2 Movies+1 Book=1 Incredible Story

**spoiler alert**

Is it possible to give a 1 person standing ovation?
I'd like to give one to Charles Portis, the author of True Grit.
I've never been able to read an entire book in one day. I just don't have the focus for it after years of multitasking. Goodness knows I try. But when I started reading True Grit, after watching both versions of the film, I tore through the pages without stopping. Perhaps it was because I loved the movies so much and knew the story well, or because I wanted to know which version of the movie's ending had it straight. Here's what I learned.

The real story of True Grit, in a nutshell: Mattie Ross' father, Frank Ross, is shot in cold blood by a man that he'd been trying to help. The man who shot him, Tom Chaney, disappears into the Oklahoma Territory where the local law can not go. Mattie insists that Chaney be brought to justice. She hires a U.S. Marshall to find Tom Chaney, seeking a man who's got grit. She chooses Rooster Cogburn, a one eyed drunk, and offers to pay him fifty dollars to find Chaney and bring him back to Fort Smith to be hanged for the murder of her father. Rooster reluctantly agrees, after much negotiating.
While Rooster is stalling the trek into the Oklahoma Territory, a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf, comes to Mattie about Tom Chaney. He is also looking for the man to be brought back to Texas and hanged for the murder of a senator and his hound. He tries to talk Mattie into letting him help her find Chaney then take him to Texas instead of Fort Smith but Mattie won't stand for this and tells LaBoeuf so in her purposeful and witty way. Rooster and LaBoeuf meet and discuss the girl and her plan. Eventually Rooster and LaBoeuf decide that they're going to go alone to get Chaney and Mattie will be notified when he's been hanged. She won't stand for this either and follows them, regardless of how they treat her.
Adventure ensues and they do end up catching Tom Chaney. Mattie is then kidnapped by Chaney's companions and Rooster and LaBoeuf are forced to flee and see her die. They go. And I'm sorry if you don't know how it ends because you're about to. Mattie shoots Tom Chaney but the blast knocks her down into a pit of rattlesnakes. She's stuck and her arm is broken. As she's trying not to slip through the moss and brambles, deeper into the pit, the snakes wake from their winter slumber and one bites her.
Chaney comes to and finds Mattie in the pit where he prepares to shoot her. Rooster comes back just in time to finish Chaney off, dropping him into the pit with Mattie. Rooster goes down into the hole and gets her out and leaves Chaney dead with the snakes and another mans remains. When Rooster finds out about the snake bite, he rushes Mattie back to Fort Smith, running her pony to death and then carrying her the rest of the way. She loses her arm. There's not a really happy ending, but everything ends up the way that Mattie wanted it to be. And for Mattie, justice is happiness.

The Coen brothers are brilliant. If their version of True Grit doesn't win at least 3 Oscars, I'm going to be really disappointed in the American public. (Facebook is not more important than the adventure of a willful young woman.) But their version is a little different. Mattie has different experiences with Rooster in the movie than she does in the book. LaBoeuf doesn't go his own way in the book either, but I think that the way that the Coen brothers wrote it makes the connection between Rooster and Mattie so much stronger. It makes the ending so much more powerful. I'd like to see it again before it leaves the theater, and I can honestly say that I haven't felt this way about a movie in a long time. Mattie Ross is such an incredible character that she sticks in my mind. I really appreciate Charles Portis' talent for providing his fourteen year old girl so much gumption and wit. I hope to someday write characters as well as he wrote Mattie.

Now, as for the original True Grit, its more similar to the book for the majority of the film. But given the fact that this version was made in 1969 and Mattie Ross was being played by Kim Darby, a much too sweet version of the sharp tongued young woman in the novel, the ending is different. It wouldn't be right for Miss Darby to appear to have shot a man or to have lost her arm. Not many people would have bothered to watch something like that in those days. (We're tougher nowadays) And I don't think that John Wayne would have allowed it.
On a side note, I didn't realize that John Wayne only knows how to be one character and that he reminds me of my uncle so much.

Charles Portis, thank you for your work. I will read it again and again. Joel and Ethan Coen, I love what you've done with your updates. And the dirtiness of it all really makes it seem realistic. I'm hoping that it wins the Best Picture award. I also think it would be very special if Jeff Bridges won the Best Actor award because John Wayne won it for the origincal Rooster Cogburn. And I loved the way Jeff Bridges portrayed the one eyed fat man. Hailee Steinfeild also deserves the Best Supporting Actress (which should have been the Best Actress, but whatever) because she was Mattie Ross exactly as Mr. Portis intended, I believe.
Good luck to all of them.

And if you haven't read or seen True Grit, I highly recommend doing both. And I'm sorry about the spoiler.

This Can't Be Stopped

I heard that they were making a new The Great Gatsby movie. I also heard that Baz Luhrmann is planning to direct it. And that he thinks he might do it in 3D. Oh please don't! Gatsby is perfect as it is, we don't need an over colored and over filmed in high speed re-enactment. This was so much bad news that I had to do more research to find out if it was true. It's unconfirmed truth, meaning that they' re talking about it and possibly planning on it, but they're not quite certain yet.  Other unconfirmed truths have Leonard DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire may act in it.

So you may ask yourself, why is this all bad news? I'm about to tell you.

First, let me start out by saying that I loathed The Great Gatsby when it was required high school reading. But wouldn't you know it, the summer that I graduated I read it again. It was the only non-bodice ripper in the box of books at the drive thru coffee stand where I worked. It filled only one long, hot day, but it was a good day. I enjoyed it so completely that I've read it a few times since and still find something more wonderful about it each time. And I like the movie adaptation because it is incredibly accurate, right down to the presence of the color green in the story. My fear is that they won't be able to recreate the same detail and accuracy and complexity of the story without completely duplicating the original movie but with different actors, like Psycho.

That brings me to the director. And for the purpose of this blog I will retract my previous statement about not caring who directs a movie. I do. Baz Luhrmann is not my kind of director and I find myself turning most of his movies off because I get tired of seeing bright colors and close ups revealing the pores on the actors nose. When I was fifteen and Romeo and Juliet came out in theaters, I was first in line. I devoured it and I loved it, but in retrospect I think it was only because it was a requirement in my social circle, and the bitchin' soundtrack. Now, fifteen years later, I can't watch it all and the music is only nostalgic. I lose interest when Juliet's mother is preparing for their masquerade and the camera moves so many times in so many different directions that it actually has an impact on my balance. Moulin Rouge isn't any better and I've never seen Strictly Ballroom simply because I'm afraid. Australia is better, as far as cinematography goes and it gives me a glimmer of hope that this won't be another of Luhrmann's spectacles.  I'm hoping with all of my hopes that he respects Fitzgerald's vision of the roaring twenties, and keeps the freak show out of it.

Now, 3D. 3D is awesome. They've made huge advances in the technology very recently and the 3D theater experience is catching up with the price of the tickets. Scenes have more depth, the viewer is more involved in the story. And in some movies, objects pop out at the audience, creating an all encompassing experience. But, not every movie needs to be 3D. And if Luhrmann follows through with what he's been talking about, we'll be seeing Gatsby, face down in a pool, in the middle of a theater. Please no. Gatsby is an experience in itself. It doesn't need to have access to addition dimensions to make it more enjoyable. What would be the point, other than to create depth? And if he does make it in 3D, it won't be filmed in 3D, so there won't be as much of the depth as we're getting from the other live action 3D movies. It's not necessary. I won't pay more to see it that way. I will pay more to see it in DLP though, because that's a sharp picture.

So, I'm not excited, and almost worried about the new Gatsby movie. I hope that Baz does a good job telling the story so that the people who've never been to East Egg will get the right idea about it. I hope that he does Mr. Fitzgerald proud and doesn't make it into an unsightly mess of color and close ups like he's done to other classic tales in the past.

Computer Love

I was on my daily Twitter Clicking (where I read through dozens of posts, open dozens of articles and then read them) when an article from TheOnion.com about a man who hates his copmputer, because of his printer. It reminded me of another article about printers and their subterranian origins that I'd read on TheOatmeal.com. Yes, I think I like websites named after food that is best not eaten by itself.
Anyway, it made me think about how I solve computer trouble. And the terrible damage I've inflicted upon the contents of my hard drive, and countless hours of typing.
My laptop is four years old. It's a dinosaur by most standards. It weighs more than a gallon of milk. But it's also got a 17" screen and a 10 key pad which were the newest and best features when I bought it. Today, it runs hot like lava if I use it for gaming (Plants vs. Zombies) and I've got a 9 cell battery on it to make it last for hours because the poor charger port barely hangs on anymore. I've also worn the wrist rests down with my mouse... it's not a mousepad afterall.
Anytime my computer has trouble, I always start with a power cycle. Oh yes, the good old turn it off and turn it back on routine. Fixes nearly everything. But as it turns out, this doesn't free up memory. This is where I start digging around in my files to remove things that I don't need. I used to use this nice writing software but when I found out that it was leaving little tiny save files behind, millions of them I'm sure, I decided it had to be stopped. I changed the settings on the software to stop making mini saves and then I set to work deleting the mini saves from my hard drive. I needed those 8 megabites really bad. And wouldn't you know it, I deleted all the files, emptied the recycle bin and defragged before I realized that I couldn't access my nearly completed novel. I do more damage than I'm worth really. It's a good thing that my printer decided that the planets were aligned just right for it to print it out. Needless to say, I knew the story very well after re-typing the entire thing. I don't use that program anymore, mostly because I destroy anything that isn't based in .pdf or .doc formats.
DRM's cause me other troubles, but that's a whole other blog. Just let me say, if you screw up your computer and have to get software support from your manufacturer, support that they charge for, just reinstall the OS and call them to fix it when it needs to be partitioned. I call this the mega power cycle.

Anyway, I wanted to share these articles with you, and a funny story about the pain I've caused myself with my own laptop. I'm looking into getting a new one someday. But until then, I'll be emailing myself my work every night and praying that my hard drive fights to see another day.

Stolen - Book Review

I finished another book today. That's the third this week. Probably not much of a feat for some, but for me, that's a big deal. I'm not good at concentrating long enough to be able to read quickly. I finished a Terry Brooks novel and a Charlaine Harris novel by Thursday and was feeling pretty good. I was also honestly not really looking forward to starting the second book of The Women of the Otherworld Series by Kelley Armstrong after the first one bored me so excessively. But I'm not one to hold it against an author if they bore me once. I'll give them a second chance, sometimes even a third chance if the characters are good enough. I have to say, Stolen exceeded my expectations. I liked the action.
Elena, the only female werewolf in the world, finds herself kidnapped by a parapsychological scientist and a few other people looking to manipulate the super human genes and use it to make the world a better place. Without retelling the story, let's just say that Elena is incredibly tough and resourceful, and the action in the story makes it hard to put down.
But what I really liked about this story was how Ms. Armstrong used Elena's self-depricating sarcasm to make her more real to me. She was speaking to me. It really involved me in the emotions she was feeling. When Elena was scared, I was scared, because the voice Ms. Armstrong used for Elena's narrative is so real. It's like listening to your best friend retell the story, but in your head. This might be one for an audiobook too, come to think of it.
I didn't realize how fast action moves in text. I suppose I haven't read many stories where fighting, running, hunting, or escaping were involved, or at least as involving as Ms. Armstrong makes it. Elena's inner monologue keeps the reader very in tune with what she's doing or what's happening around her. There's barely time to pause when the action gets going because Elena is so observant.

Overall, I liked Stolen better than Bitten and I'm looking forward to reading Dime Store Magic. Stolen was intense and exciting and I give kudos to Kelley Armstrong for really changing her style between the two books.