From left to right: Kristi Jacobson, Steve Buscemi, Lori Silverbush and Jeff Bridges (Getty Images)

Last Wednesday night, at around 8 p.m., the Transom spotted celebrity chef Mario Batali ambling through the Museum of Modern Art in his bright orange Crocs. But he wasn’t here to see the Munch exhibition. He was en route to the New York premiere of A Place at the Table, a somber new documentary from directors Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson, about America’s widespread--and underpublicized--hunger problem.

And while one imagines Mr. Batali doesn’t know much about being hungry, he was here to learn about the topic. And he wasn’t alone. Lots of star power turned out for the screening of the film—which hit theaters across the country last Friday and is also available on iTunes and on demand—including Steve Buscemi, Jon Stewart and Jeff Bridges, who appears in the movie.

Mr. Stewart left before the screening, presented in association with the Cinema Society, but he had already seen the film, which mostly documents the travails of three individuals who deal with food insecurity. In fact, the film's directors had appeared on The Daily Show the previous night. We had seen the interview and noticed that the dialogue had been unusually straight-faced. No jokes were cracked. Why so serious, we wondered?

Mr. Stewart, who will be leaving The Daily Show for 12 weeks to direct his own movie, let out a big laugh. "I try, but sometimes I don't nail it," he told the Transom, going on to talk about the power of the film. "Sometimes you see something and you get so wrapped up."

We asked Ms. Jacobson how she felt she had fared on The Daily Show.

"I was incredibly nervous," she admitted, "but to be honest, once Jon started talking, it got easy. There are times when the subject doesn't lend itself to making a lot of jokes, but we had fun.”

"It was pretty surreal," Ms. Silverbush said of the encounter with Mr. Stewart, "but I came away from it feeling excited and empowered."

And the directors feel that their film will have the ability to empower hungry people around the country. Ms. Silverbush told us that the reality of hunger in the United States--more than 50 million Americans struggle with food insecurity--hit her on a visceral level when, years ago, she realized that a young girl she mentored was going hungry.

It took three years to make A Place at The Table, whose executive producer is Tom Colicchio, the chef and restaurateur who owns a number of elegant eateries throughout the country and happens to be married to Ms. Silverbush.

And the directors say the movie has a precedent: Hunger in America, a CBS documentary from 1968. That film galvanized the nation, they explained; the government took action by creating a food safety net and helped to end hunger, almost entirely, by the end of the 1970s. During the Reagan years, though, reforms were pushed back, the movie argues.

We asked Ms. Silverbush—who, with her co-director, has unleashed a social action campaign in conjunction with the movie's launch—if she thought her film would have the same effect on the country that Hunger in America had on a previous generation.

"I know that it will," she said, without hesitation.

After the screening, guests headed over to Riverpark, a Colicchio outpost on 29th Street, near the East River, where they were treated to a sumptuous, late-night buffet of wagyu beef brisket, Berkshire pork rack, fried chicken, shrimp, lobster, oysters and more.

From left, T-Bone Burnett, John Turturro, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi. (Diane Bondareff/AP Images for Universal Studios Home Entertainment).

White Russians were flowing by the pre-made bottle at last night's Lebowski Fest at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 34th Street.

"I'm not sure why we are even offering a full bar," the bartender told The Observer. As we took our creamy libations from her, an unshaven man donning a bathrobe, jellies and sunglasses pushed by us and ordered three more. “'Scuse me dude.”

On the “red carpet” – actually a number of the rugs depicted in the film, stitched together along the length of the entrance – we had been approached by a pair of middle-aged men in life-size bowling-pin costumes: Scott Shuffitt and Will Russell, co-founders of Lebowski Fest and authors of the book, I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What Have You.

“We played in a really bad band and instead of practicing we would just quote lines from The Big Lebowski,” Mr. Russell said, recalling the inspiration for their first Lebowski-themed bowling party. “We thought ten of our friends would show up and we had like 150 people come out. Next thing you know, twelve hundred people are there.”

This was the first time the cast has reunited since the release of the movie in 1998. The event (minus stars) traditionally features a bowling party, costume contest, and a screening, but for this year’s simultaneous release of the limited-edition Blu-Ray version of The Big Lebowski and Jeff Bridges’ self-titled solo album, Universal partnered with Messrs. Shuffitt and Russell to bring the original cast together for the event.

Tickets for this year’s festival sold out in 48 hours, “quicker than any other event at the Hammerstein,” Mr. Russell announced to the room. “Take that, David Bowie!”

Spying John Goodman break free from the plethora of cameramen at the other end of the carpet, The Observer caught him before he entered the venue. We asked if, like his character, he was armed. “Yeah, I am,” Mr. Goodman said casually, a crazed look in his eye, before he broke into a hearty laugh.

Other actors took on roles not their own: "I'll suck your cock for a thousand dollars" Julianne Moore told us, recalling Tara Reid's line as her favorite from the movie. She was then mauled by a number of reporters eager to know what Maude named the Lebowski lovechild.

As T-Bone Burnett, Jeff Bridges’ music producer and the music archivist for The Big Lebowksi, gloated about Mr. Bridges’ new album, a work he described as “a beautiful, beautiful record,” a procession of emergency vehicles roared down 34th street, temporary deafening us both. “Rick Perry!” Mr. Burnett yelled over the din. “Rick Perry is coming to the screening!”

Later, following a cast Q&A marked by the more intoxicated members of the audience yelling lines from the movie before the cast even had a chance to speak (Steve Buscemi shouted “Shut the fuck up!” more than once), The Observer picked our way over to Jeff Dowd, the original "Dude" and the Coen brothers' inspiration for the movie.

What message did Mr. Dowd have for aspiring Dudes?

"Are you fucking ready for this?" he asked, posing for a picture with a couple who had been to Lebowski Fest more times than they could count.

"Get as close as you possibly can to one woman," he began, while shaking hands and posing for a few more pictures. "Intimacy is everything."

He meant what he said, putting his arm around us, and pulling us in uncomfortably close. He hiked his leg up on the chair in front of us and gazed out over the crowd. “The Dude is the holy fool, like the King’s jester. He is the one guy who can tell the truth without getting his head cut-off,” he paused, looked us straight in the eye, and said: “We need to use that power to create the future.”

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Jeff Bridges is not aging well, but when he stopped shaving, he started acting. The acting shows in Crazy Heart, an otherwise boring slice of country-fried steak with an exceptional performance by the gravel-voiced good old boy that raises the film several notches in the direction of unforgettable.

Bad Blake, a once-famous country western singing attraction now reduced to one-night gigs in bowling alleys, drives his truck into Santa Fe, pours out his urine from a gallon milk jug, slugs down enough whiskey to float a cargo ship and leaves the stage in the middle of his show to vomit into a garbage can. The next morning he rolls his gut out of bed and hits the road again, leaving a haggard fan behind in the motel sheets. It’s a routine he knows by heart. Moaning in an inaudible croak like a cross between Tom Waits and Harvey Fierstein, he’s a sort of first cousin to Robert Duvall’s Oscar-winning role in Tender Mercies, a 1983 movie that was also about a down-for-the-count country singer trying to put the broken pieces of his wasted life back together. (Mr. Duvall produced Crazy Heart and plays a Houston bartender in it.) But Tender Mercies was supported on the literary columns of an Oscar-winning screenplay by Horton Foote, who knew how to take his time and examine his characters with a flashlight to the soul. When Crazy Heart takes its time, it’s more like stretching a short story into a feature film. Well directed but sketchily written by actor Scott Cooper, the film relies a great deal on the star to flesh out what is only implied. It’s a lot of work, but Mr. Bridges is merely miraculous.

A 57-year-old has-been who is slowly killing himself with alcohol and cigarettes, Bad Blake is also a variation on the revolting creep Mr. Bridges played in The Big Lebowski, as well as the white bearded, pot-bellied version in The Men Who Stare at Goats. The once handsome, clean-cut embodiment of reliable Hollywood aristocracy has just about got a patent on stumble-bum reprobates. Bad Blake refuses to reveal his real name or discuss his four failed marriages, but he’s impressed enough with the pretty young reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who comes to interview him after one of his shows that he takes her to bed, befriends her little boy and thinks maybe he’s finally found the girl who could mean more to him than another meaningless one-night stand. But first, he’s got a trying gig in Las Vegas as the opening act for his arch-nemesis Tommy Sweet (a miscast, unconvincing Colin Farrell). A lot of guitar-plunking Nashville crooning ensues, followed by a potentially life-altering decision. What happens in the 111 minutes of Crazy Heart can be written on the head of a bobby pin, but there’s no arguing about the sweet impact of the central performance.

Whether you like the film depends on how much you like hillbilly music and Jeff Bridges. He’s pretty dog-eared and over the fence by now, but he sings the original songs with real conviction, and there’s something about him that’s as down-home as a bowl of grits with sawmill gravy. Anyone who remembers his father, Lloyd Bridges, with the legendary Kim Stanley in both The Goddess and John Frankenheimer’s Playhouse 90 production of Clifford Odets’ Clash by Night knows he comes from great acting genes. His performance as Bad Blake—lonely but aloof, talented but self-destructive, desperate for roots but a victim of his own addictive demon—leaves no shadowy corner of a complex life unexplored. He’s aging like a sweaty, chain-smoking King Lear.

rreed@observer.com

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Is Fox Searchlight contractually obligated to release one film per year with a veteran actor in a career-defining showcase performance? Last year it was Mickey Rourke who delighted audiences in The Wrestler; this year, it looks poised to be Mr. Bridges in Crazy Heart. For those unfamiliar with the film, consider it The Wrestler gone country. Mr. Bridges plays an aging performer on his last legs hoping for one last... yadda yadda yadda. The film might seem trite, but the buzz on Mr. Bridges—who, as the trailer happily points out, is a four-time nominee—is already borderline deafening. Though Crazy Heart doesn't come out for another two weeks, he already feels penciled in as a nominee and perhaps could be a favorite to take home Oscar gold.

Best Supporting Actor: Woody Harrelson, The Messenger

Call him Jeff Bridges, Jr. The long-beloved Mr. Harrelson has only been nominated once (for The People vs. Larry Flynt), but there is a very good chance that he'll wind up in the running next year. Best Supporting Actor is one of the weaker categories on the docket (lest we forget—and God love him—but people were taking Zack Galifianakis somewhat seriously as a contender for The Hangover), and Mr. Harrelson's work in The Messengers, as a casualty notification agent for the army, has been universally acclaimed. Whether voters actually sit-down and watch the little-seen indie film is a different story, but, hey, that's what screeners are for!

Best Feature: The Last Station

If you've never heard of The Last Station, don't worry: you're probably not alone. But we have a feeling everyone is going to be sure of its existence come Oscar night. The film tied Precious—the ostensible belle of the ball—with five nominations (in addition to Best Feature, nods went to director Michael Hoffman and stars Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer), and if the early reviews are any indication, the plaudits won't stop there. Our own Rex Reed outright gushed about The Last Station, saying it "should be accompanied by the sound of trumpets" and calling it "passionate, profound and unforgettable." With ten slots to fill for Best Picture, will it surprise anyone when The Last Station shows up on the not-short list?

A Christmas Carol

What's the story: Are you ready for Christmas? Yeah, we didn't think so. But that hasn't stopped Disney from trotting out yet another version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This time around Jim Carrey stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, though the twist here is that his entire performance is motion captured and animated. Robert Zemeckis, apparently finished with flesh and bones—he is, after all, planning on a sequel to Roger Rabbit—directs what is sure to be a Polar Express-type money maker for years to come. It's in IMAX 3-D, people! Even Santa Claus couldn't resist that.

Who should see it: Tiny Tim.

The Box

What's the story: If you feel like The Box has been knocking around forever, that's because it has. Richard Kelly's follow-up to the inscrutable and unending Southland Tales was supposed to come out last November, and then again in early October. Now it's finally here, this November. This isn't necessarily a dump—it is opening in over 2,600 theaters—but don't get your hopes up (witness the 45 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Based on a Richard Matheson short story, "Button, Button" (which was turned into a famous Twilight Zone episode), The Box stars a badly accented Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a couple who find a box on their front porch that, if opened, will give them a million dollars... and kill someone they don't know. Oh, the moral implications! Cue the dun-dun-dun music!

Who should see it: Donnie Darko.

The Fourth Kind

What's the story: We know Hollywood loves piggybacking on to trends, but usually it takes more than a few weeks to do so. Ripping a page right out of the Paranormal Activity playbook, The Fourth Kind paints itself as a true-life look at some mysterious disappearances in Nome, Alaska, that were blamed on alien abductions. Wait, isn't that a close encounter of the third kind? Meh. This probably should have come out before Halloween.

Who should see it: Roy Neary.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

What's the story: Despite being the other George Clooney movie here in 2009—Up in the Air, with all its Oscar buzz, will be the one to remember—it feels like we should still be a bit more excited about The Men Who Stare at Goats. Mr. Clooney's good friend Grant Helsov directs this adaptation of Jon Ronson's book about the military's use of the paranormal and psychic soldiers. Don't worry—it might sound creepy, but it's a wacky comedy! The Men Who Stare at Goats has the look of a watered down Coen Brothers movie, complete with Jeff Bridges in a Dude-like performance as the founder of the psychic soldier program. The reviews have been mixed, but our Rex Reed spared no vitriol, calling The Men Who Stare at Goats a "cinematic Katrina" while comparing it to being "stung by a wasp on the inside of your eyelid." Ha! Also, ouch.

Who should see it: The Coen Brothers.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire

What's the story: Since the buzz machine on Lee Daniels' new film has been turned all the way up to eleven for a few months now—Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey signed on as executive producers after it appeared at Sundance; the New York Times did a massive Sunday magazine piece on the film and Mr. Daniels—logic dictates that the backlash would start eventually. And here it comes! While a majority of the reviews have been strong—the Observer's Rex Reed called it "one of the most unforgettable films of the decade"—there are a select few critics who don't seem all that impressed. Of course noted contrarian Armond White eviscerated the film (apparently Norbit is better), but both David Edelstein and Anthony Lane have their doubts too. Still, what everyone seems to agree on is that Precious is not for the faint of heart—the 16-year-old heroine is raped, abused, and worse. And while that might turn you off, since this is sure to be one of the films on the long list for Oscar (hey, 10 nominees!), you should probably find yourself a ticket anyway.

Who should see it: Madea.

The Men Who Stare at Goats
Running time 93 minutes
Written by Peter Straughan
Directed by Grant Heslov
Starring George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges

The Men Who Stare at Goats, the latest George Clooney fiasco, is like getting stung by a wasp on the inside of your eyelid. You are blinded to all reason and the agony lasts for days. Despite Mr. Clooney’s easygoing charm and obvious good looks, his film choices point to an appalling lack of both intelligence and taste. He just doesn’t seem interested in narrative movies that make sense, and even worse, he has an exasperating tendency to turn his projects over to buddies and basketball cronies, whether or not they have any talent. (In George Clooney movies, talent is optional.) The result is a depressingly high track record of incomprehensible bores like Solaris, Syriana, Michael Clayton, the dumb, overplotted Ocean’s flicks by the overrated Steven Soderbergh … the list is long. In fact, the marvelous and insightful Good Night, and Good Luck is the only major exception in a career notable for frat-house one-liners and photo op mugging over artistic quality. At the press conference for The Men Who Stare at Goats in Toronto, when asked what drew him to a movie this bad, he deadpanned, “I’ve known Grant Heslov [the director] since 1992, and he has some compromising photos of me, so I really had no choice.”

It’s hard to believe this is the same Mr. Heslov who helped write Good Night, and Good Luck, about Edward R. Murrow and the McCarthy witch hunts. He may be Clooney’s longtime filmmaking partner, but he is certainly no director, and this wobbly, one-legged directorial debut proves it. It’s supposed to be a takeoff on Dr. Strangelove, with all of the slobbering, winking, brain-dead overacting on display in the abominable Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?; it pastes together disconnected stories from a book by Jon Ronson about the U.S. Army’s use of parapsychological research in Iraq. Ewan McGregor, who shows up in what feels like at least half of the movies released today (and seems to get worse in each one), plays a down-and-out reporter from Michigan who travels to Fort Bragg in 1983 to interview a top-secret brigade of psychic and paranormal soldiers trained in New Age warfare. The result is surreal and patently absurd as he tags along to Kuwait as a war correspondent with a gang of illogical military muttonheads trained to make themselves invisible and impersonate Jedi warriors in Star Wars epics, run through walls and kill goats by staring them to death. Dedicated to ending the “war on terror” without violence, these “warrior monks” hike across the Iraq desert in search of the founder of the “First Earth Battalion”—a pony-tailed acid head freak named Django (Jeff Bridges, re-creating his performance as the Dude in The Big Lebowski). As part of their combat training, he encourages his foot soldiers to stop shaving, grow long hair, wear Jedi robes and dance—a natural for Mr. Clooney, who is in civilian life a dance instructor. They spout nonsense about steroids and solar cooking on sand dunes and perform sadistic experiments on animals, and their nemesis is new recruit Kevin Spacey, whose special talent is spoon bending. They’re all crazy and none of their theories work, and neither does the movie.

The structure is nothing more than a series of anything-goes contrivances. It is never clear what the goal is (the reporter narrates: “I was on a mission—even I didn’t know what the mission was”), although when recruited to find the hideout of General Noriega, the Jedis say, “Ask Angela Lansbury.” Paranoid and nutty as an Almond Joy, Bridges uses pension fund money to hire hookers and, inspired by the discovery that the Russians are torturing kittens in the name of psychic warfare, uses Barney the Purple Dinosaur’s “I Love You” song as a torture technique of his own. When he finally gets a dishonorable discharge, you wonder why it took the Pentagon so long. Using his Jedi powers for evil instead of peace, Mr. Clooney comes unhinged and has Jonathan Demme–homage nightmares called “the silence of the goats.”

It’s episodic and broadly incoherent; the direction is all over the map; and the acting is so atrocious it wouldn’t get past a Saturday Night Live dress rehearsal. There’s a big difference between comic acting and just plain goofing around, but nobody in this movie seems to know it. Mr. Clooney knocks himself out making fun-house faces, but shows no real talent for political satire. (Didn’t the people who financed this trash remember him in Three Kings?) The script by Peter Straughan is demented jabberwocky that just makes you groan. Example: The Jedi motto is “I will drink your blue water, live in your red clay and eat your green skin.” Huh? Say what? This cinematic Katrina is only 93 minutes long but seems like 93 days of hard labor.

rreed@observer.com

The plot sounds like a mixture of the Bourne movies and Fringe. A struggling, down-on-his-luck reporter (Mr. McGregor) meets a man who claims he's a former military psychic soldier who was re-activated post-9/11 (Mr. Clooney). Predictably, the two go on a wild adventure through Iraq to find the truth about the psychic program that may or may not deal with soldiers bending spoons and exploding goats... with their minds!

Mr. Spacey plays another former psychic soldier who is running a prison camp. And of course, Mr. Bridges is the founder of the psychic soldier program, Mr. Clooney's character's mentor and, most likely, the bad guy.

We'd watch Mr. Clooney, Mr. Bridges and Mr. McGregor even if they were starring in a remake of Meet Dave, so the fact that this movie sounds pretty awesome has our interest piqued. And for Mr. Spacey, who's been miscast as a leading man these past few years, maybe taking fourth billing in a George Clooney movie will be just what the doctor ordered.

That the movie was a flop and yet has grown into an enormously successful cult phenomenon, including its own circuit of Trekkie-like conventions has been well-documented. In March, Entertainment Weekly's Clark Collis offered a personal take on the movie and its afterlife called "The Dude & I":

Here's how Mr. Greene describes the film's appeal in Rolling Stone:

This calls to mind an essay Jeff Bridges, the actor who portrayed "The Dude" in the film, contributed to I'm A Lebowski, You're A Lebowski, a 2007 book about the film. In an excerpt of the essay in The Guardian, Mr. Bridges tells of a devotee of Zen Buddhism suggesting to him that The Dude is a Zen Master.

"I don't think of the Dude as a fancy spiritualist or anything like that. But I can see what these folks are talking about," Mr. Bridges wrote. "There's enough room in the movie that a lot can be read into it."

In its interpretive elasticity (is The Dude "platform agnostic"?), The Big Lebowski is a lot like Groundhog Day, which The New York Times' Alex Kuczynski described in 2003 as "a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in 'Groundhog Day' a reflection of their own spiritual messages."

Ms. Kuczynski was prompted to write that after Groundhog Day was included in a Museum of Modern Art film series called "The Hidden God: Film and Faith." As luck would have it, The Big Lebowski is currently part of a MoMA series as well: A retrospective of the Coen Brothers' work running through the end of the month.

The Big Lebowski is playing Wednesday.