This Week’s DVD, Blu-ray and Cinema Offerings

It’s been slim pickings here at AATM review-wise for the last few weeks. Kick-Ass wasn’t screened for Utah-based critics and both Date Night and The Losers were screened during the day, which for two working-class stiffs like me and Dan is next to impossible to attend. At any rate and all excuses aside, here’s what you can look forward to this week:

Opening in theaters on April 23:

The Losers (PG-13)

You can read Dan’s commentary on the poster here and my critique of The Losers trailer here.

The Back-up Plan (PG-13)

Watch the Super Bowl spot and read my commentary on J-Lo’s new romantic comedy here.

If you want to skip the box office lines, you can buy movie tickets in advance at Fandango.com. Plus shopping with our affiliate partners always helps AATM. It hasn’t bought me a Porsche Cayenne, but it has bought me and Dan a couple of value meals at McDonald’s.

As for DVD and Blu-ray, it’s a fairly beefy release week, with Avatar, Crazy Heart, The Lovely Bones and The Young Victoria hitting store shelves in both formats. This week also features a Blu-ray catalog release of Minority Report. You can purchase any of these titles from our affiliate partner Amazon.com below. Personally, I’d hold off on Avatar until an extended, special feature-rich version comes out (probably fall/winter 2010).

Crazy Heart Behind the Scenes Featurette

We sung the praises of Crazy Heart on tonight’s KVNU Movie Show, but if you’re still unsure on whether or not to give the film a shot, check out this behind-the-scenes featurette from Fox Searchlight. Happy Friday!

Movie Review: Crazy Heart

The first thing you should know about Crazy Heart – a simple yet searing portrait of a tired and broken country music artist named Bad Blake – is it will bring to Jeff Bridges (Iron Man) his first-ever Academy Award win out of five nominations over the last 40 years.  You should also know if you live in Cache Valley and plan to see this movie, you’ll have to head south to Ogden, where it’s showing at the Megaplex 13 at The Junction.  With all the crap jam packed into the multiplexes lately, Crazy Heart is a burst of fresh, inspiring cinema, driven by the haunting old school twang of the film’s soundtrack and the emotionally resonant acting from Bridges.

Crazy Heart is directed by Scott Cooper and adapted from the 1987 novel of the same name, written by Thomas Cobb. The main character, Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a mélange of country and Western music bad boys, namely Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard. Blake’s past is best summed up in a line from one of his songs, “I used to be somebody, but now I am somebody else.” The person he is now is an alcoholic drifter, wandering from one small-town, low-paying gig to another, all the while splitting time between cheap motels and his dilapidated old car. It’s never fully explained, but part of Blake’s wandering seems to revolve around a former protégé, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), and the assumption he’s left Blake alone in the wake and dust of his newfound success.

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Movie Review (Dan’s Take): Crazy Heart

Some of cinemas most satisfying experiences can be found in small, quiet movies. The kind that don’t bowl you over with strength of their story, but rather the subtle unwrapping of their soul. Films whose strengths expand on the accessibility of its characters thanks in large part to actors who lose themselves in their roles. Crazy Heart is one of those films and Jeff Bridges is one of those actors.

If you’ve seen the trailer for Crazy Heart, you’ve sampled its flavor. Crazy Heart wears its emotions on its sleeve, gently allowing the audience into a simple country song captured on film: a story about a washed-up drunk, love and aching redemption. Crazy Heart‘s emotionally resounding  strength lies in its ability to avoid the kind of heavy-handed drama easily injected into a film about real-life blues, real-life mistakes and the man who succumbs to them. At times, Crazy Heart‘s events hint perilously close to cliche, but director and writer Scott Cooper, propelled almost single-handedly by Jeff Bridges, delivers an emotionally rich character arc that kindly averts the easy ledge and keeps things both authentically grounded and achingly real.

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Ryan Bingham Sings The Weary Kind from Crazy Heart

Crazy Heart is in limited release so I’ve been forbidden to post my review yet, but I will say this – it is definitely one of the year’s best films. It’s like a kinder, gentler, blue-sky version of last year’s The Wrestler. One of the film’s strengths is the soundtrack, especially the song “The Weary Kind.” Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall and Collin Farrell all sing on the soundtrack, due out on January 19th, 2010.

Ryan Bingham co-wrote the song with T-Bone Burnett and the duo scored a Golden Globe nomination last week for Best Original Song. You probably recognized Burnett’s name, as he produced the soundtrack for Walk the Line and worked with the Coen brothers for 2002′s O Brother, Where Are Thou (he won an Album of the Year Grammy award for that soundtrack). I hadn’t heard of Bingham until Crazy Heart, but that’s because I don’t listen to alternative country music, or any country for that matter. Even still, Bingham’s got a melodic, raspy, whiskey-meets-velvet voice and I think you’ll enjoy the live performance of “The Weary Kind” below.

Trailer Tuesday: Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors, so reading he’s receiving Oscar buzz for his portrayal of an alcoholic country singer in Crazy Heart comes as no surprise. Whether he’s resurrecting a deer in Starman, drinking a White Russian in The Big Lebowski, or chucking Robert Downey Jr. into a bus in Iron Man, the guy is 100 percent solid. Add to the cast the equally dependable Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Dark Knight) and Robert Duvall (We Own the Night), as well as the underrated Colin Farrell (In Bruges), and I think you indeed have a movie with some awards potential.

Check out the trailer below and share your thoughts. Like many other movies generating Oscar buzz, Crazy Heart is only available in limited release on December 16. I think it looks fantastic. What say ye?