Thompson on Hollywood

True Grit Early Review: Coens Deliver PG-13 Classic Western, Bridges Owns Cogburn

Finally, the last anticipated Oscar contender has been screened and Wednesday, reviewed. The question is whether expectations of the Coens' True Grit have been overblown. Reaction at one New York screening was mixed. It's not surprising; pure westerns do not play in some quarters. Younger moviegoers don't get the genre; westerns are set in a past that is too distant and foreign. But the Academy, which trends older and male, will be far more receptive, so this well-mounted movie may well hit their soft spot. (The Gurus 'O Gold weigh in). Here is our round-up of True Grit's other early reviews.

By Anne Thompson
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December 1, 2010 5:58 AM
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Star Watch: Burlesque vs. Showgirls, True Grit's Steinfeld, X-Files' Duchovny and Anderson Reunite

- We made the comparison back on November 5 ("Burlesque...the bastard child of Moulin Rouge and Showgirls"), and now The Daily Beast has taken the Burlesque vs. Showgirls concept to new heights. They say that while Burlesque is not a notorious train-wreck like Showgirls (Cher and Christina Aguilera also hold more clout than Elizabeth Berkley did in 1995), it "is not without issues, the script being a big one, but it embraces campiness in a more jovial way, striving to be an updated Chicago or Cabaret, sans the heavy undertone issues, like abortion and anti-Semitism."

By Sophia Savage
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November 24, 2010 5:21 AM
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True Grit Posters Starring Damon, Bridges, Brolin, Steinfeld: No Country for Old Men Redux

In a reprise of a strategy Miramax employed for producer Scott Rudin and the Coen brothers on No Country for Old Men (which eventually took home the Oscar), Paramount has designed a series of posters for the Coens' True Grit (below).

By Anne Thompson
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November 23, 2010 10:27 AM
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Oscar Wrap: Blue Valentine's Gosling, Dive-Bombing 127 Hours, Best Actress Death Match

Blue Valentine star Ryan Gosling not only talks to Crazy, Stupid, Love co-star Steve Carell, but self-mockingly poses in tight leather in the rain for Interview Magazine. On his past Oscar nomination for Half Nelson, he says: "it feels weird…not that long ago that I was on a TV show called Young Hercules in which I had a fake tan and wore tight leather pants and fought imaginary monsters." As for working on the smaller indie films he loves, the downside is that "when you’re making them, you’re pretty sure no one’s going to see them," he notes---unless they get a nomination: "[it] in some way affirms those choices by making it possible for people to hear about a film and maybe see a movie they wouldn’t have otherwise seen."

By Sophia Savage
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October 28, 2010 7:55 AM
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Recycling at the Cinema: True Grit, The Great Gatsby and RED

We all know recycling is good for the planet, but is it good for cinema? Consider three old-is-new retreads: a western remake, a 1920s period piece and a contemporary action flick. True Grit is a remake of a 1969 John Wayne film which was adapted from a novelization of a Charles Portis 1968 serial which first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post. The Great Gatsby started as a lauded 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald novel which became a film in 1926 and again in 1949 and 1974. Even comedy hit RED, although it is not based on a book or an old movie, still exists--argues Movie City News--due to recycling of the DC graphic novel's plot and characters. There's nothing new here: movies have been adapting popular fiction for as long as they've been around. What's horrifying is Hollywood's current aversion to anything original.

By Sophia Savage
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October 19, 2010 6:12 AM
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Trailer Watch: True Grit Long Version

Paramount tacked the long True Grit trailer in front of The Social Network this weekend. Now I know more than I want to know, typically. Instead of wondering if Josh Brolin and Matt Damon are both bad guys, we see that Damon plays a Texas Ranger helping Bridges' U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn on a two-man job to track 14-year-old Mattie Ross's target: Tom Chaney (Brolin), the man who killed her father. And we get more glimpses of banter among the group tracking Brolin.

By Anne Thompson
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October 4, 2010 5:21 AM
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Trailer Watch: Coens Western True Grit Stars Bridges, Brolin, Damon

True Grit is the 2010 movie I cannot wait to see--and the big unknown for Oscar watchers. We'll all have to wait until Joel and Ethan Coen finish the movie in time for a December 25 release. But the trailer hit today (below).

By Anne Thompson
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September 27, 2010 11:33 AM
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TIFF Buy: Oscilloscope Acquires Meek's Cutoff

Oscilloscope, the same distrib that opened Kelly Reichardt's 2008 film, Wendy and Lucy, starring Michelle Williams, will also handle the North American release of her most recent Venice/Toronto entry, the western Meek's Cutoff, starring Williams, Will Patton, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan.

By Anne Thompson
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September 17, 2010 12:44 PM
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Venice Day One: Black Swan Early Reviews, Machete

As a Venice newbie, I got off the speed train from Rome, exited the station to a canal and grabbed a 40-minute ferry to the island the Lido. It's an adjustment. Basically a subway is a ferry here, a taxi is a motor boat or gondola, and houses have water in their basements with a garage for their boat (below). Trucks are boats too; Venice is under constant construction, like New Orleans. The Lido is a lovely resort (a bit like Fire Island or Catalina); I figured out that I needed to rent a bike to get around (I get a silly kick out of passing slow riders on the left). The casino location of the film festival (this is the 67th) is a maze of corridors, high-ceilinged halls, wide stairways and long lines for multiple screenings.

By Anne Thompson
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September 1, 2010 1:25 AM
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First Look: Coen Brothers' True Grit

Here's a first look at the Coen Brother's True Grit, which was filmed (along with another western, Cowboys & Aliens) around the Southwest. Paramount has released this still of grizzled Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld as Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross, respectively.