The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: shooter32 on December 14, 2009, 03:10:40 PM
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Josh Brolin and Matt Damon to Star in Coen's 'True Grit' Remake
by Elisabeth Rappe Oct 26th 2009 // 6:40PM
Filed under: Action, Classics, Drama, Casting, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, Western
It's impossible to top an icon like John Wayne, but the Coen Bros' True Grit is shaping up to have a better supporting cast than the original did. (Hey, Wayne supposedly didn't like Kim Darby either.) Variety has just announced that Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are in talks to join Jeff Bridges in the Coens' remake.
Bridges will play Rooster Cogburn, while Damon is in talks to play La Boeuf, the Texas Ranger who pairs up with Cogburn and Mattie. I'll probably anger the Glen Campbell fans out there, but I think this is a vast improvement over the original casting. I can actually buy Damon as a Texas Ranger.
Brolin will be taking a walk on the nasty side, as he'll be playing Tom Chaney, the man who gunned Mattie's father down for the gold he had in his saddlebag. While Chaney wasn't the most pleasant fellow in the original, there's no doubt that Brolin will increase the menace and nastiness. I think we can all agree Brolin has done no wrong since his No Country For Old Men comeback, and this is the kind of role that'll be delicious to watch him tear into. The film is set to go into production in March 2010, and the Coens won't waste any time in the editing room as it's slated to be released in late 2010.
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I've said it before - The number of movies to be made is only limited by the imagination's ability to tell a story. Don't mess with retelling a classic! Movies about Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, and Scrooge are all examples of movies that can be redone both good and bad. Why take a chance on not measuring up and ruining a classic?
The lame reason I can see for a "remake" is to capitalize on the classic name. And, the only acceptable reason, in my mind, to do a remake is if the director, producer, screenwriters, and leads get together and determine they can do it better or update it.
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I'm kind of torn on this one, too.
I liked the remake of "The Alamo" with Billy Bob Thorton but wasn't as excited with "3:10 to Yuma". Shooter's right about the supporting cast though. They fit well.
I'll have to wait and see the teasers before making judgement.
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Another reason for a "remake" of a given story is to return to a book and do a new screen play that better expresses the feel of the book.
I have to agree the biggest jarring note of the original True Grit was that as an actor Glenn Campbell was a good singer, He stunk.
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We don't get too many westerns, so I'm still excited. With the Coen brothers doing it, I'll expect it to be a whole other entity. It's a real shame that the featured actors are big ol' lefties, but that's Hollywood today. Even retelling stories can be render different results. We saw that when Tombstone and Wyatt Earp came out not too far apart.
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Sounds like a believable cast. Campbell was ordoriferous. This should be better. As mentioned above, we don't get that many westerns and I grew up with Hoppy, Roy, Gene, and the Lone Ranger. Still love that stuff.
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Glen Campbell...now that's an odd story. Campbell did some bad acting and had that silly show on tv ("HAAAAII, AAHHMM GLEN CAAYYMMBLE!!!"). Like many in the entertainment world nearly his ENTIRE career success was found outside of his greatest talent. You saw a little of it on his tv show, but Campbell was one of the BEST pickers in his time. He was a highly sought-after session player. There's a story that he was working on a session for Frank Sinatra. After awhile Sinatra says to someone in the production staff, "Hey, what's with that guitar player? Is he gay or something?"
Campbell could play rings around a lot of his contemporaries in many musical genres. BUT...he made his money mostly on commercial crap. Art....go figure.
Another modern guy like that is John Mayer. He sings a bunch of sappy teenage type songs and makes money on them, but he is one of the best guitar players you could ever hear. He's just got AWESOME licks. Check him out at one of those Clapton Crossroads concerts...they guy is a monster guitar player and 95% of the public doesn't even know it.
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Another modern guy like that is John Mayer. He sings a bunch of sappy teenage type songs and makes money on them, but he is one of the best guitar players you could ever hear. He's just got AWESOME licks. Check him out at one of those Clapton Crossroads concerts...they guy is a monster guitar player and 95% of the public doesn't even know it.
Totally agree on John Mayer, my boys turned me on to him. He indeed is a great guitar player!!
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just look at the 2 Earp movies , one was a dog and the other, "Tombstone" was great. The original is usually hard to beat.
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Gun Porn: The guns of True grit
http://www.imfdb.org/index.php?title=True_Grit
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just look at the 2 Earp movies , one was a dog and the other, "Tombstone" was great. The original is usually hard to beat.
If you're talking the two I'm thinking of, they came out at the same time, and I actually like Wyatt Earp better. Problem is that Kevin Costner makes epics that are as commercially popular with theater owners and tv networks as Queen and Iron Butterfly are with radio stations. In this case I'm not saying they shouldn't do a sequel, but why do a copy. They could take the same characters, and follow their lives down one of the many branches open.
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If you're talking the two I'm thinking of, they came out at the same time, and I actually like Wyatt Earp better. Problem is that Kevin Costner makes epics that are as commercially popular with theater owners and tv networks as Queen and Iron Butterfly are with radio stations. In this case I'm not saying they shouldn't do a sequel, but why do a copy. They could take the same characters, and follow their lives down one of the many branches open.
There was supposed to be a third movie with the Cogburn character called "Someday" (after the toast at the end of 'Rooster Cogburn'.
They should've played with that and left 'True Grit' alone. JMHO.
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If you're talking the two I'm thinking of, they came out at the same time, and I actually like Wyatt Earp better. Problem is that Kevin Costner makes epics that are as commercially popular with theater owners and tv networks as Queen and Iron Butterfly are with radio stations. In this case I'm not saying they shouldn't do a sequel, but why do a copy. They could take the same characters, and follow their lives down one of the many branches open.
M58 is right - Wyatt Earp and Tombstone are not remakes of each other, but were contemporaneous offerings from competing studios - another Hollyweird oddity of behavior. I would have noted this previously but some of us do go to bed at night!!!! ::)
Wyatt Earp is actually a half-way decent movie epic, more true to the history than Tombstone. For example, Earp carried his revolver in the pocket of his frock coat and not in a holster in the shootout - Wyatt Earp had this right, Tombstone had Russell as Earp wearing a holster. Wyatt Earp did leave out Earp's pimping in Illinois though, made him more of a frontier man. However, that said, Tombstone is a much better told story - not to mention I liked Dana Delany as Josie better than Joanna Going. Actually, much, much better. Of course, we have no documented photos of Josie until much later in her life, so no one really knows what she looked like as a younger woman.
BTTTAIP - I generally dislike even the idea of a remake - Hollyweird has enough problems even getting sequels and prequels right, remakes almost always miss the mark.
One of the few exceptions to this is Dickens' Christmas Carol. Alistair Sims' portrayal of Scrooge is hardly the first (or last), but that is the version (from early 1950's IIRC) that I watch every time this year.
As for the True Grit remake, I will probably watch it when it comes out on DVD, just because I watch westerns a lot. I will admit I have not yet seen Sukiyaki Western Django - just saw that in the store and may have to rent it sometime.
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I think the only thing that made Tombstone better was Val Kilmer. His Doc Holliday was more entertaining, if not necessarily accurate.
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I think the only thing that made Tombstone better was Val Kilmer. His Doc Holliday was more entertaining, if not necessarily accurate.
I'm your huckleberry. ;D
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http://www.startribune.com/blogs/Artcetera.html?elr=KArksUUUycaEacyU (http://www.startribune.com/blogs/Artcetera.html?elr=KArksUUUycaEacyU)
StarTribune.com
Coens to deliver 'True Grit' for Christmas
By Tim Campbell
January 20, 2010
Meet the new Rooster: Jeff Bridges (left, in "Crazy Heart") will play the role made famous by John Wayne, right. (photos by Fox Searchlight and Paramount).
The trade paper Variety reported that Paramount Pictures -- sight unseen -- has given Joel and Ethan Coen a prestigious Christmas Day release slot for their upcoming western, "True Grit."
Filming has not even begun, but no doubt a big reason is that their star, Jeff Bridges -- stepping into the role of the hard-drinking, eyepatch-wearing lawman Rooster Cogburn that won John Wayne an Oscar 40 years ago -- is himself an Oscar front-runner after winning a Golden Globe Sunday for "Crazy Heart."
Matt Damon and Josh Brolin reportedly will co-star.
Don't expect a remake of the Wayne movie, which was the Hollywood icon's last big hit but has since been relegated to the kitsch bin. Rather, the Coens are going back to the source material: the 1968 novel by Charles Portis, about a teenage girl in 1870s Arkansas who hires Cogburn to track down the hired hand who killed her father.
"It's partly a question of point-of-view," Ethan Coen told the website IGN last fall. "The book is entirely in the voice of the 14-year-old girl. That sort of tips the feeling of it over a certain way.
"I think it's much funnier than the movie was, so I think, unfortunately, they lost a lot of humor in both the situations and in her voice. It also ends differently than the movie did. You see the main character -- the little girl -- 25 years later when she's an adult.
Also expect the Coens' version to be more violent (no surprise there, right?).
Sand Coen: "Another way in which [the book is] a little bit different from the movie -- and maybe this is just because of the time the movie was made -- is that it's a lot tougher and more violent than the movie reflects. Which is part of what's interesting about it.
"I don't actually remember the movie too well, but I do remember it as being much more of a standard western, and the book is just an oddity. It's a very odd book."
Brolin, who starred in the Coens' "No Country for Old Men," plays the killer while Damon is the proverbial good cop -- a polite, abstemious Texas Ranger (Glen Campbell in the first movie) who teams up with Cogburn and the girl, Mattie.
The movie is set to film in Oklahoma this spring.
Earlier this month, the production held an open casting call in Tulsa to find an actress to play Mattie. The Coens even set up a web site -- TrueGritCasting.com -- soliciting applications from young hopefuls, aged 12 to 17, who are "tough, strong and tell it like it is."
© 2010 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
In reading this I'm glad to see that it is not a remake. It is going back to the book and retelling the story. Now if they would have just picked a new title to reflect that it is a different view of the story and its characters.
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By God girl...thats a colt dragoon....your no bigger than a corn nubbin, what are you doing with all that gun?
I am on the fence as to whether they "should"....but I have never seen a coen movie i didnt like, and Jeff Bridges is awesome. Just remember how awesome Bridges and Coen did together on the Big Lebowski...
As long as they never attempt to redo "The Searchers" we will all be ok.
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That's a great link eric,.... thanks, I hope they remake the movie with the exact same one's...
I'm not a big fan of remakes, but westerns??? Well,..... ::)
I can always wait for it to come out on DVD right?
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I love westerns and I hope this is worth it. I just wish they would make more of Louis L'Amours books into movies. Flint, Noon, Killkenney, Sacketts. Why go there when you can put some of these on the silver screen. My 2 cents.
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Tom Selleck was great in the ones he did, pretty much how I visualized Tell Sackett when I read the books ;D
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How weird, their building all the sets, a whole western town from what I understand, out here at Spiderwood Studios for this picture. One of my guys contracts out there and mentioned the western town construction for a True Grit remake. I've been promised a trip out there some time, if it happens I'll sneak pictures. ;D
http://www.spiderwoodstudios.com/
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Tom Selleck was great in the ones he did, pretty much how I visualized Tell Sackett when I read the books ;D
And Sam Elliot as his brother.
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And Sam Elliot as his brother.
+1
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;D
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EUP9rOLf30
I thought this was a really neat video showing the actual places where a lot of the scenes in "True Grit" were shot, and how they looked then, and now. Pretty interesting to anyone who saw and liked the movie. Bill T.
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It's amazing how much of the landscape has remained much the same after 40 years. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Kim Darby. Bill T.
(http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1425/kimdarbytoday.jpg)
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Nice video billt.
Getting old sucks don't it?
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It's amazing how much of the landscape has remained much the same after 40 years. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Kim Darby. Bill T.
(http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1425/kimdarbytoday.jpg)
Your lovely wife may look just as good as back in the day, but there has been a notable lack of photos of yourself.
FQ13 who is just sayin' ;D ;D ;D
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Actually Darby doesn't look all that bad for what I'm guessing to be close to 60. Although I doubt the lack of a single grey hair is natural. Bill T.
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Women seem to change a bit more than men. This is Hawaiian singer Liz Damon taken in 1971 for her album cover.
(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1316/lizdamon1971.jpg)
And today, 39 years later.
(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/9043/lizdamon2009.jpg)
Still, not too bad really. She looks "more Hawaiian" in the younger photo.
http://www.youtube.com/user/billt460#p/f/81/yVd0yTDNThc
Doesn't sound too bad either. Much better than the crap they produce today. Bill T.
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Tom Selleck played Orin Sackett and Sam Elliott played Tell Sackett
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The original is on TCM tonight at 8:00 est....followed by The Shootist. :D
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I'd buy off on the new TG.
Sheree North was great in the Shootist.... not sure they'd be able to pull that one off as a remake.
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(http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1425/kimdarbytoday.jpg)
I still see plenty of the "corn nubbin' " in her....she certainly looks better than Glenn Campbell does now...
(http://www.absolutenow.com/mugshots/images/CampbellGlen.jpg)
http://www.absolutenow.com/mugshots/images/CampbellGlen.jpg (http://www.absolutenow.com/mugshots/images/CampbellGlen.jpg)
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Women seem to change a bit more than men. This is Hawaiian singer Liz Damon taken in 1971 for her album cover.
(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1316/lizdamon1971.jpg)
And today, 39 years later.
(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/9043/lizdamon2009.jpg)
Still, not too bad really. She looks "more Hawaiian" in the younger photo.
http://www.youtube.com/user/billt460#p/f/81/yVd0yTDNThc
Doesn't sound too bad either. Much better than the crap they produce today. Bill T.
You know what? That's just fine with me. I have a lot more respect for a woman who says, "I have crow's feet, a big ass and a pot belly, deal with it. I'm fifty. If you wanted to f..k me when I was 25 you missed your chance. Either take your clothes off or leave.". I'll take her every day over one who has a chest full of silicone, a face full of botox and has had so many face lits her ears are stapled toghether. I want a real woman, not some anorexic model or a sixty going on thirty diva. The same is true of movis. The only sequel/remake I've ever really liked is "The Unforgiven". It wasn't a remake of a "Few Dollars More", it was just a natural extension of the guy's story, wrinkles and all. +10 to Clint for doing it right. Me, I wouldn't want to try to be a better John Wayne. A better Glenn Cambell, that I can do, but upstaging the Duke.......
FQ13, who knows his limitations ;D
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FQ you just mentioned the "Duke's" name in the same post as:
A better Glenn Cambell
it was just a natural extension
movis
anorexic model or a sixty going on thirty diva
a face full of botox and has had so many face lits
I'll take her every day over one who has a chest full of silicone
"I have crow's feet, a big ass and a pot belly, deal with it. I'm fifty. If you wanted to f..k me when I was 25 you missed your chance. Either take your clothes off or leave.".
Ol' tex here will be washing this blatant disregard to "Man Laws Violations" down with three fingers of single malt scotch.
tex
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Sorry Tex
I think I pretty much gave you chapter and verse of the the Man Laws. The exception being mentioning Glenn Campel's name in proximity to the Duke's, but that's not my fault, I didn't cast the original. As for the rest of it, a real man wants a real woman. Period, end of discussion.
FQ13
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Real Men, Real WOman, roger. Got it . But opinions, and FEELings need no mention in the same post as the DUKE. These are strictly forbade in 'The Man Laws' dude.
That's all I meant of it.
tex, who still respect the JW and the boyhood dreams of westerns.