Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Fill Your Hands...

...you son of a bitch. Here I come!

That is to say, the remake of True Grit comes to theaters for Christmas. Here's the trailer:



I'm conflicted about this one. True Grit is my favorite John Wayne movie, and it was successful because it didn't stray too far from the Charles Portis novel, and in fact lifted huge chunks of dialog from the same. I really don't want to see the story made politically correct, and I don't want to see the injection of Hollywood bullshit into it either, such as snide references to the Tea Party or changing the name of the villain to Lucky Ned Palin. In other words, I don't want to see a leftist remake of True Grit.

At the same time, there are some things that were in the book that I'd like to see in the remake, since they weren't in the John Wayne film. In the book, the rattlesnake bite results in Mattie losing her arm, and there was a sequence in the novel after the conclusion in which Mattie's later life is sketched (she became a rich spinster bank owner) and her search for the aged Rooster, only to find that he had died.

Ah, well. We shall see what we shall see.

h/t Joan of Argghh! at Primordial Slack.

3 comments:

Butch Cassidy said...

I have faith that this movie will be pretty good. If any actor these days can pull off Rooster Cogburn, it is Jeff Bridges. And a few of the new western re-makes have been pretty good, like 3:10 to Yuma.
Dissapointment or not, I'll be at the theatre with bells on.

Jack said...

I'm a trifle conflicted, too. Jeff Bridges, on the surface of it, doesn't seem like a too terrible choice, but if hearing his syrupy "Wut's yer nayum, gurl?" is any indication, he's going to go goofy with the accent. Plus: Matt Damon? Aye currumba!

Looks like it might be more faithful to the book, though...check the slider at 1:01 and tell me if that doesn't look like an older, one armed Mattie walking away.

Bob said...

@Jack: good catch, it does indeed look like that.