You really don’t need to see every critically-acclaimed movie of the year in order to forecast the Oscars. If you follow blogs and critics enough, you can set your watch to what will be under consideration, what will be “in the Oscar bubble.” They usually set the climate for awards contenders, regardless of quality, and an excellent case study in Oscar candidacy has presented itself with the sudden rise up of under-the-radar drama “Crazy Heart.”
Yesterday we reported on a last-minute industry screening coinciding with rumors that the previously-unseen “Crazy Heart” was angling for a late ’09 release. The film, a country western music drama starring Jeff Bridges, was acquired by Fox Searchlight this summer and was scheduled for an undetermined ’10 release. Searchlight seemed content to dump it wherever next spring, hitching their awards hopes to “Amelia,” but since that film died with the public and critics over the last two weeks, the studio, who has released lightweight awards pap like “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Juno” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” has been left scrambling. If the whispers are true, they’ve cherrypicked their 2010 lineup and came away with “Crazy Heart” as a contender.
Early word out of this “screening,” which was probably littered with prognostication-homers desperate for a new movie to write about, is strong. The Hollywood Reporter proclaims that, “It’s Bridges time,” quoting one of their reporters present who says, referring to Jeff Bridges’ character, “Bad Blake is the new Randy the Ram!” Which is to say, “Fox Searchlight can market this just like ‘The Wrestler’! Yay!” It’s funny how THR marks this as the most important attribute, and not whether this movie is absolutely worth a damn. Kris Tapley at In Contention feels awkward giving his opinion on a film he claims is unfinished, but he has no problem claiming Jeff Bridges’ performance, which he was also seen in an unfinished, not-fully-edited version, would stand up to be one of the year’s best. He also says, “These are the moments I live for in an Oscar season,” which is a nice way of ending this significant discussion about the film by making it about him.
“Crazy Heart” is generating buzz for three common Oscar rules…
-He’s Never Won. Jeff Bridges is a consistently great and Hollywood loves to reward consistency. He’s second generation Hollywood royalty, he’s given several performances that were unjustly not nominated for awards, and he’s even done the comic book thing (“Iron Man”) and emerged with dignity. His front-runner status in a surprisingly weak Best Actor field would be a major headline generation. The movie doesn’t have to be any good for this rule to take affect, it just needs to be a standout lead role.
-Minor Category Domination. “Crazy Heart” has a number of original country songs written and produced by T-Bone Burnett (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”). The Academy faced its share of criticism last year by only honoring three nominees in the Best Song category, two from “Slumdog Millonaire,“ but that doesn’t preclude another film from dominating the catagory again. If a film gets heat in one category and it’s not a sci-fi blockbuster, it could easily translate to bigger exposure among the voting body.
-New Kid On The Block. Oscar bloggers write about the same movies all year, hoping for a new entry to break up the monotony. If it hasn’t already screened at a big festival, it’s likely a bigger movie being treated with kid gloves by the distributor (“The Lovely Bones,” “Avatar”). If a film screens late to a favorable audience and it has high profile stars and either isn’t very challenging or ineptly made, it stands a great chance of entering the nomination circle.
The presence of a formidable pedigree also helps in the form of Robert Duvall, who costars. Duvall made “Tender Mercies” in the mid-eighties, excellent film with very nearly the same plot. Of course, this is a superficial similarity that bloggers will use to assure themselves they remember “Tender Mercies” and aren’t total trolls who treat the Oscars like a fucking sporting event. The question remains, how good is “Crazy Heart”? When Searchlight acquired it in July, head execs Nancy Utley and Steve Gilula (simultaneously?) said Bridges gave “the performance of a lifetime” before promptly announcing it wouldn’t receive a late-year awards release. Was “Amelia,” with no lead male performances, really the factor keeping Searchlight from unveiling “Crazy Heart”? And why does “Crazy Heart” seem difficult to distinguish from “The Open Road”?
