True Grit
This new one is 10 times better than the original.
I don't really get why everyone keeps saying how it's not like the original movie, but based off the novel. It's practically a line for line remake. Just with an abbreviated beginning and an extended ending.
The Dude out-Dukes the Duke. But I'm not really sure because the kid is so damn good, she makes Jeff Bridges' performance that much better.
I'm floored that they scored the entire movie off of on old hymn.
Anyways, everyone should go see this right now!
it was great. well put together. i havent seen the first one in twenty years. so dont ask me to compare them
my only issue is the dialogue seemed a little wooden. i dont know if this was because of an effort to maintain the dialogue from the novel or even the original, but it stuck out to me as a writer.
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“...There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.”
-James Baldwin
My on problem was that Josh Brolin's character is in all of the promotional material for this yet he has less screen time and less lines then Barry Pepper's character, who I thought was a lot more memorable and imposing.
Also the girl pretty much made the movie for me. She out acted everybody else in the cast.
That's what I figured was supposed to be the big "difference" between this one and the first one. That maybe in the book Cheney was the head bad guy instead of the peripheral bad guy like he was in the first one, because of how they advertised it with him showing up in everything.
Hailee Steinfeld deserves an Oscar, she out preformed everyone else. My biggest grip with the movie was the third act, it just sorta happened, it lost all sense of momentum.
"The rat inside your brain rules the world."
Citizen Kane SUCKED!!!!!!! True fact.
Alcoholism is the cure not the disease.
Still haven't seen this. A boy in my English has a copy because his father works for BAFTA. He started watching it in class and didn't get past the opening title,fucker.
You look like the type of guy / gal, who would like:
Has anyone else noticed how Steinfeld is only getting best supporting actress noms and awards. For fuck sakes she was the bloody protagonist.
"The rat inside your brain rules the world."
Citizen Kane SUCKED!!!!!!! True fact.
Alcoholism is the cure not the disease.
I whole-heartedly agree with all of this. Yeah, that climax could hardly be called a climax. It almost killed the rest of the movie for me. If the rest of it wasn't so damn funny, I'd say this was the Coen brothers' worst.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
This was the very straightforward for a Coen bros movie.
I felt there was something to be desired, and the climax and conclusion were kinda blah. Not bad though.
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
I dug it. It was pre-contractions. It was a good western, to say the least.
It was about the characters. I like how the Coen Brothers always take on stories that fuck with the idea of right and wrong, or hero and villain.
The original adaptation of the novel is on this Saturday night on (AMC?) or one of those cable channels.
Watch the original! I swear you'll think it's a bad SNL spoof of the movie that goes on for far too long, even for a bad SNL skit!
I really can only imagine what they would do with this story at the time it was made. I can speculate without seeing it that The Duke is a lot more of a HERO and can handle his whiskey better, and the little girl will probably be a bad actress with a little orphan annie screechy voice.
The actress was okay enough I suppose. They did change it to where she looked like she was 20 years old or older for some reason. I guess in the 60's they figured no one would buy a 14 year old doing things.
Plus it makes Glen Campbell putting the moves on her a little less creepy.
SPOILER ALERT: DONT READ IF YOU DON'T WANNA KNOW
I found the conclusion to be so unnecessary as to frame the film in a dull light. You learn that the girl grows to be a miserable loner without an arm, and when she goes to visit the Dude, he's crumbled, so she just drags him off and buries him on her property and walks defeatedly into the sunset. Was this a bad joke of an ending? You have to block it out of your mind to enjoy the film, otherwise the next viewing I guarantee I'll be seeing a boring old woman played by a little girl.
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
Spoilers
I was thinking about writing a thing where I compare her to Ahab.
It's like she's Ahab if he had caught the whale nshit!
I liked the movie better than the book. I read things way too dry and unless it's obv a funny book (e.g. Christopher Moore), I fail to see the humor. It was way better to me hearing the dialogue.
That being said, is it fair to criticize a movie for an ending that was faithfully based off a book? It's a catch-22. If it's changed, it's wrong for straying, if it's just a weak ending, than it should be changed.
the ending kind of bugged me to at first, but after watching it a few times, if you don't look at as so much a story but rather a filmed definition it's magnificent.
SPOILERS!!!!!DON'T READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN"T SEEN IT. IT'S NOT THAT INTERESTING OF A COMMENT ANYWAY..
I thought the end was ok. It's just a longer epilogue than we are used to. And if you're talking about an adaptation from a novel (which I haven't read) then it's a fine ending in my opinion. Novels end like that all the time. I take it the book was probably written in first person from the girl's perspective?
Anyways I think it was kind of historical - documenting how things were back then. A lot of those badasses from that period ended up in traveling shows when they got older and things changed to not so wild west-ish. I mean from what we learn about Rooster, it would be pretty ridiculous to see things really ending luxuriously for him. And I like how she lost her arm. It's fucking gritty.
If you put this in perspective with a lot of the Coen's other movies, they fuck with the idea of climaxes and endings in movies a lot. They are always saying just a little more than what is happening in the story. You have to think in themes more than plot when you watch a lot of their movies.
what ever happened with them putting John Goodman in all their movies anyways?
I don't know but I miss that. I always enjoy seeing him in anything. Well, maybe not Roseanne but that's not because he's in it.
His especially good in Barton Fink. I forgot about that one until just now.
"You are entering a world of pain!" - classic fuckin scene for The Big Lebowski.
Oh and that shot of him and his buddy escaping from jail and coming out of that mudhole in Raising Arizona still gets me.
what about him as the cyclops in o brother where art thou? Beautiful!
Oh yeah the bible salesman!
He actually would have been good as the shopkeeper/ horse stabler guy in True Grit. Not that the actor who played him did a bad job or nothin.
it took me a little while to figure out it wasn't him, but for a moment there I thought it might be hm as the weird hairy tracker/trader dude that comes up to them on horseback.
I thought the end was ok. It's just a longer epilogue than we are used to. And if you're talking about an adaptation from a novel (which I haven't read) then it's a fine ending in my opinion. Novels end like that all the time. I take it the book was probably written in first person from the girl's perspective?
Yup. She really plows a lot more religion into it to.
Oh, heh, yeah that totally could have been him.
I may go see this tomorrow.