Mac stuck at startup screen

I have a MacBook pro with lion installed on it. I was doing one of apples software updates which takes you into an install screen and the progress bar froze. This led to me restarting the computer at which time it got stuck in the boot screen with the apple logo and spinning wheel.
I've tried resetting it. I've tried going into disk utility and repairing the Mac hd and permissions and I've tried holding command, option, p and r on startup. None of these seemed to do the trick.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Solution that worked for me:  Power down your system.  Now press and hold the "option" key and the power key at the same time.  Hold both until you get to the hard disk icons.  Click on the one on the right that reads:  Recovery HD.  You will then be taken to Mac OS  X Utilities screen.  Now click "reinstall Mac Os X". 
When I did this, a progress bar showed that it will take about 16 hours.  Just leave your moniter in the open position.  When I woke up, I clicked the trackpad and my keyboard lights come on but my screen was black.  I just hit the F2 button to increase brightness, and there was my desktop! 
I powered down to see if it would reboot correctly and it did.  Problem Solved.
This is for the late 2011 MacBook Pro.  The problem began after I did a software update for Office for Mac 2011.
Hope this helps,
Good Luck!

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