City College News

Scott Cooper's first film Crazy Heart, featuring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal, was a fantastic success.

The film follows Jeff Bridges' character Bad Blake, the classic washed up formerly famous country singer who spends his days traveling the country in a beat up old truck, drinking whiskey and playing bars every night. However it appears that he is on the road towards something bigger and away from certain demons that have chased him to this point.

He meets a female reporter, Maggie Gyllenhaal's character Jean, who tests his ability to continue on his life of partying and excess, and winds up teaching him about himself, and learning a little bit about love.

The film features fantastic country music written solely for the film, and performed by Jeff Bridges. In many ways it could be compared to Walk the Line, the film chronicling the life of Johnny Cash, however in this film everything is in a modern setting, and though the characters aren't taken directly from real life, they are just about as true to form as you could hope for. The music was written by T. Bone Burnett, famous American songwriter, and one song from the film, "The Weary Kind" has already been nominated for an Academy Award.

The film has also already received several other Academy nominations, being Best Actor, for Jeff Bridges, and Best Supporting Actress, for Maggie Gyllenhaal, who gave one of her best performances yet.

The film is truly a great time, and even though in its country western sense of beauty and spending nights at the bar it gives you a bit of lightheartedness, the film also tugs hard at your heart strings.

It is the classic story of the has been trying to find his place in the world. Jeff Bridges does a fantastic job of creating a perfect characterization of country singers, and the rest of the films' supporting cast, including Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall do a great job of giving some emotional backing to this timeless tale of redemption, and classic American music.

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