I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man

Well, apparently the Coens are going to remake True Grit. Well, they are re-adapting the novel, hoping to make a more faithful adaption. To me, that almost seems worse. The Western is a dying genre. There are still some films with Western themes but, they are very distilled along with other factors to paint a larger picture. A full out Western is seldom attempted anymore. It seems that you have to be an established director to even get the financial backing to do one. It's the Coens turn to try a full out Western.

The feeling I have is that, in oder to revive the Western as a genre is to experiment with it. There needs to be some changes made. This genre is very much an American institution, for obvious reasons. Not many international filmmakers tackle the subject matter because, well, it seems foreign to them. Though, ironically, for such an American genre, the best filmmaker (arguably) to work within it was an Italian director.

So, because of the American mainstream's influence, there was little experimentation done with the genre. Since the True Grit remake will be closer to the source novel, this will not change. That is a shame. Despite a couple here and there, I don't really enjoy straightforward Westerns. It is the few that mix it up and play with expectations that I enjoy. A film like Near Dark is considered to be loosley Western, and it does not hide that. The film is excellent and is probably my favorite vampire film (well, until i saw Let the Right One In). Another film which I felt was vitally important to the Genre was Johnny Guitar. Nicholas Ray's offbeat Western took Joan Crawford and made her a badass. And it fucking worked. Mix in some themes of sexual confusion and frustration and you've got a whole new can of worms. Unfortunately, that can did not stay open for long since there were no offshoots of this broken seal of a film. Hell, they haven't even released the movie on DVD in the United States. This seems frustrating to me. Though, the film was not an immediate hit, it gained a reputation and has now been inducted into the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". I would have hoped that this influential film could actually influence someone to make a Western that strayed from the norm. The genre has so much potential. There has been little done to experiment with it so I hope that one day, a stream of creativity will strike the Western.

Well, I still have faith in the Coens. Even if their last remake, The Ladykillers, was a giant heap of misguided awful, I believe they still have the ability to do this film correctly. Even though I don't think they can pull off another great streak like Barton Fink to Hudsucker Proxy to Fargo to The Big Lebowski, I am confident that they can make a good film. The Coens have definitely earned my optimism.