I'm checking in from my exciting days of viewing! Charlotte and I both lied TRUE GRIT very much. I've never seen the first film vewrsion and never read the novel, but I found this movie truly moving and wonderful: there's a certain sense of myth to the story of the smart young kid going out to avenge a father's death. At one point, I thought, she will lose something in this story, because in a good myth or fairy take the hero will give up something to achieve his goal. I had no idea what the loss would be and I found the epilogue to the story and all the loss tremendously heartbreaking. I think Charlotte was amazed to find me weeping through the credits.
As to the cast, I thought they were all wonderful: Matt Damon makes a good character actor I prefer to his juvenile lead roles, Josh Brolin makes his killer truly creepy and deserving to die, Jeff Bridges reminded me nothing of John Wayne and I think that's a good way to play the character. His final sequence to save Mattie's life fulfilled her comment to him early in the film that she heard he possessed true grit. The young lady playing Mattie Ross sold me completely. I thought the mid-nineteenth century west was captured both in the design and in the langiuge, which always sounded to me the language spoken by literate and intelligent people of the period. I loved Carter Burwell's score, which sounded like popular ballads and hyms of the same time period. I don't think I ever want to see the original film now. This was awfully perfect.
When I got back here, I finished WIVES & DAUGHTERS, and I enjoyed it. I kept waiting for Francesca Annis' horribly shallow and materialistic stepmother to get her comeuppance; I was sure she had a lurid past that would force her into exile but it didn't happen. I liked the series very much, just not so much as CRANFORD or NORTH & SOUTH.