Crazy Heart and Tender Mercies

I saw Oscar award-winning “Crazy Heart” this weekend, starring Best Actor Jeff Bridges and Oscar-nominated supporting actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. A story about a 50-something country legend who never quite reached major stardom, I was reminded of two other pictures: one, I saw parallels between Bad Blake and Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson  from 2008′s  “The Wrestler”; two, I thought of Robert Duvall’s “Tender Mercies” (1983), where Duvall played a country star down on his luck, finding new love and getting new chance to start over albeit late in life.  TRIVIA: Duvall also plays a supporting role in “Crazy Heart” as the bartender in Houston.

They’re both seasoned films I would recommend. For more information, see:

Tender Mercies http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086423/

The Wrestler http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1125849/

On an additional note,  the morning of the Oscar ceremony, CBS Sunday morning movie critic-in-residence David Edelstein listed his predictions for that night’s award winners for acting, directing, and best picture. He remarked that while the actors were likely to win that night, the award was really going to them for past work that the Academy hadn’t recognized the year it came out, some years have multiple great films, and the award can go to just one in each category.  Also, the list of great actors overdue for an Oscar is about as long as other American award organizations, for instance, the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.  That’s a lot of years to give out consolation prizes; meanwhile, moviegoers are quick to assume a movie is the best that actor has ever done if he won the Oscar for it, and that may not be necessarily true. Like with” Crazy Heart”, Edelstein said the Oscars  tend to snub brilliant work in comedy, Bridges was getting an award for “The Big Lebowski” a decade later for a 2009 dramatic film, “Crazy Heart”; similarly, Sandra Bullock was getting an award for “the Blind Side”, but she had earned it over the years with her comic brilliance in “The Proposal”, “While You Were Sleeping”, “Miss Congeniality”, “Two Weeks Notice”,

Whether he meant to or not, I thought Edelstein was making a strong point by how important it is not to totally rely on awards to tell moviegoers what is worth checking out. He didn’t say where to look instead (in his commentary), so I will add my two cents. I would not be as familiar with the Coen Brothers body of work were it not for a friend named Scott who really loves offbeat films with rich characterization. I wouldn’t appreciate the therapeutic experience of seeing screwball comedies to laugh as much as possible were it not for Nicola. My friend Miranda and I caught every corset film Miramax had to offer in the 1990s.  And if it weren’t for non-profit film houses like the Roxy, the Terrace, South Windemere, and the Nickelodeon, my college days would have been riddled with more bland, predictable  and forgettable films.

With that life experience behind me, would think asking friends, most 20-50 year olds who like movies, checking out movieblogs (ahem), checking out the non-profit cinemas near you, checking out free showings at the library,  are all great places to start to find great films that just might change the way you see the world.

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