anticipate TRUE GRIT by the Coen brothers

veg have you ever read oakley halls warlock?

No, I haven't. What is it?

terrific 'revisionist' western from '58. not quite like true grit (the movie) in tone, maybe closer to deadwood. but i just finished it so its on my mind.

I'll check it out thanks Max!

I absolutely loved it. Matty was amazing, and it was often very funny despite being essentially quite a sad film.

i got warlock for xmas! havent started it yet tho

re: the discussion upthread about this being a "religious" movie: the last part of this post outlines my general take on the Coens' sensibility and why I see it as more "religious" than absurd/nihilistic/whatever; I'm having trouble directly connecting it to this movie, tho, and the stuff I throw out there at the very end is just kind of speculation.

oh yeah uh also I just saw this movie! it was good! I don't understand why everyone had to talk like that but it was an... interesting stylistic choice

("like that" = excessively witty and lightning-quick volleys of convoluted verbiage from which contractions would seem to be almost entirely absent)
felt like gilmore girls/aaron sorkin at times

Frank Rich attempts to read TG/TSN sociopolitical tea leaves:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/opinion/23rich.html

pretty all over the place, that article

yeah I don't really get what point/s he's trying to make (though that might be bc I'm tired, lol)

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y266/kewlsan/grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloud_001.jpg

haha

While “Social Network” fictionalizes Mark Zuckerberg, it mines the truth of an era — from the ability of the powerful and privileged to manipulate the system to the collapse of loyalty as a prized American virtue at the top of that economic pyramid.

the (relatively) powerful and privileged people in the social network are comically defeated, and i'm pretty sure there were movies about business betrayals before 2008

You almost wish Rooster were around to get the job done.

what

also, a movie in which a preadolescent's utterly cold obsession with justice leads to a life as a crippled spinster with a single alcoholic fuckup friend who dies at the end is maybe not so much a comforting ode to strong punitive principles?

not saying that it's relativistic and opposed to mattie but i mean it is not exactly an untroubling movie!

Yeah I mean harkening back to the 'simpler' time of frontier justice in True Grit is wtf because the justice that is served is not just served on the wrongdoers, the avengers themselves pay a heavy price personally, even physically. Dude is just hammering the corners off that story to make it fit some crazy rant he came up with in the shower that morning.

I think someone drew that cartoon of Rooster and Zuckerberg sitting next to each other, and the editor assigned someone to write a story around it.

haha I think you're right

Frank Rich doesn't get assigned. He was the Times' theatre critic for a dozen or more years, and now writes about whatever he pleases in Op-Ed.

That said, his column didn't make a whole lotta sense to me (nor does the profundity he, or anyone else, sees in The Social Network).

The column was kind of rambling and wtf already, and then he brings in Social Network and I'm like "Okay now I have NO idea what you're on about"

(he also though The Talented Mr Ripley was a great film) xp

The column was worthless. Frank Rich is a dream of a columnist: he writes cogently, is liberal, and utterly predictable.

did rich write a dark knight/wall-e mccain/obama column in 08? seems very his style. also he was crazily feared as a theater crit right? was it for any reasons specific to him or just 'he was the times theater critic'?

http://vimeo.com/19373173

The Conversation, published in Slant, is outstanding.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2011/01/the-conversations-true-grit/

That was fantastic, thanks Morbs!

Me the nerdy book-stan gets bummed out by every reviewer that says "I didn't read the book" but eh, it's not book club, I should probably get over it :)

Surprised by that Zanzie review that they referenced, about how the Coens version is a *rejection* of the lessons of Unforgiven.
Makes me wonder if people are watching the Coens version through a Hathaway lens, you know, with the old movie still hanging in their mind. Because to me, there's nothing in the Coens version that could possibly leave you with that impression, unless you just weren't paying attention/didn't care.

yeah honestly the only people i can imagine reading the coen version as capital punishment cheerleading are people who are pro-capital-punishment in the first place and thus aren't bothered by all the bothersome things, or interested in noticing the (pretty heavily telegraphed!) irony in the suggestion that if god has held anyone accountable for their actions it's mattie.

Exactly. It's a pretty flawed reading of the movie if you're coming away with that interpretation.

I can't understand why people would bother projecting their social agendas on a film like this. It didn't even occur to me to regard the hanging as CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

It's like with Juno and its "pro-choice agenda."

Hanging scene seemed to be contructed for "Don't let the Injun talk" gag

I always figured it was more to establish the vengeance/punishment theme, where Mattie has established that she's seeking vengeance and that she lives in a society where vengeance is something of a spectacle. And for Mattie to begin to see the human face of it.

Saw this last night, it was ace, and lol-packed according to the theatre I was in, which

Totally entertaining movie, which makes it my favorite Coen thing since Lebowski (the last time they were willing to be totally entertaining, or maybe able to).

Morbz already cited Intolerable Cruelty, and I’d also throw in O Brother Where Art Thou, Burn After Reading, Bad Santa (which they wrote) and Ladykillers. Reading and Santa do also act like they’re ~saying something~ about human behaviour, but the text explicitly says not to bother taking that too seriously, and Ladykillers fails, but they certainly seemed willing to totally entertain there. (Haven’t seen A Serious Man.)

Like oh no, Mattie is about to be kilt by Tom Chaney and oh look, there's La Bouef from out of nowhere there to save the day.

The text has the grace to actually explain this retroactively though, and the set-up makes total sense once LaBouef lays it out

wayne's better for the part too cuz he actually was a fat piece of shit - bridges looks like a trainyard hobo and it sounds weird when people keep calling him a fat old man

Bridges looks OK upright, on horseback but they make sure to show you his giant fat gut spilling out of his underwear when Mattie has her first extended conversation with him, bargaining in the back of the Chinese grocers

I saw the original. I just saw the remake. I give the Coen Bros high marks for their version. Very entertaining stuff.

wayne's better for the part too cuz he actually was a fat piece of shit - bridges looks like a trainyard hobo and it sounds weird when people keep calling him a fat old man

Wayne was a fat piece of shit, but he couldn't act like anyone but John Wayne saying lines from a script. Bridges can act. Therefore it doesn't matter if he's all that fat. His Cogburn has life. Wayne's just had sounds and motions.

i'd say the point of no country was to be 'totally entertaining' which is why its so frickin rad.

Bridges looks OK upright, on horseback but they make sure to show you his giant fat gut spilling out of his underwear when Mattie has her first extended conversation with him, bargaining in the back of the Chinese grocers

― basically just a 2/47 freak out (sic), Tuesday, February 1, 2011 9:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

eh i wouldnt call that a giant fat gut, its just a regular 60-year old man gut

strongly disagree about Wayne aimless

There's lots of room to disagree about John Wayne. To me, he wasn't really an actor, but a movie star. He could fill a screen. He could carry a film with his presence. But his dismal failures (like that Ghengis Khan biopic) are pretty much of a piece with his best roles; they are cut from precisely the same cloth, delivered with the same inflections, the same facial expressions, displaying the same level of acting ability: it's the only John Wayne we ever got.

it's the only John Wayne we ever got.

you could say that about a lot of the greats. a memorable performer is a memorable performer, whether they're an 'actor' or a 'movie star'... i will agree that some performers are more notable for their star quality than acting ability and wayne's probably one of them, but i can't make that leap to his cogburn being lifeless

It worked most of the time, and then...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX0GsD2K8tc

there were times it didn't.

haha are you kidding that looks AMAZING

"that gun's not licensed, McQ!"

"...neither am I!!!!"

"I don't like bears."

There's lots of room to disagree about John Wayne. To me, he wasn't really an actor, but a movie star. He could fill a screen. He could carry a film with his presence. But his dismal failures (like that Ghengis Khan biopic) are pretty much of a piece with his best roles; they are cut from precisely the same cloth, delivered with the same inflections, the same facial expressions, displaying the same level of acting ability: it's the only John Wayne we ever got.

But you could say this about many Hollywood actors then and now. Why hold his failures against them?

plus, as Pleasant Plains suggested, writing that "He could fill a screen. He could carry a film with his presence" is certainly one way of defining screen acting. What do you think Cary Grant and George Clooney do?

To my eyes, the Method has dated far worse than Wayne's star power.

I'll take Wayne's worst over Pacino and DeNiro's worst, thanks

I somehow didn't know that Deakins has never won an Oscar.

http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/a-q-and-a-with-roger-deakins-the-susan-lucci-of-cinematography/?ref=movies

Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana discuss:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/feb/08/talking-about-true-grit/#

Thanks for posting that Morbs, that was pretty cool. Kind of wish they had a video version of the discussion...they change gears pretty sharply in the transcript, lol.
Ossana bringing up the way the story harkens back to childhood adventure novels, but with a girl in the lead kind of hones in on what I love about the movie, and the book...just the fact that this gutsy, serious, determined girl can lead these two men on an adventure, and us...I mean, it shows the possibility of the genre, of female protagonists and it's done in a way that isn't condescending.

And I'm with Larry. I don't really see how it's a story of Rooster's redemption either. Saving Maddie is some kind of redemption but spending the last of his days in a touring gun show with the James brothers hardly seemed redemptive to me, it almost seemed to suggest that maybe there are only acts of kindness, that you can never truly gain redemption? I dunno. But it never seemed as cut and dried to me.

http://jeffbridges.com/true_grit_book/