Tuesday 4 January 2011

True Grit revitalises the western genre for the screen

It may not be as good as the original but it's great news that the new True Grit is doing excellent business at the box office and is approaching blockbuster status - (From The Baltimore Sun) The box-office news this week is that the Coen Bros.' deliciously literate "True Grit" is acquiring blockbuster status. It's an amazing victory for a Western that is centered not just on character but on language -- on personality and values as expressed through formal period diction (courtesy of original novelist Charles Portis). The movie brings you into a world in which a young heroine can achieve power partly because of her manner of speech. 14-year-old Mattie Ross expresses rectitude and strength with a verbal intensity that's sometimes funny and sometimes even scary. Hailee Steinfeld is a wonderment in the role (she was thirteen when she played it) -- and apparently, young men as well as young women can identify with her.

This is great news for the western genre - of course we've known it all along but westerns are cool again.

2 comments:

Davieboy said...

Hi Gary,
I'm thrilled that this movie is doing so well; the film is a gem. Like you, I watched a downloaded screener copy, a fact of which I'm not proud. As a huge Western fan I will def. pay to see this film at the cinema when it arrives here, but I wish it had been released in the UK at the same time as the US, so we could have seen it over Xmas.
I think this is a big problem that the movie industry should address; it's too much temptation for somebody who has been waiting ages to see a movie not to seek it out elsewhere if it's not available at the cinema. I of course want to encourage this type of movie.
You are an actor I believe, so have a vested interest in this - what do you think?
Davieboy

Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin said...

Couldn't agree more. These day having staggered release dates in utterly stupid. I mean if someone, like myself and you by the sound of it, have been waiting months to see this the temptation of watching a screener of via the bad old web is too great to resist. I however will be there on opening day in the UK and will be taking my little ones along. I thought the film was excellent even if I do prefer the original.

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