He also plays a pretty mean bagpipe!pvitari wrote:
Campbell is a terrific guitar player and has a beautiful voice . .
Check out his cover of "Mull of Kintyre" - mostly a vocal, but he does contribute a respectable pibroch in the interlude!
He also plays a pretty mean bagpipe!pvitari wrote:
Campbell is a terrific guitar player and has a beautiful voice . .
Yes, you are right, in that he passed over the River . . . but maybe he was right, and you still will meet him again . . sometimes, you gotta just believe.JackFavell wrote: He told me we would meet again....in that beautiful voice. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
Wendy, have you ever caught the indie film Down from the Mountain? It came out back in 2000 (debuted, I think, @ The Sundance Festival), and it documents performances & personalities of all the musical contributors the Coens used for O Brother, Where Art Thou?.JackFavell wrote:
The man was fascinating, and one of the true wild spirits - he was a riverboat captain and fiddler, a banjo and guitar player and he could step dance. I'll never forget him. He lived up to everything I thought he was when I was six, and that is really saying a lot.
I can't imagine someone not having seen the original True Grit. That's like not having seen Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, or Citizen Kane. The novel was a literary masterwork in its day, and if anything, it is held in even higher esteem today.MikeBSG wrote:I saw the new "True Grit" yesterday. I've never seen Hathaway's film, although I've seen clips from it in tributes to John Wayne. I did read the novel way back when and didn't especially like it.
Can you provide a link to David Thomson's review?MikeBSG wrote:...I think I have to agree with David Thomson's review of it, basically that this is a movie you could watch with your eyes closed because the Coens seem to be fixated on the dialogue and narration. I don't think I've ever seen (or should that be heard) a more talky western.
These are astute observations and accurate ones. Damon's posture may be his own contribution. He works hard at the physicality of his character, and he may be drawing on the same sources of inspiration that you've noted.MikeBSG wrote:The Coens talk as if they know nothing about John Ford, but two shots in the film are clearly inspired by Ford: the first view we have of Damon, sitting on the boarding house porch (Fonda in the chair in "My Darling Clementine"), and a shot of Bridges approaching a mine filmed from within the mine (Wayne in "The Searchers.")
I liked the "coda" as well. Straight out of the novel. It should have been better. It's not quite right. The whole business is so off-pitch.MikeBSG wrote:The part of the movie I liked best was the coda, in which Matty is grown-up. Perhaps I liked this best because this (her confrontation with Frank James) is the only part of the novel I remembered. (Or maybe I didn't really like the actress who played the 14 year old Matty.)
Agreed.MikeBSG wrote:Frankly, I think "The Assassination of Jesse James" is a better film.
I disagree with that statement - sounds too much like a distended generalization; I'll bet Frances McDormand would disagree as well, especially as the direction by the Coens for her role of Marge Gunderson in Fargo led to her winning a Best Actress academy award.Richard--W wrote: Posturing an actor and composing him in ways that show dignity and strength, or in ways that just favor him, used to be a director's job, but it's not what the Coens do.
There is an entirely different sensibility at work. A different mind-set. Francis McDormand is not Jeff Bridges, Marge Gunderson is not Rooster Cogburn, and the Coen's aren't married to Bridges like one of them is to Francis. The Coens do everything they can to take the dignity and cleanliness out of Rooster. In the Hathaway version these are assumed traits, as we say.klondike wrote:I disagree with that statement - sounds too much like a distended generalization; I'll bet Frances McDormand would disagree as well, especially as the direction by the Coens for her role of Marge Gunderson in Fargo led to her winning a Best Actress academy award.Richard--W wrote: Posturing an actor and composing him in ways that show dignity and strength, or in ways that just favor him, used to be a director's job, but it's not what the Coens do.
Richard--W wrote:I don't see a John Ford influence in the Coen brothers True Grit, nor in any of their films for that matter. They have denied his influence in interviews.
On the other hand, if you review Henry Hathaway's earliest westerns and historical films, including his early 1930s Zane Grey adaptations and The Shepard of the Hills with Wayne, you'll see that True Grit is consistent with Hathaways themes and preoccupations, consistent with his dramatic approach, his aesthetics and his technical decisions. Hathaway was a serious director, and he has a lot to say in his True Grit.
Richard