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Crazy Heart
Feb. 27th, 2010 06:23 pmDid you know that Jeff Bridges can sing? Well, i didn't. I went to see Crazy Heart this afternoon, starring Bridges as an alcoholic country singer, Bad Blake. His performance is toted to win the Oscar and i can see why. It's a good movie, albeit a fairly standard formula story. It's the performances that make it special. We first meet Bad when he's booked in to play a bowling alley in Nowhere, New Mexico. He was a huge country star but his career is on the skids. He's a heavy drinker, really, he's clearly an alcoholic and his liver has most definitely seen better days. So that's how the movie opens, we see the mess he's in, a washed up singer, past his glory days at age 57, drinking himself into a slow death. He's not a nasty drunk or an emotional one, just sloppy, pathetic, and almost functional most of the time. He performs drunk and does a fair job though now and then he has to rush off stage to upchuck.
( a few spoilers therein )
Colin Farrell's character was interesting, seeing the difference between the younger superstar and the grizzled old mentor down on his luck. Tommy is clearly at the top of his game, with sleek hair, earrings, the epitome of modern country music. Yet he knows he owes his fame to Bad who "taught him everything he knows". He seems to respect Bad, and wants to help him. Bad is reluctant, feeling like it's charity i suppose but he really needs the money. There's also a small role by Robert Duvall who's character is a good friend to Bad. And as down and out as Bad is, you can see the talent still in him, both in his experience on stage in spite of the whiskey and his ability to write a shining and perfect song still, when he's inspired.
I found all the performances very real, very believable. No righteousness, no preaching, no exaggerations. Yes, it's still a love story underneath and there's the redemption bit (i did say it's a formula story) but it's worth going to see.
And is it me, or does Jeff Bridges in this movie bear quite a strong resemblence to Kris Kristofferson? Even sounds a bit like him at times. As i said, he can sing, too, and quite well. He sounds like the old fashioned country singers i always liked.
Anyway, after the movie, i went to the gym in Park Lane. I think i'm just going to have to stick to my own club because both times i went to other locations, i never seem to like them as much. The machines are different or they seem calibrated differently and they don't have all the same ones i'm used to. Then wanting to use the weights, one of the rooms looked like it was being used for a class so i used another one and there wasn't all the ranges of free weights in there. I did what i could and got pretty much a full workout aside from a couple of things. All in all a productive day.
( a few spoilers therein )
Colin Farrell's character was interesting, seeing the difference between the younger superstar and the grizzled old mentor down on his luck. Tommy is clearly at the top of his game, with sleek hair, earrings, the epitome of modern country music. Yet he knows he owes his fame to Bad who "taught him everything he knows". He seems to respect Bad, and wants to help him. Bad is reluctant, feeling like it's charity i suppose but he really needs the money. There's also a small role by Robert Duvall who's character is a good friend to Bad. And as down and out as Bad is, you can see the talent still in him, both in his experience on stage in spite of the whiskey and his ability to write a shining and perfect song still, when he's inspired.
I found all the performances very real, very believable. No righteousness, no preaching, no exaggerations. Yes, it's still a love story underneath and there's the redemption bit (i did say it's a formula story) but it's worth going to see.
And is it me, or does Jeff Bridges in this movie bear quite a strong resemblence to Kris Kristofferson? Even sounds a bit like him at times. As i said, he can sing, too, and quite well. He sounds like the old fashioned country singers i always liked.
Anyway, after the movie, i went to the gym in Park Lane. I think i'm just going to have to stick to my own club because both times i went to other locations, i never seem to like them as much. The machines are different or they seem calibrated differently and they don't have all the same ones i'm used to. Then wanting to use the weights, one of the rooms looked like it was being used for a class so i used another one and there wasn't all the ranges of free weights in there. I did what i could and got pretty much a full workout aside from a couple of things. All in all a productive day.
