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  • Listen to Jeff Bridges’s ‘Somebody Else’ from ‘Crazy Heart’

    Jeff Bridges in Crazy HeartToday we’re wrapping up the “listen to” series of featured tracks in this year’s Best Original Song race.  We spotlighted 17 contenders in total, not all of which made the eventual eligibility cut, of course.  But it’s been a nice way of giving the field it’s proper due.

    Surprisingly enough, only one other song from “Crazy Heart” joined “The Weary Kind” on this year’s list of eligible contenders.  That song was “Somebody Else,” which is in fact the first tune we hear Jeff Bridges’s Bad Blake character sing in the film.  The opening lyric was a particular favorite of songwriter T Bone Burnett’s: “I used to be somebody.  Now I am somebody else.”

    It’s a great moment because it introduces you to the killer soundtrack that will unfold for the next two hours and because it sheds a compelling light on the film’s central character, a man clinging to his past when he has long outgrown it.

    Have a listen below and tell us what you think.

    [display_podcast]

  • ‘Air,’ ‘Basterds,’ ‘Precious’ lead the way with SAG

    Diane Kruger in Inglourious BasterdsThere wasn’t much in the way of a surprise with this year’s Screen Actors Guild announcement.  The nods that are least likely to translate to Oscar, if I were a betting man, are Diane Kruger’s supporting actress bid for “Inglourious Basterds” and (I guess I just have a feeling) Matt Damon, supporting for “Invictus.” The rest seem like safe bets on down the line.

    I wouldn’t read too much into the ensemble snub of “Up in the Air,” though it’s curious to nominate three actors from the film and then ignore it in that field.  The ensemble category is also where “Nine” got its expected attention, though Penelope Cruz also showed up in supporting for the film.  The BFCA, you’ll recall, went for Marion Cotillard instead.

    “Precious,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up in the Air” had the most nominations, with three apiece.  I would have expected “An Education” to have that designation, too, but somehow Alfred Molina was ignored.  Maybe that won’t be the case with Oscar, maybe it will.

    On to the next thing.  Check the full list of nominees after the jump.

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  • 12/16 Oscarweb Round-up

    Capturing the Friedmans• Sharon Waxman says “Avatar” is “just what ailing, uncertain Hollywood needs.” [The Wrap]

    • Nikki Finke writes up Oscar’s bad-mouthing season. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

    • Rodrigo Perez names “Capturing the Friedmans” the best documentary of the decade. [The Playlist]

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  • 12/14 Oscarweb Round-up

    George Clooney in Up in the Air• In case you missed this morning’s announcement, “Inglourious Basterds” and “Nine” led the field of BFCA nominees. [In Contention]

    • Frank Rich op-eds a love letter to “Up in the Air.” [New York Times]

    • Steve Pond painstakingly assembles a primer on how many votes a contender needs for an Oscar nomination per category. [The Odds]

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ tops with LA Critics

    Kathryn BigelowToday is a very good day to be one Ms. Kathryn Bigelow. A few days ago, we asked you which film looks set to be the critics’ darling of the season — today, at least, the clear answer appears to be “The Hurt Locker.”

    Hours after sweeping the board with the Beantown crowd, Bigelow’s Iraq-set heartpounder took the top two prizes in the LAFCA voting. What this means for the film’s Oscar chances is open to question, but its 58 year-old helmer’s trifecta of prizes today bodes well for her chances of become the first female Best Director Oscar winner in history.

    The film wasn’t as dominant as it was in the Boston critics’ awards. Jeremy Renner’s Boston upset was not to be repeated, with Jeff Bridges taking his first (and, I suspect, not his last) Best Actor honor of the season for “Crazy Heart.” Meanwhile, DP Barry Ackroyd came in second to Christian Berger for “The White Ribbon.”

    More thoughts, and a full list of winners and runners-up, after the cut.

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  • The Great Performances: 2004

    Paul Giamatti in SidewaysIn Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Paul Giamatti gave the best performance by an actor in 2004, so said the New York Film Critics Circle, and how right they were.  So why, why, why was the actor denied an Oscar nomination?  Granted, it was a strong year, but his work was at the top of that heap and that snub was one of the biggest shocks of the year.

    Here was a man giving perhaps the finest performance in a comedic film since Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie.” His co-stars go were recognized, save for the equally deserving Sandra Oh, but the leading man, around whose performance the film stands, is snubbed.  All I can remember saying is: “Wow.”

    Certainly Jamie Foxx deserved the attention he received for “Ray” and Leonardo DiCaprio was astonishing in “The Aviator,” even though he drew some criticism for before too youthful in the role. Rubbish, I thought.  He was superb, inhabiting Howard Hughes as he must have been in those days, brash, cocky, wealthy and willing to do anything that interested him.

    Clint Eastwood was terrific in “Million Dollar Baby,” while Jim Carrey gave a wonderful performance in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — a marvelous piece of acting, in fact.  Equally fine, and dark, was Kevin Bacon as a pedophile struggling to start anew in “The Woodsman,” which was one of the most daring American films in a long time.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: NBR winners, Spirit nods and Jeff Bridges

    Jeff Bridges• The National Board of Review offered the season’s first major precursors, with “Up in the Air” sitting pretty.

    • The Independent Spirit Award nominations were topped by “Precious” and, more surprisingly, “The Last Station.”

    • Indie award rivals the Gotham Awards, meanwhile, crowned “The Hurt Locker” as the year’s best.

    • Fresh off his Spirit nomination, we served up an extended interview with the great Jeff Bridges.

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  • The Great Performances: 2003

    Sean Penn in Mystic RiverThere is little doubt in my mind I am going to take some heat this week, so let’s kick it off right away with my belief that Sean Penn deserved his Best Actor Oscar for “Mystic River,” a performance of overwhelming ferocity and staggering emotional power.

    Yes, I too loved Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation,” and would have loved to have seen him win, but he didn’t, and frankly he lost to a stronger performance (in my opinion). I know it is a cliche to say the nomination is the reward, but I would hope that Murray would be happy with that.

    But there were so many great male performances in 2003!

    Robert Duvall was superb in “Open Range” as the wily old rancher who ends up in a gunfight for his life with his friend, played by the also fantastic Kevin Costner, by his side. Tom Cruise gave a great performance in “The Last Samurai” for director Edward Zwick, while Russell Crowe was again brilliant in “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” adding to his string of stunning performances.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The music of ‘Crazy Heart’

    T Bone BurnettThis marks the first of this year’s Tech Support interviews series with below-the-line crafts personnel, an annual feature at In Contention.

    When Scott Cooper’s adapted screenplay “Crazy Heart” was making the rounds a few years ago, it had the kind of soul a guy like T Bone Burnett wants out of a country-western film. But as far as musical accompaniment was concerned, it was a blank canvas.

    A close friend of actor Jeff Bridges dating back to their time together on Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate,” Burnett was the selling point when the actor began toying around with the idea of playing Bad Blake in the film. With Burnett came longtime friend and musician Stephen Bruton. With Bridges came his own longtime friend, John Goodwin. With a modest writers’ table assembled (including, of course, Cooper himself), the task then became searching for a voice with an array of original songs for the film.

    “There’s a Nashville voice that comes really from Lefty Frizelle,” Burnett says. “And then Merle Haggard was the next, and there’ve been hundreds of people who’ve learned to sing from Merle Haggard and Lefty. Most of the country singers are essentially in that tambour. Jeff is a whole different thing. So we began looking for prototypes, so to speak, and the first prototype to me was Leonard Cohen, who’s a great writer and sang with a deep chest voice like Jeff did. Don Williams as well, who was a big country star in the 70s, big and good, too, and very much an individual. So we started looking for those kinds of voices that could be country music.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Jeff Bridges

    Jeff BridgesFor actor Jeff Bridges, whose career has already spanned five decades, Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” was something of a homecoming and, the actor says, “a dream come true.”

    Bridges stars in the film as Bad Blake, a ramblin’ country-western singer who travels the Southwest playing dive after dive, cut from the same cloth as Hank Williams Jr., maybe, or Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, etc. A guitarist in his own right, Bridges was eager to take on a film so concerned with music, but was wary of underwhelming after the example set by another music-themed film from his past, Steve Kloves’s “The Fabulous Baker Boys” from 1989.

    “What they did with that movie I thought was so wonderful that to do another music movie and not match that, it’s a pretty high bar there, so I was concerned about that,” Bridges says over lunch in Beverly Hills one November afternoon. “There were several music scripts that came down the pike, and sometimes it would have lyrics or little samples and it wouldn’t be right. And this one had no music. Then I thought maybe I could write the music, or my friend, but then, you know, I was busy, so I didn’t focus on it.”

    Indeed, Bridges is quick to admit that he spends a great deal of his energy steering clear of new projects. It might be a phobia of commitment on one hand, but on the other, he’s a man who likes to keep his options open. Signing onto a new film means missing the chance to work on any number of other projects that might ultimately interest him more.

    But “Crazy Heart” was a different story, especially once his good friend T Bone Burnett got involved as producer, music consultant and composer.

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  • 11/25 Oscarweb Round-up

    Viggo Mortensen in The Road• “The Road” takes desolate journey from page to screen. [Wired]

    • Andrew O’Hehir talks “Bad Lieutenant” with Werner Herzog. [Beyond the Multiplex]

    • Anne Thompson says “Avatar” could debut at AICN’s Butt-Numb-A-Thon, of all places. [Thompson on Hollywood]

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  • The Dude abides

    Snapped Tuesday afternoon over lunch at the Four Seasons.  Interview to come, maybe next week/over the holiday.  Fascinating discussion on “The Contender,” “Starman,” “Heaven’s Gate,” etc., including, of course, plenty of talk about “Crazy Heart.” Stay tuned.

    Jeff Bridges

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Doc shortlist, honorary Oscars and more

    Lauren Bacall at the 2009 Governors' Awards• The shortlist of contenders for the documentary Oscar was announced, surprising many — we dug into it a little.

    • The season’s first Oscars were handed out, as Lauren Bacall, Gordon Willis, Roger Corman and John Calley were celebrated at the Governors’ Awards.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column broke down the wide-open Best Original Screenplay race.

    • The Long Shot lived up to its name, spotlighting a few of the season’s most deserving outsiders.

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  • Preview?

    Jeff BridgesSo yeah, I cropped poor Gordon Willis out of the photo to end up with the image to the right here, but I can’t help wondering whether it’ll be a familiar sight come March 7.

    Of course, some folks have their panties in a twist at the gall of predicting winners this early, so I won’t go there again.  But it really does feel like things are going to go Bridges’s way this Oscar season.  It’s all just…too difficult to argue with.

    Jeffrey Wells recently saw the film in New York and is on board.  Steve Pond, Anne Thompson, Gregory Ellwood, Patrick Goldstein, there is little resistance.  No one likes an obvious race, but let’s call it what it’ll likely be: a Jeff Bridges victory lap, ebbing and flowing waves of applause for Duane Jackson, Lightfoot, Kevin Flynn, Terry Brogan, Preston Tucker, Jack Lucas, Max Klein, The Dude, Jackson Evans, Charles Howard, Ted Cole and finally, Bad Blake.

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  • The Great Performances: 2000

    Tom Hanks in Cast AwayMichael Douglas was robbed.

    The already Oscar-christened actor gave a career-best performance in 2000 in Curtis Hanson’s “Wonder Boys,” but he got no love from the Academy. Worse, his performance was easily among the five best of the year and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Actor prize.

    That having been said, I don’t think Douglas actually deserved the Oscar in 2000.  That honor belonged to Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” for a performance that was nothing less than astounding. For two and a half hours Hanks commands the screeen, moving into silent film territory for a stretch, the actor using strictly his body and face for the performance. Anyone who has ever, and I mean ever, doubted his range needs to take a hard look at this film.

    The five nominees for Best Actor in 2000 were Hanks, Russell Crowe for “Gladiator,” Ed Harris in “Pollock,” Geoffrey Rush in “Quills” and Javier Bardem in “Before Night Falls.” For me, Douglas was the most glaring omission, followed by George Clooney’s Gable-esque work in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” which I think remains one of the actor’s very best pieces of work.

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  • First stab at winner predictions

    Chris Pine in Star TrekI don’t offer up predictions on a given year’s Oscar winners until November, generally speaking.  And, well, it’s November.  Which is still, of course, too early to be making calls like these, since we don’t even have a nominations slate to go by, but I like to take an early stab, revisit in early December and then one more time in early January before we get the nominees.

    I asked over the weekend what readers thought would take the Best Picture crown this year, and the majority seemed to lean toward Lee Daniels’s “Precious.” It might be too easy to figure on that at this stage, but it’s difficult to argue with the early box office success and overall critical approval.

    But there are certainly other spoilers lurking and the danger of peaking early (yielding more time for competitors to take you down) is always apparent with a film like this.

    Keep reading to have a look at what I’m thinking.  Rattle off your thoughts and predictions in the comments section if you like.

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  • Idle trivia for a Saturday morning

    Henry Fonda. Alan Arkin. Jack Palance. And, strictly hypothetically, Jeff Bridges.

    What am I listing here? Bragging rights and an imaginary cookie for the first correct answer.