Jeff Bridges continues his triumphant, graceful stroll to the best actor Oscar this weekend with another magazine cover, this time for Guitar Aficionado.

No, that’s not a little gold statue in his hands. It’s a late 1930’s Gibson Roy Smeck stage deluxe. According to the editor-in-chief of GA, these guitars were originally meant to be played Hawaiian style on the lap, but Bridges’ has been converted to play like a normal guitar.

The issue doesn’t come out for another two weeks, but in the story Bridges springboards off his heralded performance as Bad Blake in Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” to talk about his own musical obsessions and notable guitar collection (cover line: “The Dude Collects!”).

“Bad Blake is one of those ‘Dude’ parts,” Bridges says in the piece. “It’s the kind of part you know you’re born to play. Bad’s the last of a breed, one of those guys they just don’t make anymore — like Kris [Kristofferson] or Waylon Jennings or Merle Haggard. The role was such an open canvas for me to work with. And hey, the chance to actually do my own singing and guitar playing on film — what a trip!”

I’ve been wanting to get this up since Thursday night, when the Writers Guild held its annual star-studded Beyond Words panel, but too many events piled up. The WGA’s awards-season closer turned out to be a bizarre laugh-riot that managed to skirt almost completely any discussion of the craft of writing.

In attendance were James Cameron (”Avatar”), Jon Lucas & Scott Moore (”The Hangover”), Scott Neustadter (”(500) Days of Summer”), Mark Boal (”The Hurt Locker”), Alex Kurtzman (”Star Trek”), Geoffrey Fletcher (”Precious”), Scott Cooper (”Crazy Heart”) and Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner (”Up in the Air”). Missing were Nora Ephron (”Julie & Julia”), Roberto Orci (”Star Trek”), Michael H. Weber (”(500) Days of Summer”) and Joel and Ethan Coen (”A Serious Man”).

Everyone knows The Dude loves his Creedence and hates the Eagles. But what about the man who played him, Jeff Bridges?

I was lucky enough to spend a few minutes chatting with the actor at a Fox Searchlight cocktail party last Thursday — the studio is pushing hard for awards consideration for Bridges — and I asked him for a music recommendation. Bridges is a musician himself, famously performed at Lebowski Fest one year and plays Bad Blake, a craggy old country crooner, in “Crazy Heart,” which Searchlight is releasing next Wednesday.

Anyway, here’s what the man is listening to these days: Benji Hughes. Bridges enthusiastically described the Charlotte, NC, singer-songwriter as a mix of “Paul McCartney, Beck and Brian Wilson,” the kind of references a few friends of mine would jump on in a second. (I listen to stuff like Elbow, The Raveonettes and Ulrich Schnauss, so I admit Hughes was not on my radar.)

Hughes apparently put out a double-disc record last year called “A Love Extreme,” and the music is all over the place genre-wise. Here’s his MySpace page, if you’re interested.

Bridges was at the party with his best friend John Goodwin, with whom he says he’s been “painting, making music, dancing and tumbling” since the fourth grade. Both of these guys have their work on iTunes, too.

So, enjoy.

Just don’t leave the iPod in the car. Freakin’ Nihilists.

After missing a few of the early showings, we finally caught “Crazy Heart,” the last-minute Fox Searchlight awards hopeful, at a media screening. Comparisons to “The Wrestler” danced in our heads (and on the lips of bloggers) coming into the pic. And indeed, it’s hard to avoid the numerous similarities between the Mickey Rourke-Darren Aronofsky collaboration about a washed-up wrestler at a crossroads and the Jeff Bridges-toplined tale of a washed-up country singer at a crossroads.

Both pics feature a fading  performer whose addiction to the spotlight is rivaled only by his addiction to substances (alcohol for Bridges’ Bad Blake, steroids for Rourke’s Randy the Ram) — and who gets a harsh wake-up  after a medical close call, eventually finding salvation (or does he?) with the help of a beautiful but lost-soul single mother. There’s even the reaching out to an estranged child in both.

Bridges’ performance is almost custom-built for awards consideration. It’s not just that it’s strong; it’s that he’s playing someone who will remind viewers and voters of this timeless awards theme: perseverance as age and talent work against you.

But is the film a best-picture contender? Awards voters looking to fill out a ten-slot ballot may be tempted to consider it (especially as possibles like “The Lovely Bones” fall away, if a number of bloggers, including THR’s Roger Friedman, are to be believed). But it’s here that “The Wrestler” similarities could ding “Crazy Heart’s” chances. The pic has its effective moments and generally well-calibrates its backroad-blues mood. But director Scott Cooper is not (no fault of his own) half the helmer that Aronofsky is, and most people who make the comparison will likely come to the conclusion  that the movie feels less fully-realized than Aronofsky’s meisterwork (which itself wasn’t nommed).

Last year, Fox Searchlight became the toast of awards season by cutting it close — it picked up the season’s two darlings, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Wrestler,” as late as August and September, respectively.

This year it could be cutting it even closer.

After the lukewarm response to one-time hopeful “Amelia” (not to mention boxoffice doldrums for young-skewing comedies “Whip It!” and “Gentlemen Broncos”), the specialty division may be making a fall push for “Crazy Heart,” the country-music drama starring Jeff Bridges.

At the moment, the picture remains dated for next year, as it has been since Searchlight acquired it this summer. But the specialty division has scheduled a surprise, last-minute screening for Wednesday in what wagging tongues are saying is a trial balloon for a 2009 release and awards push.