anticipate TRUE GRIT by the Coen brothers

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/

Finally saw this last night, loved it pretty much unreservedly. It was more brutal than I expected, I had to close my eyes at the tongue wrangling scene. The scene where Rooster Cogburn was galloping through the night to get Mattie treated was both otherworldly and viscerally exciting.

Haven't saw any mention of the sniper scene where LaBeouf says a prayer before shooting Lucky Ned Pepper. I'm sure that's a nod to Barry Pepper's character in 'Saving Private Ryan'.

I read the Portis last week and was amused to discover than Cogburn is in his early 40s (the headstone at the end of the Coens film follows this too), but "built like Grover Cleveland." So he should've been played by Paul Giamatti.

I liked Bridges in this, but Giamatti would have been a good choice too! But he doesn't have much box office draw power, so --

Watching this for the first time and just realized that our own pleasant plains looks a lot like Barry Pepper.

Oh and this rules. The little girl is awesome as are several others.

yay! I love this movie so much!

god this was a great movie ... love how the dialogue was written in a kind of an obsolete vernacular. most fascinating dialogue in a movie in a while, for sure.

not sure what the best line was, maybe a toss-up between "that is to say ... your eye" or "that's a good name!"

Most of the dialogue came directly from the book, that's what made it so great. If you haven't read it, you should check it out.

^^
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj1DZKOeZhI

"Vámonos, amigos," he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight.

;-D

This might be a bit obscure but if you're interested in more background on Quantrill's Raiders, Cole Younger & his involvement with the James gang, this CBS radio docudrama from the 50's does a pretty good job of it:

http://archive.org/details/OTRR_Crime_Classics_Singles - episode 28 "The Younger Brothers and Why Some Of Them Grew No Older" (geddit hur)
(can listen to the ep here online, or it's available on itunes for download too)

just watched this again

i liked it when i first saw it, but i somehow failed to notice that it is unbelievably great

yeah! i rewatched it a few months ago remembering that i liked it a lot when it came out but had still filed it away as minor coens... it really isnt though, its top tier. choked up at the end

yup.

holds up to multiple rewatches for sure. Gets better as time goes on, I think.

What a great movie. Guess I avoided it all these years just b/c it was a Western. Should have immediately watched it after I loved (most of) Buster Scruggs.

Just rewatched this last Saturday with my wife. The attention to detail was superb throughout and I appreciated that the Coens reclaimed this as Maddie's story, instead of Cogburn's.

just watched this a few months back for the first time. the cast is great is my main takeaway. will have to rewatch after some time passes, didn't see it as top-tier coens but not minor coens either.

this was the only Coen brothers movie - other than the ladykillers - that I hadn't seen. maybe I should take the plunge with that turkey soon

the ladykillers has one good performance in it by the black landlady and a total stinkeroo from Tom Hanks. I'd be surprised if you stuck it to the end, as it just progressively sinks to lower and lower levels of badness as the time drags on.

i love the Coens a lot and can't imagine wanting to rewatch The Ladykillers, but there's plenty of time so

I imagine the Coens didn't audition Hanks for the role in Ladykillers, because Hanks was too big a star to audition. Big, big mistake. His complete inability to cope with his role ruined the movie beyond redemption. But, as the Coens no doubt knew, you don't tell that to Tom Hanks during shooting; you swallow hard, take your lumps, and never work with him again.

I thought he was trying to one up Peter Sellers tbh, or, he seems like an OK guy, maybe it was a tribute