True Grit

[CaledonianGonzo]

Har-de-har, myriad CAB Coen Bros haters.  This is out on Friday and it looks spiffing.


<Bucket thread to be filled with some content when I've actually seen the ruddy thing, but oh me oh my it does look promising>

[Ignatius_S]

One of my friends was a bit underwhelmed - he thought it was pretty good, but expected the Coens to have done more with the script and seemed to think there was some reuse of dialogue.

[Absorb the anus burn]

I'm certainly a cab Coen brothers hater (hate is putting it mildly) but Bridges is always worth watching when he ditches the dude persona... Their remake of 'The Ladykillers' is one of the worst films I have ever seen, but maybe this will be okay.






Edit for sanity... What was I thinking? No fucking way, am I seeing this. I'm still waiting for Joel & Ethan to refund my ticket money for the disingenuous shite that was Fargo.

[momatt]

I thought Fargo was really good.
Was underwhelmed by Burn After Reading though[nb]Brad Pitt's

Spoiler alert

final scene

[close]

was fantastic though[/nb].

[Squink]

but Bridges is always worth watching when he ditches the dude persona...

Don't see True Grit, then. He's Dude-ing it up to the max here. I thought this was okay. The Coen brothers can phone this stuff in, and that's exactly what they do here, but it's still pretty enjoyable. I doubt many people will have much to say about this one in future discussions about their canon.

[Absorb the anus burn]

Thanks for the warning. I banged my head this morning and momentarily lost a chunk of brain.

[Queneau]

Edit for sanity... What was I thinking? No fucking way, am I seeing this. I'm still waiting for Joel & Ethan to refund my ticket money for the disingenuous shite that was Fargo.

That's insanity.

[Jemble Fred]

One of my friends was a bit underwhelmed - he thought it was pretty good, but expected the Coens to have done more with the script and seemed to think there was some reuse of dialogue.

How could there not be 'reuse of dialogue' when both films are based on the same book?

I have to admit to never having seen Duke Marion's version, but this adaptation does look quite tempting.

[Vitalstatistix]

Let's see...

1984   Blood Simple                  
1987   Raising Arizona                  
1990   Miller's Crossing                  
1991   Barton Fink            
1994   The Hudsucker Proxy                  
1996   Fargo   
1998   The Big Lebowski                  
2000   O Brother, Where Art Thou?   
2001   The Man Who Wasn't There
2003   Intolerable Cruelty                  
2004   The Ladykillers                     
2007   No Country for Old Men
2008   Burn After Reading   
2009   A Serious Man   
2010   True Grit

What a bloody great early run, but for me their last great film was 2001's The Man Who Wasn't There.

No Country was a very good (not not great) blip on an otherwise downward spiral of annoyingness and inconsistency. I know some felt A Serious Man was a true return to greatness but I found it slight, smug and pretentious. Burn was just excruciating and pointless.

Miller's Crossing and The Big L remain two of my all-time fave films, so I will continue to give their new work a fair go. I've avoided knowing anything about this new one other than that it's a Western remake. Not sure what to expect...

[Ignatius_S]

How could there not be 'reuse of dialogue' when both films are based on the same book?...

There's no need to use exactly the same dialogue even though the source material is the same - especially when the dialogue only appears in the films and not the original newspaper serial.

Although one of the Coen's promised this was going to be more a faithful adaptation, from the stuff I've heard, this version is indebted to the earlier film - and there are certainly nods such as Cogburn having a beefed-up role and sporting an eyepatch again, when this was an invention of the Wayne film.

[Absorb the anus burn]

1984   Blood Simple (good debut)
1987   Raising Arizona (horribly arch and unfunny, start of silly themes, patronising characters, irritating camera shots)
1990   Miller's Crossing (well acted but dull)
1991   Barton Fink (horrible in jokes and excess smugness)
1994   The Hudsucker Proxy (a parody of films that never existed, JJ Leigh gives best performance)
1996   Fargo (absolutely dire. F McDormand worst actress ever, so fucking what the cop is pregnant)
1998   The Big Lebowski (smug, patronising, cold and yes - one toke of a joint always sends me on an LSD trip)
2000   O Brother, Where Art Thou? (fuck off)
2001   The Man Who Wasn't There (that fucking UFO - pinched from a Martin Sherman play, btw - David Lynchian pointlessness, dead acting that is meant to be amusing... Cold, shallow, beautifully shot though)
2003   Intolerable Cruelty (never seen, thank fuckery)
2004   The Ladykillers (throw Coens onto bonfire with Gervais etc)
2007   No Country for Old Men (just awful, overrated, obtuse crap, I walked out of this one)
2008   Burn After Reading (smug with particularly bad script)
2009   A Serious Man (not seen, but poster made me vomit. So cold, so chilly and cold)
2010   True Grit (see above)









NB: I could do the same with Tarantino's films, but I wouldn't be quite so polite or generous.

[CaledonianGonzo]

2007   No Country for Old Men (just awful, overrated, obtuse crap, I walked out of this one)

You'd have loved the ending!

[Small Man Big Horse]

I saw this the other night (there's a good quality screener floating about) and it's okay - gently entertaining, with some beautiful photography, and a great performance from the young girl who wishes to avenge her father. It lacks any real depth though, Matt Damon is quite bland, and Jeff Bridges performance is an odd one, at times it's really hard to make out exactly what he's saying. It didn't frustrate me like some Coen Brothers films (Burn After Reading, for example, which I thought had a superb final 30 minutes but the hour preceeding it was all over the place) but it's by no means essential viewing.

[Ignatius_S]

2007   No Country for Old Men (just awful, overrated, obtuse crap, I walked out of this one)

Out of curiousity, given your vehement dislike of their films, what were you hoping to get out of seeing this film at the cinema?








NB: I could do the same with Tarantino's films, but I wouldn't be quite so polite or generous.
[/quote]

[Absorb the anus burn]

I went with two friends... I wanted to see something different, but they outvoted me. Bastards. I spent the last fifth of the film sitting on the stairs outside, picking Butterkist out of the swirly carpet.


Ra ra ra.

[Ignatius_S]

I went with two friends... I wanted to see something different, but they outvoted me. Bastards. I spent the last fifth of the film sitting on the stairs outside, picking Butterkist out of the swirly carpet.


Ra ra ra.

You should have done what my friend Nicola does when a film displeases her - huff, puff and mutter audibly to the five rows rows eitherside - you friends would have been ruing the day.

[jonno]

I saw this the other night (there's a good quality screener floating about) and it's okay - gently entertaining, with some beautiful photography, and a great performance from the young girl who wishes to avenge her father. It lacks any real depth though, Matt Damon is quite bland, and Jeff Bridges performance is an odd one, at times it's really hard to make out exactly what he's saying. It didn't frustrate me like some Coen Brothers films (Burn After Reading, for example, which I thought had a superb final 30 minutes but the hour preceeding it was all over the place) but it's by no means essential viewing.

Agree with this summary, not a must-see but watchable enough. I found Jeff Bridges virtually incomprehensible though, don't know if the audio quality of the screener contributed or not but most of the time I could only pick out the odd clear word amongst the Boomhauer-esque babble.

[Tiny Poster]

Out of curiousity, given your vehement dislike of their films, what were you hoping to get out of seeing this film at the cinema?








NB: I could do the same with Tarantino's films, but I wouldn't be quite so polite or generous.

Love or hate the Coens, it's undeniable that their films are truly cinematic and made to be seen on the big screen.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Allow me to be the first poster in this thread to award this an unequivocal thumbs up.  It's simultaneously pure Coen Brothers and pure old-school Western without being a contradiction in terms, and it plays like a dream.  Looks like one too.

Def. worth a watch if you've seen it:

Fr. Barron comments on "True Grit" (SPOILERS)

Plus!

Spoiler alert

Alan Moore!

[close]

[Feralkid]

I'm with Gonzo on this one.  I thought it was wonderful.   Beautifully photographed, full of fabulous dialogue and lots of entertaining turns from both A listers and obscure character actors.  Literally never thought I'd actually see Day of the Dead's Jarlath Conroy appear in another movie but he turns up here as an under-taker.  And Brendon Gleeson's son Domhnall appears too (note if you can you need to check out young Mr Gleeson;s short film What Will Survive of us, a painfully funny tale of sexual demands and emotional blackmail).

I certainly don't understand the venom being spewed at the Coens.   I don't think the past decade has been their best but even a lesser effort from Joel and Ethan is still leagues ahead of most other film-makers.   I can understand why someone might think Blood Simple is too clinical or Hudsucker a little too knowingly wacky but to dismiss their entire filmography as Absorb does seems silly and self-defeating. 

[VegaLA]

Literally never thought I'd actually see Day of the Dead's Jarlath Conroy appear in another movie but he turns up here as an under-taker. 

Really? Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

[Old Nehamkin]

I concur with the last couple of posts, this film is the shit, both for the reasons cited above and just the fact that this kind of great, big lavish western is such a rarity these days.  Someone said they didn't think this is a must-see, but if you happen to be a fan of the genre then there is no way you can miss this. It's just great fun, exciting, looks great, fantastic performances etc.
Basically, I'm just really happy that a film like this exists in 2011. Thank you the Coen brothers for making it.

[Feralkid]

Really? Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

Hah!  Nice to see someone else knows who I'm talking about.   (clutches Rosary beads and blesses himself before taking another swig from his hip flask). 

And as Nehamkin points out, it's a lavish Western made now.   That happens all too rarely.   And unlike say Open Range (which I loved as it happens) or Spielberg's Into The West miniseries (re-running from today on BBC2 as it happens) this Western was actually filmed in the US.   Range and West were filmed in Canada in fact I'm struggling to recall the last time a big studio Western was actually filmed in the US. 

[wearyworld]

There's no need to use exactly the same dialogue even though the source material is the same - especially when the dialogue only appears in the films and not the original newspaper serial.

Just to correct this staggering ignorance - True Grit is based on Charles Portis' wonderful novel, from which around 95% of the Coens' dialogue is taken verbatim. If anyone here enjoys the film, you'd do yourself a huge disservice not to check out the book. Portis is a great writer, mastering in all his books deadpan ironic narration, strange Coenesque-before-the-Coens conversation, and endless comic invention.

[Old Nehamkin]

Although one of the Coen's promised this was going to be more a faithful adaptation, from the stuff I've heard, this version is indebted to the earlier film - and there are certainly nods such as Cogburn having a beefed-up role and sporting an eyepatch again, when this was an invention of the Wayne film.

I've not seen the Wayne version so I can't really comment on the similarities between the two, but the Coens have stated that they only saw the film once when it came out (and they were children), so there's unlikely to be a huge influence. As for the Cogburn's role, the Coen's version is very much told from Mattie Ross's point of view like the novel, so it seems like they've shifted the balance a bit- incidentally, has anyone brought up 14 year-old Hailee Steinfeld's performance yet? She's very impressive.
Plus, a look at wikipedia shows me that several plot points that were left out of the 69 film have been reinstated by the Coens, including an altered ending, so I think it's unfair to link the two films too closely, they're just different approaches to the same material.

[Little Hoover]

Enjoyed this but thought it was fairly unremarkable, it's certainly one to see on the big screen, although not one you'll want to pay a lot of money to see. Lucky for me then that the woman mistakenly seemed to think I'd given her a £20 note, so I got popcorn and a ticket for only a few quid.

Spoiler alert

Anyway performances are all very good, beautifully shot and scored, but I don't think the story ever quite takes light, it all feels a bit stop-starty and though I'm sure it's written to be like that the eventual showdown just feels a bit underwhelming, the character they've been pursuing just suddenly shows up, and the gang he's travelling haven't really been built up, so there's not much emotional investment in Cogburn's fight with them. There's some fairly superfluous elements to the films as well, not sure the bear man really added much to the film. And Mattie falling into the snake pit just feels like a bit of an artificial way to add dramatic tension to the end of the film, it just needed some kind of foreshadowing maybe, some warning about the snake pit (maybe I missed it). And not this obviously but if there'd been some trait to Mattie like she had a fear of snakes, then there'd have been some irony to when she falls into the snake pit. Again I'm not saying it would have been better if they'd done my example, but just something in that vein.
Yes I'm sure they were just being faithful to the novel but that's not always the best way to go. Still nice to see them doing a proper ending this time.

[close]

[Small Man Big Horse]

Re: The spoilered text - I agree with you, but the religious fella in the youtube video above makes a decent argument as to why it happened.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Also re: the spoilertext, the 'fall' is foreshadowed by Cogburn warning Maddie that she needs to have a 'wall' behind her when she fires a gun - the previous time she fires one, she also falls backwards into the river.  It's a bit of un unsubtle mettyfor, but a mettyfor nonetheless.  Like dem snakes.

[Ian Mildcheddar]

Also, also re: the spoilertext, I'm pretty sure I remember La Boeuf say something to Mattie about

Spoiler alert

watching her footing as there is a pit just there after he takes out Chaney with a rock.

[close]

[wheatgod]

Didn't like the dialogue, too period for me and could barely make out what Rooster was saying.

Also the ending was a bit pap.

Both come from staying faithful to the book.