Now THAT'S the novel I remember
Mar. 25th, 2011 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdymonkeyBecause if you wait around for some nonexistent MAN to notice you and ask you out or for it to occur to any of your friends, most of whom don't live all that conveniently close anyway, you won't see the damn thing until it hits cable or DVD. (Oh, that sounds bitter and hormonal. Go me.)
I took off for the UA Emery Bay straight from work and caught an early show of "True Grit" while it's still in a theater. I read the novel by Charles Portis when I was somewhere around the age of the protagonist. When I saw the movie version some years later, featuring the wooden performances of pretty much the entire cast except for John Wayne, I was kinda disappointed.
The new version is much better. MUCH BETTER. It feels like the True Grit I remember reading. I was a horse crazy kid with a prodigious vocabulary when I read it. As a pathologically shy kid, I cheered when she stood up to adults and made them do right by her. As a suburban kid who had to ride in a fenced ring in a county park, I thrilled to her quest to bring her father's killer to justice. Mattie was one of my heroes and Kim Darby turned my hero into an overgrown pain in the ass without a sympathetic trait to her name.
Hailee Sternfield is the Mattie I remember. Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon are fine as Rooster Cogburn and LaBoeuf, respectively, but it's Mattie's story and Ms. Sternfield nails it.
Exhibit A, horse crazy fourteen year old.
I took off for the UA Emery Bay straight from work and caught an early show of "True Grit" while it's still in a theater. I read the novel by Charles Portis when I was somewhere around the age of the protagonist. When I saw the movie version some years later, featuring the wooden performances of pretty much the entire cast except for John Wayne, I was kinda disappointed.
The new version is much better. MUCH BETTER. It feels like the True Grit I remember reading. I was a horse crazy kid with a prodigious vocabulary when I read it. As a pathologically shy kid, I cheered when she stood up to adults and made them do right by her. As a suburban kid who had to ride in a fenced ring in a county park, I thrilled to her quest to bring her father's killer to justice. Mattie was one of my heroes and Kim Darby turned my hero into an overgrown pain in the ass without a sympathetic trait to her name.
Hailee Sternfield is the Mattie I remember. Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon are fine as Rooster Cogburn and LaBoeuf, respectively, but it's Mattie's story and Ms. Sternfield nails it.
Exhibit A, horse crazy fourteen year old.
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Date: 2011-03-26 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 09:37 am (UTC)A horse got spooked when my mother and I were riding in a carriage in Sevilla when I was nine (touristy thing). We went careening through a traffic-filled street before the driver finally got the beast under control. After that experience, I never had much time for horses. ;-D Despite growing up in Texas.
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Date: 2011-03-26 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 05:19 pm (UTC)