“True Grit” Runs The Gamut Of Emotions In Stunning Departure For Coen Brothers

“You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothing free, except the grace of God.”

There aren’t too many movies made anymore that excite me into must-see mode. But since I’m someone who thinks that teaming the Coen brothers (directors and screenplay writers) with Steven Spielberg (as an executive producer) is kind of a can’t-miss combo for a flick, “True Grit” fit into that category for me. This film represented a big departure for the Coen brothers based on their previous projects, but it was certainly refreshing to see what they are capable of in a new genre.

Though John Wayne starred in an earlier version of this film in 1969, the Coen Brothers were quick to point out that their adaption was based much more on the 1968 novel by Charles Portis than any previous cinematic interpretation.

As documented anywhere you turn and in any review of this movie, the girl, Hailee Steinfeld (as Mattie Ross) is positively amazing. Only 13 years old at the time of filming, she was a rookie chosen from 15,000 applicants for the role, and anyone involved with the flick knew an awful lot hinged on a child newcomer.

“We were aware if the kid doesn’t work, there’s no movie,” Ethan Coen told the New York Times.

Steinfeld’s repartee with Jeff Bridges’s character played a huge role in making this movie work; the idea of having him unwittingly share his life story with the girl during the pursuit was a brilliant technique. And I have no problem admitting that Bridges is one of my favorite actors, so I loved his turn as “Rooster” Cogburn. In this flick, He Who Will Always Be Lebowski to Me is reincarnated as a drunkard mercenary marshall -- so not a huge departure for Bridges. And further to the “Lebowski” tie-ins, the shooting-the-cornbread scene reminded me of the “Lebowski” scene where the Dude drops a roach in his lap, freaks out and crashes into a Dumpster.

It was hard to understand Bridges at times, but I also think that was kinda the point. Most of us are drawn to story arcs that involve a hard-shelled, past-his-prime gruffster opening up some in one last outburst of brilliance, that final hurrah ... and Bridges played that to a tee.

“I’m a foolish old man who’s been drawn in to a wild goose chase by a harpie in trousers and a nincompoop.”

The cast was rounded out with career-resurgent Josh Brolin as villain Tom Chaney and clownish Matt Damon as awkward Texas Ranger LaBouef, as well as a quick (though jarring) appearance by Dakin Matthews, who is best known as Doug Heffernan’s Dad on “King of Queens.” To be honest, I was unaware that Damon was in the flick, and while I’m not a big fan of his work, he did serve a bit as comedic relief (“I am severely injured.”).

“True Grit” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards but came away with none; however, it was tabbed as the American Film Institute’s Movie of the Year, and Steinfeld absolutely cleaned up with a host of other wins. From a visual perspective, the stark beauty of the environment essentially serves as another character, while the whites and grays are startling in their ability to capture the mood of the film.

Though humorous at times, it was an intense film (the scene with the rattler pit was shit-your-pants terrifying), and also managed to be subtly emotional throughout. I couldn’t help thinking that the Coen brothers’ well-rounded directorial background made them uniquely qualified to pull off so many disparate emotional elements under the guise of the “just a Western genre.” The result is a memorable flick that only furthered the legend of the Coen brothers and Bridges ... while perhaps launching one in the powerfully understated Steinfeld.

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXV: Mets Fans Bid Adieu To A Legend, Plus Could “Lin-sanity” Save The NBA?

RIP to a legendary Met
Gary Carter will be missed, you bet
They called him “The Kid”
Led with a passion, he did
Thanks for ’86 ... we’re in your debt

The blue-bellies the ACC does bless
Thanks to frauds like Karl Hess
The league turning into WWF
Hard to watch without saying WTF
Leadership needs to fix this hot mess

Glenn in self-doubting pain
Herschel aboard the kill-‘em-all train
As Daryl stews and hides
Lori is playing both sides
Epic battle coming between Rick and Shane

Debt crises in Europe, especially Greece
Violence threatens to wipe out peace
Instability all over the globe
So many places for the UN to probe
When will the pain and suffering cease?

The Knicks put up win after win
As David Stern sits back with a grin
Tapping the Asian market hard
While not playing the race card
The NBA thanks its stars for Jeremy Lin

Last time …

“The Shining,” Only Even Funnier

Re-envisioning Stephen King’s “The Shining” as a comedy is, well, inspired.

“Two Days in April” Picks A Compelling Subject, But Slides Into Being Just A Marketing Promo

“Two Days in April” is a documentary that landed in my lap that I didn’t quite know what to do with. When it wasn’t serving primarily as a marketing film for IMG Academies (the pronoun “our” became far too common in the story), it ostensibly was designed to follow four prospective professional football players as they tackled each step of the ladder in preparation for the NFL Draft. However, the involvement of IMG -- and at least one of the players’ agents -- ruined a lot of the impact it may have made otherwise and made it difficult to watch in some spots.

As a Miami Dolphins fan, I was intrigued by the portrayal of Derek Hagan, an Arizona State receiver who would go on to become a Dolphins bust draft pick. He was joined by Oklahoma receiver Travis Wilson, Oklahoma linebacker Clint Ingram and New Mexico running back DonTrell Moore.

The documentary features bit players who are never accurately introduced, so we are left to assume they are other fledgling agents, hangers-on or both. The movie become more about the personalities of the players involved and the behaviors each chose to use to address obstacles along the way. From that sense, it became a bit of a social experiment; oddly, the most likeable and down-to-earth player, Moore, inexplicably becomes the outcast of the group. Hagan appears not to like the “meat market” angle of the process, Wilson comes off a misguided punk (from bashing Mel Kiper Jr. to turning to tequila after a bad game, you somehow knew this guy wasn’t going to cut it in the NFL) and Ingram as a somewhat naïve country boy.

The experience of Moore is perhaps the most candid and revealing, as the difficulty of the process begins to wear on him as he slowly realizes that four years of college “can utterly mean nothing.” The role of religion in his life and environment becomes clear when people begin speaking in tongues and such in his hotel room as he watches the NFL Draft.

Focusing on the “next season” that takes place after college is over, the flick dwells on the three-and-a-half months between bowl season and NFL Draft Day. Agent Tom Condon and ESPN analyst Rob Stone have heavy involvement in the movie, which leads one to believe they were compensated nicely by IMG, but if you can reconcile some of these self-serving aspects, the story that unfolds is engrossing, from the Senior Bowl (where practices are deemed to be much more important than the game) to the scouting combine to pro days (which are glossed over a bit).

One of the cool moments in the documentary came when Tampa Bay general manager Bruce Allen allowed for the filming of his interview with Hagan. In a revealing statement about the importance of character in the draft process, Allen told Hagan, “You’re all good players. What we’re looking for is a good teammate.”

Coincidentally, three of the players (Wilson, No. 78; Ingram, No. 80; and Hagan, No. 82) documented are taken within five picks of each other in third round, while Moore’s journey concludes with an interminable day of excruciating filming as he goes undrafted. Admitting that he is “confused,” Moore opens up even more by saying, “They made me doubt myself, and I don’t like anything that makes me doubt myself.” Sharing this gives some perspective of the mindset of the elite athlete, so many of whom have never faced much in the way of adversity and have always been told they are the best, the fastest, the strongest. The vulnerability that is unearthed when those who make their living picking the best players tell you in no uncertain terms that you’re not good enough makes for uneasy viewing, but compelling insight.

In the final scene, Moore’s mother, devastated for her son, wiped away tears as she said, “I’ll always be his No. 1 fan,” against the slow-motion backdrop of discarded and forgotten signs of congratulations and balloons of celebration.

Fast-forwarding a few years, unfortunately, none of the players made much of a dent at all in the NFL, so perhaps IMG picked a really bad class to highlight. Wilson was out of the league within two years, while, plagued by drops, Hagan busted out in Miami, before spending nondescript seasons with the Giants and the Raiders. Moore had cups of coffee with the Titans and Bucs before heading to the Indoor Football League, while the most grounded of the foursome, Ingram, spent solid years with Jacksonville before missing a full season due to injury and being picked up by the Saints.

“Two Days in April” was obviously a low-budget effort, but it did manage to tell a unique story and bring out some emotion. However, the lack of focus and the not-so-subtle ties to IMG Academies turned what could have been an insightful flick into a mostly forgettable shill fest.

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXIV: “The Walking Dead” Makes A Long-Awaited Return, Plus State Not Good Enough To Overcome Eight-To-Five Odds

Walking Dead back with alarm
Shane doing less good than harm
Went out drinking in a bar
As zombies wander near and far
It’s high time to flee the farm

Millions and millions he was making
But of integrity he was faking
Tar Holes will rue the day
Bitch Davis came their way
He’s the gift that keeps on giving (and taking)

A drug bust over at TCU
Wonder if Gary Patterson knew
Rumors that 82 failed a drug test
Quite a party out West
Horned Frogs gotta get stoned, too

A voice made of pure honey
Made piles and piles of money
But picked a douche on her wedding day
Drank and drugged it all away
Wasted talent and a sad demise, unfunny

A 20-point lead up in smoke
A patented Wolfpack choke
The refs pitched in for Duke
In a way that made Pack fans puke
One reason the ACC’s sort of a joke

Last time …

Brilliant Alain de Botton Envisions Airports as a Portal to Who, Not Where, We’d Like to Be

“Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.”

I can’t quite remember who recommended “A Week at the Airport” to me, but I remember being immediately struck by the premise: an author essentially hired as a “writer-in-residence” at Heathrow Airport, where he is free to wax philosophical (“at a specifically positioned desk in the departures hall between zones D and E”) about the deeper meanings behind air travel and its impact on human behavior. It appealed to me as a unique, eccentric, quick read ... and thanks to the talents of Alain de Botton, it turned into so much more than a review of an airport.

I couldn’t help but appreciate the musical, lyrical quality of de Botton’s prose, the way he was able to subtly extract multiple layers of meaning into something as common as an airplane’s wing. One of the marks of a good writer is to take banal subject matter and create an existential bent, and de Botton’s ability to mix in quite a bit of social commentary made “A Week at the Airport” quite surprisingly deep. Even as the project begins, de Botton admits to having reservations about how he can capture the vibrancy and dynamism of an airport accurately on the written page.

“ ... it was hard to dismiss a worry about what a modest and static thing a book would always be next to the chaotic, living entity that was a terminal.”

The clever de Botton gains momentum as the book progresses, to the point where he is creating evocative and emotional passages near the end that can move the reader to tears. His job gets easier when travelers begin to treat his desk as a “confessional” of sorts, baring their souls to him and leading him to comment that he was “struck by a sense of our race as a peculiar, combustible mixture of the beast and the angel.”

The book also featured a number of pictures throughout, which did a tremendous job of both breaking up the story and helping to tell the tale. The photography was beautiful, sublime and humorous at various times, making “A Week at the Airport” an excellent case study on how literature and photography can work hand in hand to complement one another.

In the end, de Botton paints the airport as the essential conduit for our hopes and dreams, a kind of in-between, purgatory-like place where we can balance what is possible vs. what is real. In the hands of such a brilliant writer, the airport becomes purely a backdrop, a secondary concept that only serves to give de Botton the opportunity to view it in the context of a symbol for grand statements on who we are and our essential person-ness.

“Nevertheless, in the end, there was something irremediably melancholic about the business of being reunited with one’s luggage. After hours in the air free of encumbrance, spurred on to formulate hopeful plans for the future by the views of coasts and forests below, passengers were reminded, on standing at the carousel, of all that was material and burdensome in existence.”

“Had one been asked to take a Martian to visit a single place that neatly captures the gamut of themes running through our civilisation -- from our faith in technology to our destruction of nature, from our interconnectedness to our romanticising of travel -- then it would have to be to the departures and arrivals halls that one would head.”

“It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us to recognise the important things that we are too defeated or too embittered to recognise from day to day.”

“At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and aeroplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones and apologise for our tantrums?”




He goes to great pains to paint us as needy, fragile creatures, from the divorced father being reunited with an estranged son to an anonymous custodian to a prostitute working out of the airport hotel. In one of his more heart-felt musings, de Botton describes the vulnerability that describes our desires to be greeted at the airport by someone -- anyone -- who cares.

“There is no one, however lonely or isolated, however pessimistic about the human race, however preoccupied with the payroll, who does not in the end expect that someone significant will come to say hello at arrivals.”

“We may spend the better part of our professional lives projecting strength and toughness, but we are all in the end creatures of appalling fragility and vulnerability.”

“Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hated us for going travelling in the first place, even if they left us last June or died twelve and a half years ago, it is impossible not to experience a shiver of a sense that they may have come along anyway, just to surprise us and make us feel special (as someone must have done for us when we were small, only occasionally, or we would never have had the strength to make it this far).”

“Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few who hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognise by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.”

No subject is too difficult or out of bounds for de Botton, who tackles our technological enslavery, our tendency to set impossible expectations and our doomed emphasis on escapism. He also takes on the security mindset, customer service, religion, affluence, mortality, materialism, and even the interplay between celebrity and journalism.

He also lingers on the mystical quality of flying, which he argues will never be accepted as commonplace ... as it is essentially a death-defying act aimed toward reaching a destination where our life might be better.

“The lack of detail about the destinations served only to stir unfocused images of nostalgia and longing: Tel Aviv, Tripoli, St. Petersburg, Miami, Muscat via Abu Dhabi, Algiers, Grand Cayman via Nassau ... all of these promises of alternative lives, to which we might appeal at moments of claustrophobia and stagnation.”

“We have heard about too many ascensions, too many voices from heaven, too many airborne angels and saints to ever be able to regard the business of flight from an entirely pedestrian perspective, as we might, say, the act of travelling by train. Notions of the divine, the eternal and the significant accompany us covertly on to our craft, haunting the reading aloud of the safety instructions, the weather announcements made by our captains and, most importantly, our lofty views of the gentle curvature of the earth.”

“One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpoising home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wiesbaden and Luoyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.”

This fascinating book packs an unbelievably emotional wallop into just 107 pages -- an unmistakable gift for and from a writer charged with “just” detailing an airport.

“We forget everything: the books we read, the temples of Japan, the tombs of Luxor, the airline queues, our own foolishness. And so we gradually return to identifying happiness with elsewhere: twin rooms overlooking a harbour, a hilltop church boasting the remains of the Sicilian martyr St Agatha, a palm-fringed bungalow with complimentary evening buffet service. We recover an appetite for packing, hoping and screaming. We will need to go back and learn the important lessons of the airport all over again soon.”

All Hail The Amish Project

I'm sure there's a high level of irony involved with the idea that I am blogging about this, but ... anyway.

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXIII: Retire Ricky Retire, Plus The Silencing Of The Lambs

Pinpointing him is quite tricky
Not dedicated, if we’re being picky
But he was a different breed
Could dominate when he wanted, indeed
So farewell to #34, enigmatic Ricky

The receivers got all the blame
But off a little was Brady’s aim
His supermodel prayed for a win
Then called dropping passes a sin
Eli shut his mouth and won the biggest game

A douche who’s racist and hates
Fitting he won three GOP states
Candidates talkin’ ‘bout eternal damnation
Says it all about our nation
Elect Santorum and we all deserve our fates

Since Marino we’ve all been waitin’
For a quarterback that we ain’t hatin’
Long term ain’t what it’s about
Would settle for a completed 10-yard out
But not sure how to feel about possible Peyton

They called it the Battle of the Blues
A hype fest that could make you snooze
Rivers brought to their knees
The crowd of whine and cheese
Roy fainted, then cried when UNC did lose

Last time …

Deep Thoughts By No-Look McFadden: Episode 50

#1
New rule: anyone using the phrase “nom nom” to signify their enjoyment of food can and should be punched in the Adam’s apple by the closest person.

#2
Isn’t it high time Tedy Bruschi stepped down as an “analyst” considering his brutal homerism? Dude’s playing pocket pool with Patsies owner Robert Kraft in a luxury box and ESPN doesn’t recognize that he’s simply a shill for New England? Also, there’s the not-so-ancillary fact that he’s, like, sort of terrible at commentating.

#3
The fact that there is a “21 Jumpstreet” movie destroys any semblance of remaining hope I may have had for Hollywood.

#4
How pissed off must Anquan Boldin have been about New England choosing to cover him with Julian Edelman, another WR, on the potentially game-winning drive of the AFC championship game? And is there any bigger sign of a lack of respect than the opposing coach choosing to put a No. 5 wide receiver out there as a cornerback to cover you? My, how the mighty have fallen.

#5
Stay with me here: There’s a commercial for Ally where people on the street are given a suitcase full of $100,000 to “watch.” Well, the dude from that commercial is a dead ringer for Arthur Ashe.



#6
I liked Archie Manning better when he used to be seen and not heard—like when he used to appear as Woody Allen’s doppelganger in the crowd at Tennessee games.

#7
I will admit that sometimes I find myself singing the “McDonald’s Girl” song. There, I said it.

#8
Not to sound crass, because it’s clear that Myra Kraft meant a lot to the New England franchise, but I think the storylines about her passing went a bit overboard, especially considering she got a ton more pub than some of the recent lost icons of the game. Maybe it’s just me.

#9
In these dark days of political inanity, what hope still looks -- and sounds -- like.

#10
I can’t freaking believe we’ve now done 50 of these things ... I can’t fathom that I actually have that many deep (and not so deep) thoughts.

Whatever Happens In Bangkok ... Isn’t Funny

Based on how much I dug “The Hangover,” there is no way to describe “The Hangover 2” without using the words “terribly disappointing.” Zach Galifianakis brought the only funny in the whole flick, and he and Paul Giamatti—albeit in a bit part—were the only redeeming qualities in the entire film.

I mean, I think most viewers would have predicted that it would difficult to re-create the series of mishaps that made “The Hangover” so hysterical, so it’s not like my expectations were through the roof or anything. But it sure feels like director/producer Todd Phillips ran out of amusing plotlines and went straight to outright crude. As a result, I found “The Hangover 2” to be mostly weak and unfunny.

So in the interest of keep this review comparatively quick, I loved “The Hangover.” Yet “The Hangover 2” sucked mightily.

“Ferris Has Been Absent ... 13 ... Times ...”

In honor of the mildly disappointing Ferris Bueller ad from the Super Bowl, here’s the flick with a little bit of ... well ... re-envisioning involved.

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXII: An Icon Of The Sweet Science Says Goodbye, Plus ‘Fins Try To Curry Favor From Local Hacks

Floated like a butterfly, free
And boy did he sting like a bee
But Clay had help in his corner
Today’s sad as a boxing mourner
Farewell to legend Angelo Dundee

Candidates head out to stump
In hopes of a ratings bump
As politics gets increasingly out of whack
The question that keeps coming back
Who gives a shit about Donald Trump?!

A team with too many holes
Well behind Heels, Devils and ‘Noles
But February just got here
And State has more wins than last year
Gotta start somewhere to reach all your goals

Used to support Komen for the Cure
Thought their intentions were pure
Then they got involved with political hacks
On Planned Parenthood they turned their backs
Sad day for cancer research, to be sure

The ‘Fins give the media fits
So they went on a media blitz
Went from paper to paper
Spinning more than Don Draper
Need fewer soundbytes, more hits

Last time …

I Would Like To Go To There

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Just ... stunning.