Tron: Legacy - Trailer 3 Official HD

Awesome new trailer!

TRON Legacy - Derezzed Video (Feat. Daft Punk)

Daft Punk has a cameo in Tron!

And we get to see Michael Sheen in character asking them to play something to “electrify the boys and girls, if you’d be so kind.”

I am going to LOVE this soundtrack!!

New Tron Legacy Trailer from Comic Con

The Dudegyver

The Dude Abides!

Happy 60th Jeff Bridges!

The Dude abides! Jeff Bridges talked recently about how glad he is that The Big Lebowski became the cult film it is:

“I love that,” he says. “It’s so gratifying because it didn’t do much when it first came out, then it was a bigger hit in Europe and it splashed back over here. I’ve been to one of those festivals. I played it. It was my Beatle moment, playing to a sea of Dudes, screaming and excitement.

“It’s great to have a movie that I loved being a part of, and some people think the Coen brothers, they’re so good at what they do, it must just be like nothing, improvisation. But on that movie, no improvisation. Everything is scripted. They’re very precise. And to have the appreciation that it’s got now, and people study it, it’s great.”

Jeff Bridges may be having his best year yet with all the Oscar talk for Crazy Heart.

Besides Bridges in Tron, I remember being obsessed with him in the movie Starman.  I can't even count how many times I've seen that movie.  Here's an interesting comment he made about that opening scene as the alien:

So I’d go through my phone book and I’d go, ‘Which friends are in this book that I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out they were an alien?’

Jeff Bridges in Starman“One of those guys was a fellow named Russell Clark who was a dancer and had these interesting movements, so I thought I’d hire him to teach me some dance and kind of approach this thing like a dancer. I felt if I cracked that opening scene, then it would be a process of just becoming more human as the film went on.

“It was almost like imagining that I was somebody in a human body as if it was a ride, not myself. Like I was driving it around. And then it was impersonating. Like you’re sitting like this right now (he indicates the interviewer’s posture), and you’re sitting that way because you’re comfortable. So Starman would see that and rather than knowing why you did it he would do it and it wouldn’t be for the purpose, it would be kind of a bad impersonation.”

Crazy Heart Trailer

Four-time Academy Award® nominee Jeff Bridges stars as the richly comic, semi-tragic romantic anti-hero Bad Blake in the debut feature film Crazy Heart from writer-director Scott Cooper. Bad Blake is a broken-down, hard-living country music singer who’s had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times. And yet, Bad can’t help but reach for salvation with the help of Jean (Golden Globe® nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist who discovers the real man behind the musician. As he struggles down the road of redemption, Bad learns the hard way just how tough life can be on one man’s crazy heart.

 "Performance of a Lifetime,"  Is this finally Jeff Bridges' year at the Oscars?

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.

'The Men Who Stare At Goats' Official Trailer HD

WTF?! OMG, look at all the people in this movie!! It has George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, and Jeff Bridges (playing the Dude again, with a military uniform!).

Based on true events described in Jon Ronson’s 2004 book of the same title, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” involves a down-on-his-luck reporter (McGregor) who gets more than he bargains for when he meets a special forces agent (Clooney) who reveals the existence of a secret, psychic military unit whose goal is to use paranormal powers to end war as we know it.

Tron Legacy

This was shown at the 2008 Comic Con, and has finally been released. Gets my 80's loving heart a pumpin'.

Flynn Lives!

Genius, Visionary, Modern Hero.

That is Kevin Flynn.

He came into our lives and showed us the limitless possibilities of the future. And then, all of a sudden, he "disappeared."

Some people believed he died. We don't. We know that Kevin Flynn Lives.

We're not crazy, we're not obssessed, we're not lunatics. We simply have followed the facts wherever they lead. And the facts tell us that Kevin Flynn Lives.

We are here for Kevin. Nobody can make us stop believing that he is out there, that he's waiting for us, and that he will return when the time is right.

Jeff Bridges' Cool Photography

Like Variety's H.A.L. blogger, I too miss Jeff Bridges' set photography from the now defunct Premiere magazine. He's posting it now to his very interesting website. Check out his photographs from Iron Man!

Hat tip: Variety's H.A.L.

Iron Man Blasts Off!

Although today in Chicago was in the 40's and rainy, it was the first day of summer to me. It's the start of the summer movie blockbuster season. It used to be that the summer movie season started with the Memorial Day weekend, but now it's this weekend, the first weekend in May. I was bouncing up and down in my seat with my family, the biggest kid of all. The theater was packed for an afternoon show, and from accounts, that's the way it was everywhere. Iron Man had such advance demand that it played not just at midnight shows on Thursday, but starting at 8:00 p.m.

"Iron Man," the latest Marvel comics title brought to the big screen, grossed an estimated $32.5 million from its first full day in North American theaters, independent box office analysts reported on Saturday.

That tally, generated from Friday showings in some 4,100 U.S. and Canadian cinemas, put "Iron Man" on track to meet or exceed the $85 million-plus opening weekends posted by sequels to two other Marvel franchises -- "Spider-Man" and "X-Men."

The movie, which cost about $150 million to make and another $75 million to market, co-stars Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow and has drawn mostly favorable reviews.

Distributed through Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, the film is the first self-financed production from Marvel Studios and is being closely watched as the first major release of the summer movie season.

So, is the movie worth your $9 or $10? Most definitely. It's a spectacle picture that needs to be seen on the big screen -- and loud! I would agree with the 3 and a half star reviews. Robert Downey, Jr. is just perfection as Tony Stark. I love that this is not another "coming of age" superhero movie like Spiderman or Superman. This is the story of a man who'd already lived, and something happens to rock his world and change his view of his life. Casting Robert Downey, Jr. is a shorthand to so much. We see him and we already think hard living, partier -- and smartass. Favorite line to his assistant played by Gwyneth Paltrow when she finds him taking off the Iron Man suit: "Let's be honest, this isn't the worst thing you've caught me doing. "

Gwyneth is surprisingly good as Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's long suffering assistant and Jeff Bridges is a serviceable villain, but not one for the ages. Terrence Howard doesn't have much to do, but I was amused that the director, Jon Favreau appears in a cameo as Tony Stark's bodyguard and driver.

Since the film is due to do well, sequel plans are already in the works:

Paramount honcho Brad Grey has apparently stated that as long as the flick does "as well as expected" (and there's no reason to think it won't), the studio wants to get a sequel in theaters for the same May weekend in 2010.

Of course, IRON MAN isn't actually a Paramount movie -- it's Marvel's first self-financed project to hit screens, with Paramount distributing. But with the buzz so far, it's no great surprise they'd all want to get Downey back in the super-suit ASAP. Director Jon Favreau has already said he planned a loose structure for three movies, with Mandarin presumably making a villain appearance along the line.