Jeff Bridges may be nominated for Crazy Heart

For Best Actor this year, there's been talk about Colin Firth for A Single Man, Viggo for The Road, and George Clooney for Up in the Air.  Now we may have a new contender.  Just this week, there was a bunch of buzz about Jeff Bridges "career best" performance as a country western singer in the film Crazy Heart.  Here's what In Contention had to say:

Bridges fully embodies the broken but spirited Bad Blake, an alcoholic country singer touring the Southwest in his 1970-something Suburban, playing any dive that’ll have him.  He brings every inch of charisma and charm he has to a role that certainly doesn’t seem made for him on the surface, but somehow ends up entirely owned by the actor come film’s end.

Bridges haunts the stage behind a dark pair of aviator sunglasses, under a silvery, unshampooed mane, unmistakably conjuring the image of Hank Williams Jr. as he belts out a number of tunes from gig to gig.  He shares the screen with Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays Jean, a journalist and single-mother love interest.  Gyllenhaal holds her own and provides a complex, emotional core to the story that could also nail down a few kudos here and there.

Colin Farrell has something of a glorified cameo as Tommy Sweet, a famous modern country star who owes his career to Blake, while Robert Duvall (who also serves as one of the film’s producers, along with Burnett, in fact) offers a small but meaningful supporting turn as Blake’s confidante.

Colin Farrell and Jeff Bridges were filmed at a Toby Keith concert last year for the movie:

Colin Farrell as a country singer? Well, okay, I suppose he can sing, so I'll withhold judgment till I see the film.