website tracking
Search The Big Picture

« Bid to Tour the Griffith Observatory with Spock | Main | Box Office - '2012' Explodes for $24 Million Friday »
Saturday
14Nov2009

Great New Poster for 'Crazy Heart' with Jeff Bridges

DateSaturday, November 14, 2009 at 12:59PM
We've written and you have commented about Fox Searchlight's mysterious year of failures. Normally at this time, the baby studio has set itself up for a great Oscar run (or two), but outside of (500) Days of Summer, which figures to only make hay in the screenplay category, Searchlight has whiffed a lot this year. The studio announced maybe ten days ago that its sleeper this season will be Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges, kind of a modernized Tender Mercies, which won Robert Duvall an Academy Award. Click the pic to see the whole poster.

With any movie about music, I always gravitate to that section of the credits that deals with the musical score and soundtrack. In this case, the score is by O Brother composer and soundtrack producer T-Bone Burnett and a guy named Stephen Bruton. Bruton was a fixture in Austin and throughout the Texas music scene for about 40 years. He passed away in May from throat cancer a couple weeks after completing work on this film. Given Burnett's history with the golden statues (Grammy awards for O Brother and the fantastic Robert Plant and Allison Krauss albums, plus an Oscar nomination for Cold Mountain), don't exclude this one from the musical categories at this year's awards.

As for Bridges, he has four nominations already, and he should have six (you could easily make cases for The Big Lebowski and Fearless), but zero wins. And while he would almost certainly have Daniel Day-Lewis, Morgan Freeman, and George Clooney to overcome, each of them has already won an Oscar or two. That didn't stop Peter O'Toole from being overlooked a record eight times, but The Dude is certainly in the conversation at this point, and with nothing else to really throw its considerable awards season weight behind, look for Searchlight to put Bridges on every talk show it can to raise awareness even more. He's certainly overdue, but will this be the year?

Crazy Heart opens December 18th in selected cities, and I'm sure you can guess which ones. I really like the poster, by the way, for as simple as it is. Given the story and tone, I can't really see this one being a lot busier. Oh, and we'll have the trailer in a couple days, or so I hear.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment2 Comments |

Reader Comments (2)

I'm surprised you didn't mention one of T-Bone Burnett's most recent credits: Walk The Line. It was he who helped teach Phoenix and Witherspoon how to sing (and quite well).

Saturday, November 14, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterCorran Horn

Yeah, that paragraph was getting long. But yes, T-Bone, in addition to producing all sorts of artists over the past 20-25 years or more, has had extensive film work. Walk the Line is one of his many high points.

Saturday, November 14, 2009 | Registered CommenterColin Boyd

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>