anticipate TRUE GRIT by the Coen brothers

i'm only marginally interested in seeing this film

this really kind of feels like a wonderful world of disney special

oh, looks like morbs beat me to it.

this really kind of feels like a wonderful world of disney special

^^^ I haven't seen it yet, but apparently "Coen Bros" and "Jeff Bridges" are enough for some of my friends to forget how redundant it all looks.

it's not a BAD wonderful world of disney special! it actually plays like a pretty good, unflinchy family movie. which i think is kinda cool!

if i had a kid i would totally show that kid this and "me and orson welles"

Although it's an Old Movie, the original still gets shown often on cable. I prefer Bridges in grizzled mode to John Wayne but c'mon.

I'm with you on Me and Orson Welles.

oh, you mean redundant cuz of the earlier one. gotcha.

Just got back from a screening of this. Blah. With that lilting piano score and beginning narration, I thought it was Ken Burns' True Grit -- and that score never let up. The performances were pleasant enough and some of the dialogue was amusing, but it just doesn't create much interest or emotional investment (not a Coen specialty, I know). I couldn't even get that annoyed. Just mildly bored. Loved A Serious Man though.

looks like morbs beat me to it.

That's not what quite I said; Disney made a few decent movies that weren't about nannies, y'know. This certainly beats the hell out of The Fighter, Black Swan et al.

I'm dubious about the Coens saying they haven't seen the first film since they were kids. Sure their visual style is different, but the camera ANGLES for the "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch" scene looked practically the same. And the stables owner who keeps getting strongarmed by Mattie sounded an awful like Strother Martin, so I looked up the '69 cast and see he was played by Strother Martin.

On Charles Portis:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/magazine/12FOB-WWLN-t.html

thats a cool article... i should check out more of his stuff

well that's not really what i said either; i don't think disney-esque is necc. a bad thing.

Escape From True Grit Mountain

anyone catch David Edelstein's rant in the comments section of his own New York review?

Wow. John Wayne fans are just as abusive as fanboys now. Wayne was funny in True Grit but he wasn't allied with the mass-murderer Quantrill and he didn't babble incessantly for hours on the ride through Indian country (as Bridges does). He was nowhere near as ugly a drunk. And listen to how Bridges handles the line quoted--he enunciates it carefully, in a Biblical cadence, whereas Wayne employs his own familiar rhythms and it has half the impact. Nonetheless, Wayne met the book's Rooster halfway, won an Oscar, and still owns the part, the way Bela Lugosi owns Dracula despite being a worse actor than many of the Draculas who followed him. Sit down with Portis's book, meanwhile, and see all the cynical episodes left out in Hathaway's movie. And look again at the landscapes, which don't evoke Arkansas or Oklahoma Indian country at all. (The Coens shot in New Mexico, too, but elsewhere, in high desert and cold forests.)

What's interesting is the language above. "Blatant errors." "Did the reviewer actually ever SEE the Wayne version?" Why are you so filled with anger? Hathaway's True Grit is a good enough movie--and more emotionally stirring than the Coens'--but doesn't evoke the ghoulish flavor of the book. What gives you the right to hurl abuse at someone who has a slightly different opinion than yours?

are nymag writers encouraged to interact with the plebs or something? i wouldnt even read the comments if i were him

"Why are you so filled with anger" = typical liberal rhetorical question

haha yeah i just read the comments he's responding to and they're hardly 'abusive'

I dunno if that's a 'rant,' seems thoroughly otm

ya it's not like he's frothing at the mouth there, for a comments section argument that's pretty chill & articulate

I don't disagree with him, but I did wonder why he acts like it's the first time he reads a comments section.

i dunno dude, that shit can get to you, he's only human, etc etc

http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/70106/comments.html

haha there are only 4 comments on that article and one "abusive" one?

ok i take it back, chill out edelstein

Maybe he got foul emails as well.

I saw this last night and I loved it. I'm such a huge fan of the book, and it was great to see more of it on the screen this time. Bridges and Damon played off each other really well, and that little girl who played Mattie was great. Obviously I wasn't asking a lot of the movie, but honestly, I found this really really enjoyable.

Wayne version is on TCM tonight.

My fave line from the Coens' film, which I assume is from Portis, might be "Keep your seat, trash!"

That was indeed a Portis line.

this is awesome

everyone's really good (barry pepper!), but the girl playing mattie kills it, such an awesome character - i could watch a zillion hours of hailee steinfeld being a pain in the ass to crusty old men

third act left me a little wanting but that's mostly the book onscreen so, y'know, what can you do

those moments when Mattie shows that she really is just a 14 year old girl, and she gets that happy, sweet look on her face like when she wants to tell ghost stories...Steinfeld kills. And the haggling scene was perfect.

yeah, totally! though i read the ghost story thing as calculating - trying to defuse the situation. the haggling was great. i loved her continually catching the male characters off-guard with her brassiness. the first scene with Brolin is fantastic. Brolin kinda surprised me actually.

btw im pretty sure JK Simmons had a cameo of sorts doing the voiceover of Lawyer Daggett.

I could watch those two kids get kicked off that porch stoop over and over and over.

lol yeah the porch scene was funny. And TamTam otm, Brolin was GREAT. Way more charismatic as Chaney than I expected...I expected sort of a dead, dumb mean delivery but he was great, especially in that river meeting.

And Barry Pepper (cast as Lucky Ned Pepper, lol!)...really brought the right shade of grey to Ned, where he's almost likeable with the way he runs things and deals with Mattie but you still know that he's a mean sonofabitch.

just saw the original on TCM!

Yeah I just watched it too... I saw it when I was a kid but I'd forgotten a lot of it. I think Wayne might be a better Cogburn tbh, but the new one does everything else better, probably.

All I could think while watching that was how annoying Bernstein's score was.

your score is annoying!!

I could not believe that was Barry Pepper.

I really didn't like Mattie in the original. She was just so damn bug-eyed all the time.

I loved how messed up Peppers face was too...and all the spit flying out of his mouth when the camera was pointing up at his face...so great

btw im pretty sure JK Simmons had a cameo of sorts doing the voiceover of Lawyer Daggett.

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMf0MTweXYc (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, December 22, 2010 9:51 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this was definitely simmons

I'm not the biggest Coens fan you'll meet, but I have a really good feeling about this. Can't wait to see it.

quality picture imo

i dont want to SPOILERZ this but i think the 'disney' stuff is a little much, i mean what's interesting is how it deals w/ the morality of revenge -- the chain of events that leads her to the place she ends up ---

oh fuck it, SPOILERRRRRRRRRRRRRRZ

losing her arm because she takes the kill shot isnt a v. 'disney' way to approach it (fwiw im assuming this was in the book) but i think the alcoholism, the hero's patheticness, the bumbling idiocy of the bad dudes, its very puncturing of myth & the whole mysticism of westerns, doesnt feel particularly DISNEY to me imo

by 'hero's patheticness' im talking about cogburn btw not protaganist

of COURSE it is plenty dark... but the snarky definition of 'Disney' overlooks the fact that Bambi and Old Yeller traumatized millions of children by introducing them to death.

SPOILERING more:

I'm pretty sure Kim Darby doesn't lose any limbs in the first film of TG, which is certainly a crucial omission; Mattie has to pay a price for wasting Tom Chaney.

fuck

hey mods plz add "now with spoilers" to the thread title plz?

good, not great picture. brolin was funny. matt damon is always charming. couldn't decide about lead actress. score was really banal.

overall... is this the coen brothers' most conventional film?

score didnt take me out of the film at all, cant imagine how it would unless you were expecting something jarring or yeah unconventional & yes this would probably be the most conventional film theyve done -- which imo is not a bad thing.

really unsure how u can be uncertain about the lead, she was great!

i do like pita inn tho so we will always have that

Mattie has to pay a price for wasting Tom Chaney

bingo. she says as much in the opening voice-over.