Excogitating Genius, With Brandon Brendel

Starring: Sean Penn, Esai Morales and Reni Santoni
Directed by Rick Rosenthal

SP's Awards
Los Angeles Film Critics Association - New Generation Award

This was a great '80s crime drama. I really enjoyed it. Lot's of good '80s music too.

SP plays Mick O'Brien, a young thug sent to reform school after killing a rival thugs little brother. He steps up and takes control of the other kids but when his rival shows up, all hell breaks loose. Very gritty performance, really held his own.

Lionsgate was nice enough to post the whole movie online, so here you go.

Starring: Louise Davis, Edna Wisdom and Vernon Lafon
Directed by Lina Shanklin

This movie sucked. Everything about it was so melodramatic. The only redeeming quality about it was the cinematography. Some nice looking scenes. Come to find out, the cinematographer was the Oscar winner for There Will Be Blood, Robert Elswit.

I don't know what SP was doing in this. He plays Buddy, a cousin of some sort. He pops up for a few seconds before dinner and doesn't say a word. You see him for literally a few seconds. He isn't even invited to sit at the dinner table. Maybe his part was cut out or something. I don't know.

Here's the full movie...if you dare:

Staring: Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold and Brian Backer
Directed by Amy Heckerling

I really liked this movie! I can't believe it took me so long to see it. Classic 80's flick.

SP plays Jeff Spicoli, a stoner, surfer-dude, high-school student. His performance was spot-on for what it was. I don't ever think I'll ever look at Sean Penn the same again. I read that he went all "Daniel Day-Lewis" on set and would only allow people to call him by his character's name.

Starring: George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise
Directed by Harold Becker

After a few TV movies that I couldn't find, this is Sean Penn's big screen debut. I thought that the movie was alright. A little far fetched for me. Young kids at a military school revolting when they find out that their school is being shut down. And one of the kids tells a national guardsman that he won't stand down because he's following orders from his superiors. The national guardsman is your superior, numbnuts!

SP wasn't the main attraction in this, but he was pretty good for a newbie. Got to see a little of his depth as an actor and what to look forward to in the future.

Directed By Leo Penn

Sean Penn's debut! Although it is a small one. I don't know if it is necessarily a debut, as he is just an extra and has no dialogue. His dad directed this episode and it must have been take your kid to work day. But this is where it all starts for SP.

SP is very believable as a young townsfolk.

There couldn't be a better wrap-up of my Jeff Bridges adventure than this wonderful documentary put together by the people at American Masters, directed by Gail Levin.

Much like my blog here, it takes you through JB's career with lots of valuable insight from the man himself and also from those close to him and people he has worked with throughout the years.

Here it is for you, my loyal readers.

Well, it looks like this will be my last JB post for a while, unless I can come across any of the few movies I couldn't find. It doesn't look like he'll have another movie out until 2013, so I feel like I should have some kind of semi-closing. Because I am doing this to study the craft of acting, I'll hit on that.

 Jeff Bridges was taught by his parents who followed the teachings of Michael Chekhov. He uses sense-memory a lot. To start building a character he finds aspects of himself that the character also has and then goes from there. In many of the interviews I've watched where he talks about acting, he uses the words "pretending" and "play". He says that it's just like when you were a child and used to pretend with your friends, good acting depends on how fully you can commit yourself to the pretend world and circumstances of a scene. And one last thing that his mother told him that he has repeated, "Have fun, and don't take it too seriously".

Jeff Bridges is pretty darn funny! See for yourself!

Staring: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld
Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

JB's Awards
Bronze Wrangler - Outstanding Theatrical Motion Picture

The Coen Brothers can do no wrong. Anything that they do I can be fairly confident that I will enjoy it. Here, they tackle the Western genre for the first time and re-teaming with Jeff Bridges was a genius move.

It was said that Rooster Cogburn could have been The Dude's great-great-great grandfather. I can see that. I'd say that Rooster is a little more mean than The Dude, but I guess you had to have some mean in you to survive back in the day. I think JB captures the drunken grizzled US Marshal perfectly. When asked how he perfected his drunk acting, JB said that he has had some experience with the subject, and uses sense-memory to get himself to that state. He said that he made the mistake of actually getting drunk while shooting Kiss Me Goodbye for a scene that called for drunkenness. The first shots went great. But as the shooting day went on, things didn't go as well. He never made that mistake again.

Staring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde
Directed by Joseph Kosinski

JB's Awards
Saturn Award - Best Actor

After watching so many movies with the purpose of watching great acting it's kind of hard to get into a movie that relies so heavily on CGI over talent. It was a pretty movie but I didn't feel like JB had much to work with here as story was secondary to special effects.

It was interesting to see older JB acting opposite younger JB, which could never have happened without modern technology. Although the younger JB reminded me of the baby from the E-Trade commercials for some reason. How his face moved and all.