Jeff Bridges pulls Burbanked back from the brink.
By Burbanked on Mar 15, 2007 in Celebrities, Movies | 1,221 views |
A funny thing happened after my last post in which I joked that writing another, completely annoyingly idiotic post, somehow shut down my interest in blogging.
What happened was that my interest in blogging shut down for two weeks. A guy who once trained me for a job in college said to me, “Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who say ’shit happens’ usually have shit happen to them.” Perhaps that’s obvious, but I always remember it and I’ll never forget that guy. It’s absolutely true; I wanted to shut down Burbanked over the last two weeks because I simply couldn’t find anything that I really cared to write about, despite there being plenty of news about movies I care about.
I’m writing today to mention a movie that I absolutely positively didn’t care about until yesterday.
Why do I care now? Simple: because Jeff Bridges is the real frigging deal.
The thing is, I don’t think much of Iron Man. I read maybe one or two of the comics as a kid, but the character never stuck with me. I respect Robert Downey Jr., Jon Favreau and Terrence Howard a great deal but I’m not all that sold on seeing a superhero movie with them involved with it. As for Gwyneth Paltrow, the less said the better.
But that picture of Jeff Bridges - which you can see larger, as well as a few others at Superhero Hype - as he’ll look portraying Iron Man’s villain Obadiah Stane is about the coolest damn thing I’ve seen in a long time. It shocks me out of complacency and compels me to see the movie even though I couldn’t care less about the source material. Bridges has such a powerful screen presence and has such amazing talent when it comes to subtlety and nuance. You’ve actually got to watch and listen to the guy to see what he’s doing - rarely has a performance of his come across as obvious or over-the-top. As great as they are, you can’t say that about Pacino, Nicholson, De Niro or many of the greats.
And how wonderful is it that he doesn’t even look like Jeff Bridges? It’s a transformative, incredible look that serves the movie, not his stardom.
And, although it may very well undermine my entire point here, I’ll point out that Surf’s Up - a CGI-animated penguin surfing movie from Sony - stars Jeff Bridges and opens June 8th.
Dedicated screenwriting 101 here: From an interview with Harrison Ford on the MTV Movies Blog in which the inevitability of another Indiana Jones movie is mentioned:
How do I get out of this? I love going to the movies with my boys, opening up their minds to the great pleasures of cinema and all that, but this is a hard one. Please help me: do I suck it up and just go, or can anyone out there provide me with a plausible, kind-hearted, permanent way out? (
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Piper | Mar 15, 2007 | Reply
Keep the fury and don’t stop writing. I’ve been in a lull lately but then I wrote about how much I hate Brett Ratner and the stories just started flowing after that.
Plus, I don’t have a lot of viewers and would hate to lose you.
Burbanked | Mar 15, 2007 | Reply
Thanks, Piper - the only feeling that’s better than coming back to it is that of being missed in the first place.
And perhaps you didn’t notice that your excellent post Q: What’s Wrong With Hollywood? A: Brett Ratner is in the From the brains of the bloggers… position in my right nav column.
Piper | Mar 15, 2007 | Reply
I saw that.
Thanks.
MC | Mar 16, 2007 | Reply
Jeff Bridges is the man really.