anticipate TRUE GRIT by the Coen brothers

I'm honestly shocked the book is so popular. Is it that good?

Are you shocked because the characters wear chaps instead of the petticoats required by fine literature?

Ok so admittedly I am probably not going to love this in the first place, but I gave it a chance. Pretty good performances all round, particularly surprised by Matt Damon. Shot beautifully. Nice score. Just really...kinda boring?

Keep in mind I do like SOME westerns, but not many, and I mostly like the Coen brothers.

it's a really beautifully photographed Disney western w/ nastier violence, that reveals in the epilogue that yes, that annoying girl grew up to be a c**t.

Oh can we not say cunt on ilx now?

Haha iPhone tried to change "cunt" to "cynthia"

i feel sorry ms plaster caster

Girl was ok I guess. I mean she had to be fairly competent for movie to work, and it did. It was just unremarkable

hey, I quite liked the performance. I also liked the drops of racism, as opposed to 'let's all pretend our 19th-century western characters are enlightened.'

Aside from some of the dialogue, this has to be the must un-coen bros coen bros movie I have thus far seen.

I don't know how much of the dialogue is NOT from the book, but the Old West and its literature was absurdist long before they got to it.

Although it’s hard not to notice Mr. Bridges’s turn as the Dude playing the Duke with a dash of Bad Blake, much of the film rests on the diminutive shoulders of Ms. Steinfeld, a 13-year-old who was plucked from 15,000 girls who turned up at casting calls or sent taped auditions.

“It was, as you can probably imagine, the source of a lot of anxiety,” Ethan said. “We were aware if the kid doesn’t work, there’s no movie.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/movies/12grit.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

“We all enjoyed ourselves. Except Joel. I don’t think that’s his specialty."

Hey, Ethan stole my quote! Hi if you're reading, Coen Bros

no country for old men was pretty un-coens

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.