Excogitating Genius, With Brandon Brendel

Staring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Colin Farrell
Directed by Scott Cooper

JB's Awards
Academy Award - Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Critics Choice Award - Best Actor
Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
Independent Spirit Award - Best Male Lead
LAFCA Award - Best Actor
Desert Palm Achievement Award
Prism Award - Performance in a Feature Film
Screen Actors Guild Award - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

A great movie! Great performances, great music, great cinematography. My only gripe was that I felt like JB and Maggie Gyllenhaal's characters fell for each other quite abruptly. (Is that a spoler? Eh, it happens pretty early on) It is explained that a lot of the film was shot out of sequence, so they had already shot some of their more intense scenes together before the scene of their meeting, therefor they already had a relationship built up. He chalks there quick romance up to love at first sight.

Man oh man! All these awards for JB's performance! I'm trying to figure out why he got all of the accolades for this particular role. Now, I'm not knocking his performance at all. It was an amazing performance. I'm just saying that, after having just watched almost every movie he has done, there are plenty of other performances that I would put up against this one. Is it that he showed his musical prowess along with the acting? Well, he did the same in The Fabulous Baker Boys and he wasn't even nominated. Is it because it was picked up by Fox Searchlight? I guess it was just his time, albeit much later that it should have been. There are a lot of similarities in this character and his recent role in The Open Road.

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks and Chris Cooper
Directed by Gary Ross

For some reason I thought that this was going to be a sad movie. Actually, it is a very uplifting story about broken men and a broken horse overcoming adversity and giving a downtrodden country something to cheer about. This was a great movie.

Jeff Bridges talks about working from the outside in, which is how I feel that I work best sometimes. Not to say that the internal work is neglected. Just that outside influences are allowed to work their magic on the internal aspects of acting. JB went as far as to get the actual wallet of the real Charles Howard, the man he portrays in Seabiscuit, and have it in his pocket during the whole shoot. He also talks about how important getting into wardrobe and makeup in the morning is to him for getting into the character. And research. Because he was playing a real person, he tried to gain as much information as he could about his character from photographs and news reels. From body language to facial expressions. All of that adds up to a finely detailed amazing performance.



Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, Gary Ross and Gary Stevens talk about Seabiscuit with Charlie Rose:

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey
Directed by Ian Softley

I really liked this movie. It is listed under the sci-fi genre, I think it is more of a psychological mystery. But I guess that it could be considered either, depending on the conclusions that you come to at the end of the movie. Jeff Bridges plays a psychiatrist who is treating a man who calls himself Prot and clams to be an alien from the planet K-PAX. JB tries to find out who this mystery man is and where he really came from, because surely he didn't come from outer space...or did he?

A big part of Jeff Bridges performances is his research. In preparation for this part, he went to different institutions and met with multiple psychiatrists. He even had a doctor on set as a technical adviser. He wanted his performance to be as close to how a real psychiatrist behaves as possible. JB says that a psychiatrist considers themself a detective, investigating what is going on inside of a person's mind and trying to solve the mystery.



Here is a great interview conducted by Charlie Rose. Jeff Bridges talks about his performance in K-PAX and the craft of acting. It's actually a great recap of his career up to this point:
Part 1(46 minutes in):


Part 2:


JB talks K-PAX with Jon Stewart: