Take a Mental Health Break with Jeff Bridges

Swap a dwarfed existence in shrink-wrapped suburbia for a never-ending news diet of jaw-dropping political quandaries and it’s never felt easier to relate with Carol White’s environmental illness in Todd Haynes’ [safe]. With each passing revelation in Washington, security seems to slip away by the minute, sober comfort appears more elusive to find, and a nagging sense of restlessness rules the day. 

So for those of you clamoring to unclutter your mind for just a few blissed-out minutes – at the risk of prescribing pseudo-guru dogma in the great outdoors – allow Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges to lull you along a trip of grounded meditation to “Temescal Canyon” from his 2015 album of ambient soundscapes Sleeping Tapes. Just be sure not to operate any heavy machinery while doing so.

"The Dude" Honors John Goodman for his Star Ceremony

John Goodman, currently onscreens in Kong: Skull Island, just got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Jeff Bridges got in "The Dude" character via The Big Lebowski with a quick costume change to honor him.

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"I am an actor"

The best tradition of the Screen Actor Guild Awards each year, beyond their decision to keep the lifetime achievement award on air (are you listening Oscar?), is their opening bit wherein a random collection of thespians give little weird speeches that end with "I am an actor." Sometimes they're funny. Sometimes they're serious. Sometimes they're headscratching. Regardless, it's always something to look forward to each year. Here are the five actors they chose this year in ascending order of how well they pulled it off.

05 Ashton Kutcher
Kutcher read from a teleprompter. Noooooo.

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The Furniture: Porches and Nostalgia in Hell or High Water

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

The Old West has been dead since well before the dawn of cinema, and so the best Westerns are parables of a way of life in decline. Yet despite the history, there are plenty for whom the mythology of the cowboy and the outlaw isn’t extinct. That’s why the Western has lived on, well after the death of even the oldest Americans who could remember those days. It’s also what drives films like Hell or High Water, which use symbols to chronicle the last days of the Old West’s cultural descendants.

It takes place in a nearly empty West Texas, now being picked over by banks. Taylor Sheridan’s script is insistent in its reminders of this context. “No wonder my kids won’t do this shit for a living,” says an anonymous cattle rancher fleeing an encroaching fire. “The days of robbing banks and trying to live to spend the money - long gone,” says an anonymous old man in a burger joint.

This is why the surface tension between the criminal brothers (Ben Foster and Chris Pine) and the aging Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) is a red herring...

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Acting Chart Updates. Four Questions

Next week everything either begins to change or starts solidifying as the precursors begin. Woohoo, it's awards season! So ALL the Oscar charts were updated this week with the biggest gains this time going to Hell or High Water which wasn't just a momentary pleasure in the summer but a film people are still talking about - witness the Gotham and Spirit acting nods for Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster respectively.

have we been overestimating Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea? If she slips from the shortlist, who rises up?

BEST ACTRESS & BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
These categories are looking the most settled with 5 women in each chugging along smoothly toward the precursor glory. In fact apart from Oscar looking toward its default darlings (Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, who both did very fine work this year) it looks like Emma, Annette, Ruth, Isabelle, and Natalie all have reason to be hopeful. The same is true in Supporting Actress where five women (Viola, Naomie, Nicole, Michelle, Greta) have much more heat than others but they'll still have to fend off surging adorables like Molly Shannon in Other People and Octavia Spencer in Hidden Figures. 

Q1: If Meryl or Amy place in the leading shortlist, which one of them and who gets the boot?
Q2: If voters promote Viola Davis to lead (where she totally belongs given that Fences is essentially a family/marital drama) who benefits in supporting and who suffers in lead? Imagine the chaos!

How many nods can Hell or High Water manage? We're predicting 5 at the moment.

BEST ACTOR & BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
These two categories are much more volatile because the men haven't generated half as much conversation this year.

Q3: Might we see BOTH Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster in supporting for Hell or High Water since people love that film so much?  A dual nod in Best Supporting Actor hasn't happened since Bugsy in 1991?
Q4: Do you expect something like 2011 when underdogs like Demian Bichir and Gary Oldman rose up to take nominations that people initially assumed would go to Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Fassbender? And if so are Tom Hanks and Ryan Gosling pushed out and for whom?

ALL OSCAR CHARTS ARE UPDATED HERE