jeff bridges has true grit, and other things

i'm glad i haven't seen the john wayne edition. critics have been overly comparing of the two TRUE GRITs, even when the poor director duo claims to have not seen the original. this production clearly stands on its own, and anyone walking out of the movie theatre would agree.

this has brought up something, though, that i feel a need to address. i've long considered film to be the newest liberal art. it's an interesting cross between drama (or theatre--whatever you choose to call it) and literature. it's storytelling, but through a strange, updated, and easily accessible medium.

in theatre, plays are constantly and consistently reproduced. different people want to tell the glass menagerie or a midsummer night's dream different ways, and it's generally accepted that this is what you do in theatre.

in literature, however, it's much more daring to re-write a story (with the exception of translations and re-writing for young or dumb people). once it's printed, it can last forever-ish. on the flip side, in theatre, a patron's opportunity to experience the storytelling from this specific point of view is gone once the show wraps its last performance.

and then we have film, which rests in a strange limbo between. one can both go to the theatre and own a copy to watch in the comfort of his own home. like theatre, actors perform for a limited time, but like literature, it is captured forever. at the helm of both rests the author / auteur / director, which in this case is ethan and joel coen. the brothers knew about the old TRUE GRIT, but they decided to make a new one anyway, namely because they had a different way to tell the story. this has met with interesting reaction--some people are even upset that a classic was being re-made. in theatre, this is normal. in literature, it isn't.

after seeing jeff bridges tear this shit up so fine and meeting the newcomer hailee steinfeld, i only wish that competent filmmakers like the coens dared to remake classics. this 2010 edition of TRUE GRIT was so much fun to watch, and i imagine the first would not have been as accessible to twenty-first century moviegoers.

but let's not pull some michael haenke funny games and remake your own movie (austria's 1997 FUNNY GAMES and america's 2007 FUNNY GAMES) with the same effing shot list. bitch just wanted to make it rain.