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Hey Look.. Its Mel Gibson..

Yeah its been 8 long years since Mr Gibson has graced the screens. But he has been busy creating some of the decades most talked about movies. So how did he fare on his first big outing? Both Nick and Myself went off to see this screen legend return with his characteristic action sequences and witty one liners.

<Nick> Yer he’s back, Mel, in front of the camera and he’s brooding. A movie length brooding montage in every location and from every angle. Oh sure he has a lot to brood about. His daughter was literally blown away right in front of him, which looking back at the movie now drove him slightly mad. And as we’re usually looking through his eyes at the story, that may explain the rest of the movie.  Read the rest of this entry »

Based on the Thomas Cobb novel of the same name, Crazy Heart tells the story of Bad Blake (Bridges), an aging country music singer who bares the emotional and physical scars of a life that has been made up of too many marriages, far too long on the road and an over abundance of whiskies along the way. However despite ending up playing in bowling alley bars to small collections of aging fans, Bad can’t help but reach out for a new reason to go on through a chance encounter with Jean (Gyllenhaal), a small-town journalist who longs to discover the real man behind the songs.

Now, for some people there will be too much music and not enough complex storylines and subplots, for others it will be vice versa, however for me it was the perfect blend of drama and melody. As the story unfolds we see this old broken down country musician stuck playing the songs that had previously brought him glory while blocked from any inspiration by the constant search for meaning at the bottom of his whisky glass. Jeff Bridges does play Bad Blake, he is Bad Blake. At no moment in this film do you not believe that Bridges is this aging and trapped musician. His acting performance is backed up thoroughly by his musical performance. When he grabs his guitar and stumbles out in front of his make shift backing band, hammering out the riffs as he leans in to the microphone and growls out these country lyrics wrought with pain, loss and failure, you can’t help but feel as though you are watching the real thing.  Read the rest of this entry »