In Contention

Tag: The Big Lebowski

  • 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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  • Why ‘Lebowski’ will win Bridges the Oscar

    Jeff Bridges in The Big LebowskiSpot quiz: how many award mentions did Jeff Bridges receive for his inspired comic turn in “The Big Lebowski” 11 years ago?

    If you guessed anything other than a single Satellite Award nod for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical, you’d be wrong. (That’s right, even the Golden Globes preferred Robin Williams in “Patch Adams” to The Dude.) Today, however, it ranks as possibly the most beloved creation in a beloved actor’s career, the character’s nickname having become Bridges’ own in a few short years.

    In a nice EW piece, Owen Gleiberman explains why that performance was never going to catch the Academy’s eye — yet at the same time, is partly responsible for his all-but-inevitable win for “Crazy Heart” tonight. Likening the scenario to disguised career-achievement Oscars for Al Pacino or Kate Winslet (or, more contentiously, Sandra Bullock), Gleiberman nonetheless thinks it’s this one 1998 performance that seals the deal for him.

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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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  • Dude

  • The Coens abide

    (from left) Ethan Coen and Joel CoenI’ve been chewing on the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” like a thick piece of spiritual jerky ever since I walked out of the Clariety screening room in Beverly Hills yesterday evening.  I’ve retweeted other perspectives, exchanged emails with industry types equally leveled by it and, in my own way, started banging the drum for a film I think everyone should see.

    It’s sticking with me in the best of ways, I guess you could say.  It’s illuminating unexpected corners.  It really is settling in and staying there.

    So I was quick to devour this piece in The Toronto Star by Chicago Sun-Times religion columnist Cathleen Falsani.  Falsani is also the author of the book “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers,” which explores the spiritual messages found in the Coens’ films.  So she was more than qualified to write up the siblings’ most personal and, certainly, most spiritual film to date.

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  • Second life

    Seth Rogen in Funny PeopleOn Friday, John Foote raised the question of which recent films look likely to endure through the coming decades, despite, in many cases, having under-performed on initial release. You responded in your droves.

    Interestingly enough, Joe Queenan recently addressed a similar issue in a very good essay for The Guardian, contemplating the odd phenomena that lead certain films to largely escape the notice of critics and audiences in theaters, but then go on to gain cult status on DVD (or, back in the day, home video).

    Films he cites as key examples include “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “The Big Lebowski” (which many seem to have forgotten was dismissed by many as a misfire following the crossover success of “Fargo”) and “Office Space” (which barely made it to theaters at all), as well as far older titles that slow-burned their way to classic status, such as “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

    When it comes to predicting a similar path for current films, he dismisses naming broadly acclaimed specialty titles with moderate box-office (“The Wrestler,” “The Hurt Locker”) as too easy, too prestigious.

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  • 11/18 Oscarweb Round-up

    Coraline• Jeffrey Wells responds to the documentary short list. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz go back and forth on the Oscar prospects of “Slumdog Millionaire.” [Entertainment Weekly]

    • T.L. Stanley catches up with a report from the “Revolutionary Road” screening this weekend. [Gold Rush]

    • Peter Bart whines about a lack of Oscar ads…again.  And insultingly draws the conclusion that studios are hanging talent out to dry.  Again. [Variety]

    • Patrick Goldstein chastises Bart for the whining (fair enough), but in calling for a moratorium on ad buys, fails to understand that their existence might have something to do with the fact that he hasn’t had to accept a buy-out yet.  Just sayin’. [The Big Picture]

    • Reporting with the Dudes from the “Big Lebowski” festival. [The Guardian]

    • Kathy Marks reports from the ground at the “Australia” premiere in Sydney. [The Independent]

    • Alonso Duralde runs down 10 competitors for Best Picture. [MSNBC]

    • Mickey Mouse turns 80. [CNN]

    • David Frank comes up with 10 reasons not to make a third “Batman” film.  Kris Tapley hunts David Frank down with a pair of garden sheers. [Rope of Silicon]

    • Helen Mirren talks about the joys of being in her birthday suit. [The Times]

    • Susan Wloszczyna talks to Henry Selick about the upcoming “Coraline.” [USA Today]

    • Praising the film for the most part, Glenn Kenny hopes “Revolutionary Road” can find an audience. [Some Came Running]