My Christmas present to myself was to see this tonight at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. An iconic theatre for an iconic film.
I watched the original yesterday for about the 6th time, enjoyed it very much but recognized the extreme cheese in a lot of it - particularly the perfectly horrendous music! GAH! But I wanted to see it again first rather than after because I suspected that it would be even worse after.
I LOVED IT.
First and foremost: I laughed out loud and longer watching this film than I have laughed at any “comedy” I can think of in recent memory.
Second, but really first and a big part of the first: the language, lord the language! I could bathe in it. Swim in it. Heartbreaking because it just proves how puny our language has become.
All the performances were superb, and I have to say there is not a single one I didn’t prefer to the original, not one. (And rewatching the original I couldn’t shake the way Campbell reminded me of Steve Martin…watch it carefully, if you’re a fan of Martin’s I think you’ll see it. Martin playing a fool, but Martin)
The Dome was sold out.
[spoiler]
[quote=“Gordon_Urquhart, post:18, topic:565059”]
[li]The encounter with the fellow (almost wrote “dude,” but that wouldn’t be right) dressed in the bearskin. That was pretty entertaining.[/li][/QUOTE]
That was not in the first film, and it was priceless! Brilliant, starting with Rooster’s reaction.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]
That was in the original, only creepier.[/spoiler]
I agree, and I know a lot of the dialogue is taken verbatim from the book, but the Coen brothers are still masters of language and dialogue in their own right. I think they might arguably the best writers of dramatic dialogue since Shakespeare (I put The Big Lebowski up there with fucking Hamlet in terms of pure dialogue). All of their scripts are gorgeous on the written page. My understanding is that they’re very vague and deflective on who writes exactly what (they don’t like to talk about how they divide tasks, and those who work with them say that talking to one is like talking to the other. They are that sympatico), but whichever of them is in charge of dialogue is a goddamn genius.
Thought it quite good - but so was the original. I’m always confused at why someone redoes a book/film like this, when the second film is so similar to the first. This Maddy is definitely better than Kim Darby, but that’s about it.
As the Coen’s have such high reps (which I don’t fully understand) I found myself somewhat picking nits. Thought they really blew the “fill your hands…” scene.
And another thing about the shootout that I thought odd - inconsistent. They show the character named Doc slip down to the side of his horse/saddle. I was unsure whether he was shot or hiding himself. But we never see him fall off - which I though odd given that they not only show the next guy get shot but smash his brains out on a rock! Yeah - like I said - nits.
Another incredibly small thing that bothered me - that bowl of nice shiny red delicious apples. Just seemed quite out of place given the rest of the town.
My family said Jeff Bridges was great. I don’t know, but I tend to be less impressed with the portrayal of a character who is so broad.
Oh yeah - another nit. In the epilogue, Maddy says LaBeef is likely in his 70s or near 80. If I did the dates on Cogburn’s tombstone correctly, he died at 78. So they are trying to say LaBeef was older than Cogburn? No way!
They both fought in the Civil War some forty years before 1901.
And Lebeouf would be the first to tell you that Texas Rangers look younger than their years.
Well, Rooster died in 1903 and that was 25 years after the events of the movie took place, right? That means it was 1878 or so when the events in the movie took place. Rooster lived 1825-1903, making him 78 when he died. The Civil War, of course, took place 1861-1865. So LeBouef might have only been 15-20 when he was in the army. Even if he enrolled at age 20, say, he would only have been about 37 at the time of the movie. I’m guessing Mattie was making a dig at him, saying how old he was, as he did throughout the movie. Or maybe it is simply that a 15 year old has little ability to gauge how old anyone older than them is.
I saw this again yesterday and fell totally and completely in love with it. A second viewing elevated the movie much more than I expected, made it even funnier, and more emotional. I laughed much more often than I did the first viewing. I cried real tears and looked away when Little Blackie literally runs his heart out and is killed. It didn’t affect me too much the first time because I expected it, and because I knew it was computer-generated. This time though, I let my heart override my logic, and embraced the sadness.
Forget that “might.” I believe now it is, it definitely is a new American classic.
Well, that’s all changed too. I thought it would take a few more viewings, but in almost every way, I now like the new one more than the old one. I still missed Strother Martin, but appreciated Dakin Matthews as Col. Stonehill much much more this time. I also appreciated Barry Pepper as Ned much more than I did the first viewing. Like Gordon Urquhart, I’m still preferring the original’s cabin scene.What an outstanding movie.
I never saw the original movie, but finished reading the book just before going to see the Coen brothers movie. It’s not completely clear from the movie, but the narrating Maddy is significantly older than the Maddy who encounters Cole and Frank, meaning that a number of years have passed between when Rooster died and when she makes the comment about LaBeouf’s age. Based on the book, I assumed about a 15 year age difference between the two men, but I’m not sure that is accurate.
Maybe a dumb question, since I’ve only seen the original once that I recall, and that during the first run in the theater. What are the chief differences between the original and the Coen Brothers’ version?
We saw the new film yesterday and I really liked it. Took my kids (15 and 12) and they both liked it although at least one of them was reluctant to go since it’s not the sort of movie that would typically appeal to them. My daughter’s one criticism was that some of the dialogue was difficult to understand since “it was as if the characters were chewing on rocks”. My son, the younger of the two, found it sad, although I saw him laughing aloud several times during the film. I’ll ask, but it seemed they both really liked the Mattie character.
[ul]
[li]LeBeouf (?) DIES after he drags them out of the hole[/li][li]Rooster accompanies her back to Yell County and she offers him the graveyard spot[/li][li]No adult narration, we see the events leading to the Mattie’s quest[/li][li]No hanging man[/li][li]No bear man (that was priceless) [/li][li]LeBeouf and Rooster never have any kind of falling out, they are together the whole way[/li][li]Maddie never sleeps at the undertaker’s[/li][/ul]
I think it was probably the rock-chewiness AND the fact that the language is so unfamiliar to most people, particularly young people, that they couldn’t mentally insert what they missed the way you usually can in a normal movie with more familiar dialogue.
A couple of people have commented on how much they like the bearman. I’m curious - why? Because it didn’t seem to add anything to the story for me, didn’t advance the plot. Just seemed like a bit of weirdness tossed in for the sake of being weird.
And I din’t appreciate Brolin’s portrayal of Chaney as basically retarded.
Would just appreciate someone explaining what i missed.
Saw The King’s Speech today. A far superior film in just about every respect.
I didn’t find him to appear retarded, just really stupid. If he were smarter, he’d have a job and not be shooting folks and stealing from them. His character was more threatening to Mattie.
Ned had promised to spare her life, but Chaney seemed to wish to harm her.
I liked the Bear man. So what if it was a bit of Coen weirdness? It’s not like he was out of place, not like a character that you actually would run into at that time and place, wearing the exact same thing.
That’s fantastic! I’ll bet if they saw it again, either in the theater or on DVD, they’ll start quoting lines to each other. It’s a very quotable film.
You just liked it better. I’ve seen both, twice, and they’re both great movies, both among the best of the year. I expect both will get a lot of Oscar nominations, and I fervently hope that Colin Firth takes home the Best Actor Oscar.
I really enjoyed True Grit - of course I really enjoyed the book and previous movie. And I don’t really see the point - or a great achievement - in doing again what had been done pretty well before. I view it similarly to covering a song. Why bother, if you aren’t going to do it really differently?
We can argue over which part/characters of which version each of us preferred, but they were both largely true to the book. I’m not film expert, but a movie like The King’s Speech really transports me into a different world far more effectively than the new TG. And I’m not an actor, but it seems to me that it is a greater acting accomplishment for someone to display the subtleties of Firth and Rush showed as opposed to just playing an obnoxious old drunken slob.
And I’m still trying to understand the appeal of the Coens. Don’t get me wrong - on balance, I enjoy more of their films than I dislike. And their names attached to a project will make me think there will be something worth watching in it. But a lot of people discuss them as tho they can do no wrong - or even that their every move is a masterpiece. I just don’t get it.
