True Grit (2010)
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The Big Lebowski is great, and I am not one for golden calves.....but nobody can play Rooster but The Duke.
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http://www.usatoday.com/life/m…truegritinside19_ST_N.htm
'True Grit' reunites Coens, Bridges
The shadow looming over True Grit is not just The Duke, but The Dude. John Wayne won an Oscar playing Rooster Cogburn in 1969's original film, but Jeff Bridges takes over in a darker version adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen. USA TODAY explores the trio's first reunion since 1998's The Big Lebowski. "I don't know if any one of us have changed. But a lot of water has gone under our bridges," the actor says.
Hailee Steinfeld is frontier girl Mattie Ross, and Matt Damon plays LeBoeuf, a Texas Ranger who joins Bridges' Rooster Cogburn on the trail of Josh Brolin, the man who killed her father. Around such a guy-centric cast, Steinfeld found it easy to bond. "They all have daughters. So they knew," she says.
"Talking about 'innocent girl'and so forth, I'd say we both have complex characters," Bridges says of Rooster and Mattie Ross. "The girl might seem innocent, but she's quite intellectual and quite savvy about a lot of things," Bridges says. "On the other hand, Rooster's innocence and naïveté are brought to light, even through his grizzledness."
The Coen brothers told Bridges they didn't want him to think about the Wayne movie, and instead draw inspiration from the Charles Portis novel. "The basic premise is this young girl is looking for somebody to go after the killer of her father," Bridges says. "She asks, 'Who is the best bounty hunter?' And a bunch of guys are good, but Rooster is the badass merciless one. You don't want to mess with him."
It's Bridges' first film since winning an Oscar himself, for last year's Crazy Heart.
True Grit is set to debut nationwide on Dec. 25.
Steinfeld's bubbly personality contrasts with her character's dark intensity. "My goal when I was filming was she would never be happy," she says. "She's trying to be as tough as she can be. A father would be the one to help her out of it, but she doesn't have one." Hiring Bridges' Rooster Cogburn makes the two become begrudging surrogates. "The entire time, she's testing to see if he can be like a father," she says.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/m….htm?loc=interstitialskip'True Grit'? Hailee Steinfeld's got plenty of it to spare
This is no country for a young girl.
But here she is, regardless — Hailee Steinfeld, the 13-year-old star of Joel and Ethan Coen's Western True Grit, as a pigtailed, angel-faced frontier girl who recruits Jeff Bridges' one-eyed bounty hunter for bloody vengeance.Matt Damon co-stars as a Texas Ranger who joins the hunt, and Josh Brolin is the predator-turned-prey who gunned down her father — a potentially intimidating lineup of guys for a girl making her first film.
They were soon wrapped around her finger.
"I actually started what I called the Bad Boy Jar," she says. "If they were to curse, they had to pay, because they did that pretty often."
She collected about $300 and donated it to the Alzheimer's Foundation.
"The f-word was $5, and every other word was $1," she says cheerfully. "They would say the f-word, and then realize they'd said it, and then they would say the s-word. So I'd be like, 'OK, that's $6!' "
The men got their revenge.
"The guys all looked at me and said, 'OK, this is not fair. We have to designate you a word now.' So I was not allowed to say 'like' or else it was 50 cents," she says.
She got into acting around age 8 after being inspired by a teenage cousin who starred in a Bratz doll commercial. She's done short films and a few TV roles, though True Grit— opening Dec. 25 — is her intro to feature films.
It also was her intro to the Coen brothers, since most of their movies are R-rated. "I saw The Big Lebowski," she says, since it was Bridges' last film with the Coens. "I saw little bits and pieces of Fargo. And I really want to see Raising Arizona."
Despite True Grit's brutality, she says, Joel and Ethan keep things mellow. "It is a heavy movie, and you get on set and it's, like, the mood is still (intense), from whatever we just did. But like at lunchtime and after lunch, it was a really, like, relaxed set."
So relaxed that she just cost herself $1.50.
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True Grit trailer shootout: John Wayne v the Coen brothers
may2, thanks for that link! Fun little article comparing the two movies, simply based on trailers. Pretty clever!Chester
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There is a part of December 25th that is sacred to me and another related part that celebrates good will. I am not sure if i am going to watch this film and that may be more out of respect for the many aspects involved in JW only getting the one Oscar. Life can be short and tragic, some days it can boil down to a choice that may have a large impact. We all make choices, and one way or another we live with them. Or die with them. anyways I hope you all take care
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From Nikki Fink,
Paramount Pictures has pushed up the wide release of The Coen brothers-directed True Grit to December 22. It had been scheduled to open on Christmas. What difference does three days make? Well, it can help build audience awareness going into the holidays. Christmas Eve is normally a down day at the box office, and distributors often shy away because it doesn't reflect well in the box office tally. But after Paramount brass was shown the finished film by the Coens, the decision was made to giddyap and get the Western out in front of the holiday. So instead of opening on Christmas Day--which falls on a Saturday--Paramount gave itself the equivalent of having two days of sneaks to build buzz among the adult audience the film is shooting for.
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This bodes well. Sometimes a studio dumps a movie on Christmas Day with no pre-screening for the press because it has no faith (pun intended) in the film.
One example was "Tombstone" in 1993. The family opened presents early that morning, the house was organized and we had a few hours before the family was due, so my son and I ducked out to catch it. We loved the movie and Val Kilmer so much, it has become our favorite "Holliday" film (go ahead and groan).We deal in lead, friend.
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This bodes well. Sometimes a studio dumps a movie on Christmas Day with no pre-screening for the press because it has no faith (pun intended) in the film.
One example was "Tombstone" in 1993. The family opened presents early that morning, the house was organized and we had a few hours before the family was due, so my son and I ducked out to catch it. We loved the movie and Val Kilmer so much, it has become our favorite "Holliday" film (go ahead and groan).
We deal in lead, friend.
Tombstone is fun to watch, doesn't make me groan at all. -
Well, I have watched both of the trailers, and I have to say......no. This girl who plays Mattie Ross in the remake, somehow reminds me of Wednesday Adams from the Adams Family. Now, I'm not a Kim Darby fan by any means, but she did do a fairly decent job as Mattie. And Matt Damon? I think he's a pretty good actor. But this outfit the Coen's have him dressed in is not only not period, but he looks like a wild west show reject. Jeff Bridges? Again, I think he's a pretty decent actor, but he just isn't doing this role justice at all. He looks like a homeless alcoholic bum. Here he has a chance (as does Damon) to really shine, but the dialog, the delivery, the costumes, none of it looks right or sounds right to me. The movie may well be 100% faithful to the book (although I doubt it), but that doesn't make it a good movie. We did True Grit as a play in Junior High School English class (I played Moon), and we took our lines straight from the book. 100% faithful to Portis's words. It was still a crappy play. My prediction is that the Coen Brothers remake will be a highly acclaimed success, lauded and pawed over by liberals for no other reason than they hate John Wayne, and want to chip away at his legacy. Even if I am given the remake on DVD as a gift, the only thing I will use it for is target practice.
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Well, Bob, those unwanted DVDs make great coasters for drinks, too. Could come in handy around the holidays. Which reminds me SXViper that the groan I meant was a take off between Doc Holliday and the Christmas Holiday.
My son and I think so highly of that film, we can just about recite the entire dialog from "Tombstone", even the Latin.
We deal in lead, friend. -
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Classics so great that they have become embedded in the public mind just should not be remade.
I'm reminded of that awful sequel to "Gone With the Wind" that came out quite a while ago. While it wasn't a remake, it still tried to do the impossible: have someone not Vivian Leigh portray Scarlett, someone not Clark Gable portray Rhett, et. al. It has sunk into well-deserved oblivion.
I suppose now they'll try to remake "Casablanca," or "Citizen Kane," or, God forbid, "The Searchers." Hollywood seems to have that little originality left.
But the press will be all over this, comparing and contrasting as if the two "True Grits" could even be placed side by side. We may even get some retrospective about Duke that's worth reading. I hardly think this travesty is worth it.
And no, I haven't seen it. And won't.
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may2, thanks for that link! Fun little article comparing the two movies, simply based on trailers. Pretty clever!
Chester
I just now watched the trailers and the New True looked so anemic compared to the Old True that I just shook my head. The nerve!Glen Campbell's brief appearance, unfortunately, reminded me how much I loathed the original's theme music. Well, nothing's perfect.
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I just now watched the trailers and the New True looked so anemic compared to the Old True that I just shook my head. The nerve!
Glen Campbell's brief appearance, unfortunately, reminded me how much I loathed the original's theme music. Well, nothing's perfect.
Glen Campbell is in the remake??
What character is he playing?? -
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'True Grit’ First Impressions Leak as Late Showdown Nears
Paramount Pictures has two of this year’s biggest last-minute entries into the Oscar race – and the first of them, “The Fighter,” drew lots of attention, strong buzz and clear awards potential.
Now a showdown is nearing for an even bigger and later entry from Paramount: the Coen Brothers’ version of the Charles Portis book “True Grit,” with Jeff Bridges in the role that in 1969 won John Wayne his only Oscar, and a supporting cast that includes Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld.
Sight-unseen, the movie has long been considered a potential awards heavyweight, maybe the last one of 2010; it landed in the top five of several pundits’ Oscar predictions before anybody had seen it.
After initial reports that it wouldn’t begin screening until December, the movie was quietly – very quietly – unveiled about a week ago. But you won’t find much reaction from the handful who’ve seen it: Paramount has embargoed all reviews and responses until Wednesday, December 1 at 10 a.m. Pacific time.
Still, a few clues have slipped out. The morning after a very small screening on the Paramount lot last Monday, the Los Angeles Times’ “Hero Complex” columnist, Geoff Boucher, tweeted, “Meeting Jeff Bridges at 10 to talk about my new favorite movie of 2010.”
Presumably he could have been referring to Bridges’ other December release, “Tron: Legacy” – or presumably he could claim as much if he was accused of violating an embargo that included Twitter.
Later on Tuesday, Jeff Bridges and T Bone Burnett reportedly hosted their own screening – and on the heels of that, a few more tweets appeared, most along the lines of “Loved True Grit! Coen Brothers did such a good job. Jeff Bridges was amazing. I now want to learn how to ride a horse and fire a gun. :)”
A couple of those tweets apparently came from overzealous Paramount employees, who took down their fulsome praise in short order.
And then over Thanksgiving weekend Jeff Wells mentioned screenings but said “I can’t say exactly when or where,” while a few more people on Twitter talked about a weekend screening in New York.
The handful who implied that they had seen the film were enthusiastic (“True Grit = Master Piece”; "finally, after decades of disappointments, a western done right"), though it’s hard to trust the veracity of all of them. One tweet raved about the film the writer referred to as “Eastwood’s True Grit,” which it most assuredly is not.
One aspect of the film, meanwhile, has been let out: Paramount sent CDs of the film’s soundtrack, by Carter Burwell, to guild members and critics’ award voters. (That’s the CD cover, above.)
The music is for the most part somber and elegiac; it’s a spare piano-based score, rife with echoes of old gospel tunes and Protestant hymns.
(The first time I heard it, I thought Burwell had a little too much of a friend in “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” though on subsequent listens the score sounds more original.)
The music is lovely, and it wouldn’t feel at all out of place as an alternate soundtrack to Ken Burns’ “The Civil War.” What’s not evident, despite some more portentous and dramatic moments, is the Coens’ twisted sense of humor.
Incidentally, the two songs used to great effect in the film’s first two trailers – the Peasall Sisters’ stark “Where No One Stands Alone” in the teaser, Johnny Cash’s doomy “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” on the second trailer – are nowhere in evidence on the CD.
As to whether Burwell’s score is an accurate indication of the tone of the film, that answer will have to wait until Wednesday morning.
At that point, I’ll have something to say in this space … so stay tuned.
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The Coen Brothers' remake of "True Grit," starring Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn and Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross (above), last week earned a PG-13 rating -- good news for all who anticipate a faithful rendering of Charles Portis' marvelous 1968 novel. Portis' exhilarating Western tale of 14-year-old Mattie and her journey into the Choctaw Nation to avenge her father's murder deserves a better movie than the pretty good 1969 film that featured John Wayne as Rooster, a mean, one-eyed U.S. Marshal. Wayne was wonderfully entertaining, but a great adaptation of "True Grit" must hinge on Mattie, and Kim Darby wasn't up to the part.
To quote Donna Tartt's terrific afterword to the 2004 edition, Mattie "is the perfect soldier, despite her sex. She is as tireless as a gun dog; and while we laugh at her single-mindedness, we also stand in awe of it." (That's why many of us compared the heroine of the recent book and movie "Winter's Bone" to Mattie.) The danger of the Coen Brothers doing Mattie's story was that they'd overly sexualize her character, gussy up her diction in some contemporary-profane way, and shade her adventure toward extreme, absurd cruelties.
So the PG-13 rating is encouraging, even if it is for "intense sequences of western violence including disturbing images." They are part of the book, too. Have you ever read Portis' masterpiece? Do you have fond memories of the first movie? How much are you looking forward to the second one?
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'True Grit': A family-friendly Coen brothers film?
The Coen brothers may have made, of all things, a family film.
It just depends on the age of the kids in the family. Fans of Joel and Ethan Coen have been eagerly anticipating their Western True Grit, but few might have guessed it would have more in common with Treasure Island than No Country for Old Men.
A 1969 version of the story, starring John Wayne, also had a light touch, and though this adaptation is decidedly darker, it still has a winking playfulness — and a PG-13 rating.
Even executives at Paramount Pictures weren't certain when the brothers repeatedly promised that their hellfire and gunfire story would fit with a release date of Dec. 22.
"They were contemplating a holiday release, and we thought that it seemed to make sense, because it is a young-adult adventure story," Ethan Coen says.
"Tonally, it's different than what we've done before," Joel Coen says.
Most of the story plays as comedy: A headstrong prairie girl (13-year-old Hailee Steinfeld) bosses the disheveled Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and a dimwitted Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) as they pursue the man who murdered her father.
"That's something people do associate with our movies, by and large: the fact that there is a humorous element," Joel Coen says.
Much of the comedy comes from the grandiloquence of the dialogue, with desperate people communicating with what seems to be comical ceremony, even as they plot murder.
"The only credit we can take from that is we didn't change it from the novel," Ethan Coen says of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. "The dialogue is taken pretty much entirely from the book. There's a formality to it. And no one uses contractions."
The Coens chuckle at the idea that fathers and daughters might bond over this tale of a vengeance-seeking girl and her paternal surrogate.
They say they wanted to make the kind of movie they used to enjoy.
"As kids we did see the Disney movies and the kids' adventure stories of the day," Ethan Coen says. "It's also like Howard Pyle, the famous illustrator who did pirate stories. That's the stuff we were taken with as kids."
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That's a perplexing statement considering that the 1969 movie was very faithful to the book.
I certainly wont be going out of my way to watch the remake, the actor who plays Rooster will have to wear boots he'll never be able to fit into.
Boy do I agree with you Robbie , I don't think that There is any actor alive that can fill The DUKE'S boots. I've seen the clips and I am greatly sickened by Bridges' attempt to portray Rooster . In my opinion this dog just won't hunt -
Great review,
http://www.deadline.com/2010/1…os-true-grit-enters-race/
Great review,
http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/12/01/true-grit-review/
Great review,
http://www.awardsdaily.com/201…it-sentimental-education/
Great review,
http://www.slashfilm.com/video…-coen-brothers-true-grit/
American Masters is kicking off it's new season with a profile of Jeff Bridges,
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Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere isn't so high on the True Grit remake.
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