Just caught True Grit, it's a great film, Jeff Bridges is phenomenal as Rooster Cogburn (played by Joooohhnn Wwaaayyyynnne in the original), a role model for all ageing alcoholics. He almost manages to steal the show from lead actress Hailee Steinfeld, who according to IMDB was born in 1996. Most of my socks are older than she is. Matt Damon is perfect as a bumbling, incompetent, Texas Ranger and Josh Brolin does a nice cameo as the villain of the piece. But back to Hailee Steinfeld. A supremely competent big screen debut for the teenager, the most impressive part of which was not her gun-play but her perfect use of the glorious dialogue, which is surely how Shakespeare would have written had he been born South of the Mason-Dixon line. Most importantly, for a teenager, she came out of it looking reaaally cool.
I also watched Everything Is Illuminated, which I would only really recommend to people who have either read the book or have a degree in Russian (there's an awful lot of it, without subtitles). I'm not entirely sure the film wouldn't have been better with subtitles during the Russian dialogue, and certainly the most beautiful parts of the book were the fictional histories of Trachimbrod that Foer wrote that weren't included, but they would have been nary impossible to have incorporated into the film without making it any more bewildering than it already is. All in all I enjoyed it, especially Eugene (Gogol Bordello) Hutz's perfomance as Alex. I'm not a huge Elijah Wood fan (excepting Deep Impact obvs.) and I still feel perhaps a more appropriate lead could have been found, but he can't help who he is (I suppose) and he gave a good performance. Worth a watch, just pay close attention. And keep a Russian phrase book handy.
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