anticipate TRUE GRIT by the Coen brothers

heh i thought real cineastes hated the term 'noir'

how'd you get that idea

― Princess TamTam, Monday, January 3, 2011 9:13 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

so what you're saying is that you're not very real

could be the day I quit ilx

joshing ya, fwiw.

forgot to mention that when she fell down the snakepit hole, kid next to me said, "That's the most EPIC FAIL ever"

I liked how the snake bite itself was almost thrown away: no hysterical music or cutting. It just happens.

thought this was pretty great. bridges and damon and pepper were awesome, hailee steinfeld was even better. brolin's character was strangely sympathetic and really, really well-played. the scene at the river, that kinda genuine dumb concern on his face when he's asking her why she's all the way out in the wilderness is kinda heartbreaking even.

brolin's character was strangely sympathetic and really, really well-played. the scene at the river, that kinda genuine dumb concern on his face when he's asking her why she's all the way out in the wilderness is kinda heartbreaking even.

yeah i really liked that its not at all cut and dried that brolin's character is Evil or w/e

exactly. The best thing about the movie and the book is the shades of grey within all of the characters.

also Damon needs to have a half-severed tongue in every role

Saw this today. It might not make my Coens' top five, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This was pretty good. Man, those snakes looked so fake though!

Herpetological realism is very important.

After Anaconda came out I was crying in my bedroom for weeks

Yeah, fake snakes :(

I liked how the snake bite itself was almost thrown away: no hysterical music or cutting. It just happens.

There was an article somewhere that said the Coens remove all trad climax from this story - that things simply happen, luck occurs, heroism is circumstantial if at all - can't remember who wrote it now, but it makes sense to me. The Coens are very existential - things usually are happening TO their protags rather than because of them. They get caught up in machinations they can't control. Mattie would seem like a huge counterexample, but even her indomitable will is at the mercy of so many happenstances and this new version clarifies that.

...the Coens remove all trad climax from this story - that things simply happen, luck occurs, heroism is circumstantial if at all... The Coens are very existential - things usually are happening TO their protags rather than because of them. They get caught up in machinations they can't control.

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, January 5, 2011 2:45 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this is OTM, but at the same time, the coen's take care always to reward, or at least to excuse, decency, and (of course) to cruelly punish sin, especially greed, cowardice and pride. odd combo of punitive moralism and existential absurdity. like, not a pleasant universe in which to wrestle with one's baser angels.

"fake snakes." tsk, a generation's inability to suspend its disbelief, except for entire CGI dream cities.

I can't suspend my disbelief for the dream cities either, FYI

Tried really hard with the snakes, though

did the snakes really bother you? who cares!!!

sorry... its your prerogative... to hate fake snakes...

It's not that they were fake, it's that they looked fake. The town looked real.

To be fair, if a bunch of computer graphics started slithering over my shoulder I'd be pretty wigged out

Josh should've called up his dad. James Brolin didn't fuck around with fake rattlesnakes... Ate the real one in Capricorn One, and shot the real one *playing a fake one* in Westworld.

I realize this is a stretch but I couldn't help thinking of parallels with US foreign policy. Go into a foreign land to avenge a wrong done to your "family", hire some local talent with dubious ethical history, get your satisfaction through extra-legal means, and come home an amputee.

damn

def flew thru my head, cept Chaney actually did kill her father, presumably

Presumably

Wait... is Dr. Morbius suggesting something about 9/11? Just trying to read between the lines here!

of course not, we all know Saddam did it

Oh yeah! Heh. Whoa.

"He tried to kill my daddy"

exactly. The best thing about the movie and the book is the shades of grey within all of the characters.

― VegemiteGrrrl, Tuesday, January 4, 2011 1:36 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is kind of a political statement too ... call it a reaction to the reactionary-ness of american conservative's idea of a 'fall' where at one time in the past morals were clear & clean, things have always been messy & complicated

the phrase "shades of grey" irks me. it seems to deny some basics of dramaturgy. basically the coens gave their characters several traits: a few admirable, a few less so. the film isn't exactly infinitely complex. it just presents its characters as a mix of good and bad.

this is kind of a political statement too ... call it a reaction to the reactionary-ness of american conservative's idea of a 'fall' where at one time in the past morals were clear & clean, things have always been messy & complicated

that's stretching things. see almost every western since 1950.

i dunno if i can think of specific examples but in my mind a lot of films ive seen would be more likely to position the person getting revenge as a morally righteous one.

rather than a person who, proactive or not, is dealing w/ outside confluence of events

Saw the '68 version tonight, and man, did it just seem silly.

COMMUNIST!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL6cwB-L6Uw

"flouridate our whiskey"

not merely morally righteous but cinematically satisfying - clint's final reel shoot em up in "unforgiven" announces its moral ambiguity with red flashing sirens but the way it's directed and edited you're like "FUCK YEAH CLINT" - the new true grit doesn't traffic in that at all, which is i think at the root of a lot of people's complaints that it feels a bit flat or whatever

yeah, that Unforgiven climax tries to have it both ways, no doubt

I questioned whether this was a good idea way upthread, but as the great reviews started to come in, I realized I was being kind of silly and started looking forward to seeing it. The Coens have made a number of great films, so no matter what they're filming, there's always the chance they're going to make another one. They usually don't, but the chance is always there.

I didn't like it, though. It seemed like the same overly reverential, overly sombre western I've seen many times before. I didn't like Unforgiven, either, so clearly I don't have any feel for this kind of movie.

"reverential" and "somber" are not words I would use for this.

Am I alone in feeling a kind of tonal kinship pat garrett and billy the kid is a kind of cousin-in-temperament to coens' true grit?

okay, less idiotically written:

am i alone in feeling a kind of tonal kinship between PG and BTK and coens' true grit?

"reverential" and "somber" are not words I would use for this.

I guess people who like this--and clearly a lot of people do--would agree, or maybe they also find it reverential and somber, but connect with that kind of mood. I don't know. I won't make a list, but to me it had the kind of deference for genre conventions that you find in this kind of western; I didn't see how it strayed at all, although I'm not the best judge.

well, the hero is a drunken fool with a morally questionable background.

clemenza here's the essay i was trying to remember from before. it's by stanley fish (and could possibly have a used a bit of editing):

[In the original] we are told something about the nature of heroism and virtue and the relationship between the two. In the movie we have just been gifted with, there is no relationship between the two; heroism, of a physical kind, is displayed by almost everyone, “good” and “bad” alike, and the universe seems at best indifferent, and at worst hostile, to its exercise. ...

[T]here is no relationship between the bestowing or withholding of grace and the actions of those to whom it is either accorded or denied. You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it). ...

It is, says Mattie in a reflection that does not make it into either movie, a “hard doctrine running contrary to the earthly ideals of fair play”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/narrative-and-the-grace-of-god-the-new-true-grit/?partner=rss&emc=rss

As I mention above, this is a pretty consistent theme in the Coens' movies, that the universe doesn't reward virtue except by accident.

If you want to get really pseud about it this goes all the way back to Achilles' speech in the Iliad, where he refuses the hand of Agamemnon's daughter in marriage. He's just had a huge realization and is in a kind of strop about it. "Equal fate" he says "befalls the negligent and the valiant fighter; equal honor goes to the worthless and the virtuous." Paul Feyerabend says this is the moment in Greek thought when honor and the rewards of honor became separate things. Previously they had been one. But now there exists the notion that a real yet hidden virtue can underlie a misleading - false - skein of material existence. (Feyerabend goes on to compare this with the current idea that there's a real atomic physics which underlies the misleading world of the visible). If we accept Fish's ideas about True Grit you could almost say that the Coens have gone back to a pre-Achilles point of view: that there is no hidden virtue to Mattie - or anyone - that goes rewarded or unrewarded. There is simply the will to do things, and the material rewards which accrue are what they are, neither true nor false.

(Which makes Fish's conclusion that this is a "religious" movie a strange one)

Thanks for the quote. As I say, I'm just not sensitive enough to fine distinctions within the western genre. I can listen to two power pop songs that would sound identical to someone else, but to me there'd be obvious differences; power pop is something I have a good feel for. Westerns, no. The limitation is mine.