Monday, March 8, 2010

the dude abides

The Academy Awards were on last night, but I didn't watch them. It seemed kind of silly when I only saw one movie last year. Granted, I picked a pretty good one, as it was one of the best picture nominees. Along with most of the female population, Julie and I went to see Julie and Julia, and enjoyed it very much.

I was marginally interested in the awards this year because I was very interested to see if Jeff Bridges would win the best actor award. Jeff Bridges, you see, is the protagonist in my all-time favorite movie, The Big Lebowski. I think of that as our family movie, actually. The one that all four of us can sit and watch time after time, each time laughing out loud at the same parts. I don't know what kinds of movies other families share, but our family movie drops more f-bombs than any other movie I know. And we like it that way.

If you've never seen The Big Lebowski, well, you should. I won't try to explain the plot to you, but I will say that the Dude (Jeff Lebowski) is the victim of mistaken identity, and becomes a reluctant detective. John Goodman, as Walter, is the Dude's large, angry, profane sidekick. This is very much a detective movie, but a delightfully skewed one.

Jeff Bridges is the Dude, of course, and from the moment he shuffles down the grocery store aisle in his bathrobe and jellies, I am completely won over. I believe Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and indeed, have read articles to that effect. So I guess I was interested to know if the man could really act, or if he was just being himself. The man can really act. He won the Oscar.

3 comments:

Ben said...

Three cheers for El Duderino!

anne mancine said...

Not into the whole brevity thing?

anne mancine said...

Jules and I went to see "Crazy Heart" today. It is excellent. Reminded me a lot of "Tender Mercies", so imagine my surprise to see Robert Duvall in this movie, as well. If you haven't seen it, you should.