TRUE GRIT

[Vic Sage]

The Coen Brothers have remade the John Wayne western which earned Wayne his only Oscar.

Thoughts?

[metirish]

Not being a prick here but I heard Bridges say on the radio yesterday that they made a movie from the book and didn't remake Wayne's movie, apparently that was a big distinction for Bridges and the Coen's.

[Edgy MD]

Eh, they all say that.

[Willets Point]

Edgy DC wrote: Eh, they all say that.

I think it's an important distinction. A movie made based on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz would be very different from a remake of the 1939 MGM The Wizard of Oz.

I haven't seen either version of True Grit though, nor read the book, so I can't add anything more to this conversation.

[metirish]

Eh is such a put down too, being doing that a lot lately Edgy.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Yes, but they actually did it, it seems-- Posnanski, IIRC, focused on the Coens' inclusion of an utterly stilted-sounding bit of dialogue (one of a few), and how they-- largely due to Josh Brolin's reading-- made it work. Plus, it's something like 25 minutes longer.

Still haven't seen it. Still wanna.

[Guest themetfairy]

I didn't love it. I appreciate that it was well done, but I'm not a fan of westerns.

I know it was a fine film, but it just didn't speak to me.

[Vic Sage]

metirish wrote: Not being a prick here but I heard Bridges say on the radio yesterday that they made a movie from the book and didn't remake Wayne's movie, apparently that was a big distinction for Bridges and the Coen's.

yes, i remember hearing them say that, too. but the book is utterly unknown to me (and, i think, is relatively obscure to most) and the film is quite familiar to me. If there was a radical difference in the narrative or characters, i would've necessarily have called it a remake of the book, to point out the differences in the films. but i found the movies quite similar... in narrative, if not in tone and quality.

The Wayne film is really mediocre, with irritating performances by Kim Darby and Glen Campbell, and a cartoonish turn by the Duke. He was owed an Oscar, so for his sins they gave him this one.

I much prefer this version. I really appreciated the restraint the Coen bros demonstrated... not their usual pyrotechnics, just good solid storytelling. Its got sentiment, without sentimentality. Great performances by all. It's not UNFORGIVEN, but its a damn good western, which is good a thing as i can think of in this ole world, i reckon.

[metirish]

The Wayne True Grit os doing the rounds on AMC lately , I did DVR it a few weeks ago but it clocked in at three hours and I didn't have the heart for that.

[Edgy MD]

metirish wrote: Eh is such a put down too, being doing that a lot lately Edgy.

Sorry. It's not really meant as such, and to the degree that it is dismissive, it's toward the Cohen Brothers, and not you.

I'm sure each film adapted more than once from the same source material would have the later creators go back to the original source. But they also have to acknowledge that frequently the success of the prior adaptation(s) is what gave their film viabliity and bow to that at some turns.

The makers of The Addams Family bent over backwards to declare that their film was based on an original interpretation of Charles Addams cartoons, but of course it was informed by the TV series as well.

[Frayed Knot]

metirish wrote: The Wayne True Grit os doing the rounds on AMC lately , I did DVR it a few weeks ago but it clocked in at three hours and I didn't have the heart for that.

But that's with commercials - which AMC tacks on a ton of these days. The movie clocks in at just over 2 hours IIRC and you can DVR that down to almost the running time.
It was also making the rounds of TCM about a month ago where I caught it commercial-free. Had seen it mega years ago so it was a nice refresher course.


The Oscar was def Wayne's lifetime achievement award.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I never watch a movie on AMC, even if I'm in the mood to see what's showing. The movies are one third longer because of commercials ... they're edited (sanitizing overdubs and deletions), and pan-n-scanned. That's more than enough to turn me away. I wanna hear every "fuck". And see every "fuck", too.

[Vic Sage]

fuck yeah

[Guest sharpie]

I liked it. The girl was great. I liked the dialogue with no contractions.

Haven't read the book but I have read other Charles Portis novels. "Dog of the South" is one of the funniest books out there. Read that.

[Frayed Knot]

Vic Sage wrote: metirish wrote: Not being a prick here but I heard Bridges say on the radio yesterday that they made a movie from the book and didn't remake Wayne's movie, apparently that was a big distinction for Bridges and the Coen's. yes, i remember hearing them say that, too. but the book is utterly unknown to me (and, i think, is relatively obscure to most) and the film is quite familiar to me. If there was a radical difference in the narrative or characters, i would've necessarily have called it a remake of the book, to point out the differences in the films. but i found the movies quite similar... in narrative, if not in tone and quality.

Yeah, this.
I too was led to believe that there were going to be greater differences in the story-line but, aside from chopping off the somewhat hokey intro from the old version and adding a wrap-up scene onto the end, there was virtually none at all.

The update is a bit grittier, a bit less cartoonish, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and pronounce Matt Damon to be better at portraying a gun-toting Texas Ranger than Glen Campbell.

[Guest themetfairy]

Frayed Knot wrote: I'm going to go out on a limb here and pronounce Matt Damon to be better at portraying a gun-toting Texas Ranger than Glen Campbell.

Better than the Rhinestone Cowboy himself?!?!?

[Frayed Knot]

The thing about Campbell is that he was actually a talented guy. Good singer, real good guitar player, and a knack - at least early in his career when he hooked up with Jimmy Webb - for picking good songs. I think his biggest problem is that he came along at the exact wrong time; clean-cut country boys were definitely on the outs in the late '60s leaving him without a market and marginalized by the 'hip-ness' police (even Webb was somewhat cast aside at this point also as I guess abstract lyrical metaphors were only OK if written while on wild drug trips).

So getting into acting probably seemed like a good fit for him (like it did for John Denver later on) and probably looked like a good idea to the movie studio too -- 'Hey, we need to cast a decent-looking southern boy who isn't so big that he'll be a threat to the aging Duke for a movie which takes place in the Arkansas/Texas/Oklahoma area (Campbell is from Arkansas) ... how 'bout that singer with that cute smile I've seen on TV variety specials?!'
Later on, caught between not really being an actor and still having little market for his core music he tried to capitalize (and again foreshadowing Denver) on that 'golly gee-whiz' image and started making some really bad choices of songs -- see: Cowboy, Rhinestone

Edited April 13, 2011 by Guest

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, but it was perfectly autobiographical --- a song about the allure of selling out by a guy cashing in big playing a caricature of his act on the Vegas circuit and coked to the gills. And as pretty much his last hit and his biggest one, a song about the upside and downside of selling out became one of the most perfect examples of the upside and downside of selling out.

Amazin.

[Frayed Knot]

Glen Campbell announces that he has Alzheimer's

[RealityChuck]

I was sorry to hear that about Campbell.

I saw the movie a few weeks ago. It's a different animal from the John Wayne version, and is definitely superior. I would include it as a classic western (though the Wayne version was very good, too).

The main thing is that it was made with a more modern sensibility for "realism" and "grit" (not in the sense used in the film). Wayne was a more traditional western.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

We saw this over the weekend, I thought it was pretty solid. I never saw the Wayne version.