True Grit - the remake.

[MikeBjerum]

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.

[PegLeg45]

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.

[Pathfinder]

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.

[atmiller]

I think the only thing that made Tombstone better was Val Kilmer.  His Doc Holliday was more entertaining, if not necessarily accurate. 

[tt11758]

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.     

[Sponsor]

[MikeBjerum]

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.

[Walkeraviator]

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.

[twyacht]

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?

[bulldog75]

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.

[tombogan03884]

 Tom Selleck was great in the ones he did, pretty much how I visualized Tell Sackett when I read the books