Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit: Not Exactly a Home Run
Man, but it's been a long time since I've visited this corner of the Blogosphere. My apologies. Truth be told, I've been far from idle. Between massive changes and upheavals, and a heap of outside projects, the ol' Petri Dish has been laying cold and neglected. More on all of that later...Maybe. Meantime, I've given myself an hour (gotta sleep, y'know) to wax cinematic in these electronic pages for the first time in too damned long. And where better to start than in a movie theater? I went into True Grit -- the Coen Brothers' remake/reimagining of the 1969 John Wayne western --over Christmas, readily equipped with high hopes. Like most movie nerds worth the butter on their popcorn, I've been a pretty huge fan of Joel and Ethan Coen's brand of rejiggered genre cinema for a long time, and figured that this latest effort would maintain those lofty standards. Bottom line: True Grit does, and it doesn't. For those unfamiliar with the origin