Saw True Grit tonight. It's pretty dang good. Powerful. I don't always like the Coen brothers, but in this one they don't get too hysterical with the camera athletics, which is nice. I like a good 8 minute tracking shot as much as anyone (oh, wait, that's from Touch of Evil) but they tell the story fairly straight, visually. (I do wish there were more extreme long shots of landscapes, a la John Ford in his Monument Valley epics). I love westerns. The girl was really good. The dialog is dense and florid at times, but certainly seeming from the period, sort of like how Deadwood came across, if you're familiar with that HBO series. Listen closely, there's some good lines in there. "He has overrun the banks of English" someone says of someone else who pontificates.
I don't recall much about John Wayne's version, but I do know they replicated the final shootout-on-horseback scene where Rooster takes the reins in his teeth and has guns a-blazin' on both hands.
The song over the closing credits was by Iris DeMent, whom I saw at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass a couple years back, where she was fantastic.
