Feel free to watch the trailer, but I should warn you that Cameron Diaz speaks in an over-the-top Southern accent. In other words, don’t watch the trailer.

The film stars Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan (with an offer out to Timberlake). Isaac will play the lead character, Dave van Ronk, a real-life 1960′s folk singer who was friends with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and other famous musicians. There aren’t many details at this about the role Goodman will play but if history is any indicator, it will be the sweaty, violent guy. (Showbizz 411)

Special thanks to The Gif Lebowski.

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Due to popular demand, Universal Studios Home Entertainment will stream the cast Q&A live from Facebook for all you Achievers to enjoy.

Just tune in today at http://www.facebook.com/BigLebowskiMovie for a pre-show interview with the real “Dude” Jeff Dowd at 6:30pm ET, followed by the Q&A at 8:00pm ET with Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, John Turturro  and T Bone Burnett for a very special evening celebrating all things Lebowski.

And don’t forget, The Big Lebowski is now available for purchase on Limited Edition Blu-Ray. Now you can enjoy John Goodman at his sweaty best!

CBS Films has been throwing movies out there like energy-charged playing cards. So far, films like Beastly and The Mechanic haven’t really been hittin the box office that hard, but Gambit might be the new ace up their sleeve.

FYI, my mutant power is making dorky analogies. (ComingSoon)

No. They’re not developing a sequel but they’d love to see one. When asked about Reid’s announcement, Ethan commented, “I’m glad she’s working on it.” When asked if the project were actually being developed, he responded, “Well, we don’t but we’ll watch it when it comes out.”

Joel then added, “Especially if Tara’s in it.”

Huh. I wouldn’t peg them as fans of Senior Skip Day. To each their own, I suppose. (via The Playlist)

One thing you’ll notice when you see True Grit is that the dialogue is a little different. Obviously they don’t talk like OMG, WTF in the Old West, but it’s different than even the Clint Eastwood and John Wayne westerns. Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) speak with English grammar so formal it sounds like a period piece.

“The dialogue, the formality of it and the floweriness of it also is just from the book,” Ethan Coen said at a press conference for the film. “That might be a question for the actors. Jeff noticed. That was the first thing Jeff mentioned, noticed and liked, the kind of foreign sounding nature of the dialogue and lack of contractions. It wasn’t a problem for us. We just lifted it from the book. I don’t know how the actors feel about it.”

Charles Portis wrote True Grit and The Coen Brothers followed his novel more than the John Wayne movie also based on it. Supporting cast like Barry Pepper (as Lucky Ned Pepper), weighed in on the unique language.

“It was more like doing American Shakespeare,” Pepper said. “There’s almost like an iambic pentameter. There’s a musicality and a rhythm to the dialogue. It’s about trying to hit certain notes, maybe an irreverent falloff at the end of a line. It’s such a gift to be able to give some sort of lateral idea to an actor like, ‘Oh, I didn’t hear the musicality of the line like that.’ Just the scene blossoms, completely changes and becomes darkly humorous or odd or quirky or wonderful, bizarre.

Bridges messed around with the script a little. See if you can spot when he dropped an apostrophe into his words. “Every once in a while we’d allow a contraction to slip if it felt right musically,” Bridges said. “It was a fun challenge to take on.”

For a 14-year-old weaned on slang and abbreviations, Steinfeld probably improved her vocabulary the most on this movie. “When I first got the script, that was the first thing I really had to work on was making sure that I understood what everything meant,” she said. “Then I had to go back through and make sure I understood what everything meant to me emotionally and how I could relate to it in my own life.”

Joel Coen revealed that’s actually what won Steinfeld the part. “99.9% of the hundreds or thousands of girls that read for this part sort of washed out at the level of not being able to do the language,” he said. “That was something which was never an issue with Hailee. Right from the beginning it was clear that she was completely comfortable with the language. The language isn’t, as everyone’s pointed out, our language. That was the threshold level at which you could sort of hope to do the part but Hailee had it right from the get go in a very, very natural way.”

The language in the book is based on Portis’s research of the period, so it’s probably more accurate than the westerns we usually see at the movies. Pepper had another theory. “It’s so authentic in my mind because most people were probably pretty illiterate back then,” Pepper said. “They were maybe schooled on the King James bible and that really infused the way they spoke. I think a lot of westerns missed that.”

Ethan Coen agreed. “I’m sure Barry’s right,” he said. “You feel even more strongly reading the novel, the frame of reference for her character who narrates the novel is told in first person by her character is King James bible. It does seem clear that’s where the style derives from.”

True Grit opens Dec. 22

It’s a good thing True Grit is a good movie, otherwise the critics would have had a field day rhyming with Grit. If grit were all you needed, this film would deliver on the grizzled men, dirty and grumbling with rotted teeth. Of course, you can also admire the story, the characters, the world, the humor and/or the action.

The Coen Brothers introduce the West with a wondrous tone. Soft music and deep shots full of frontier life portray the world Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) enters. She handles her business immediately, negotiating money, room and board for picking up her father’s body. She even knows what writ to cite when haggling with Colonel Stonehill (Dakin Matthews).

Rooster Cogburn’s (Jeff Bridges) introduction is magnificent. Mattie first meets him in an outhouse, which is brilliant, but we don’t see him until he’s on trial. The camera sweeps around the courtroom, welcoming the viewer in and working up to the close-up on Rooster. The cross-examination explains all of Rooster’s kills, and it’s so entertaining how Rooster just has his way with the lawyer.

The Coen humor is present immediately, with dark jokes about a public hanging (the native American doesn’t even get to say his last words, which is accurately racist and hilarious). A mortician’s line pays off bitterly. First he tells Mattie, “If you want to kiss it, it’ll be all right” meaning her dead father. Later when she stays in his house he says, “If you want to sleep in a coffin, it’ll be all right.” A kind offer, but man, that’s dark. It can be lowbrow humor too. Mattie has to share a bed with a snoring blanket hogging grandma.

Mattie hires Rooster to help her find and kill Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), her father’s murderer. Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) is along for the ride. Rooster trash talks the Rangers before ditching LaBoeuf, and then of course he bonds with Mattie. She’s so cool that you see how a grizzled gunslinger would take to her. Rooster’s rant about his ex-wife is funny filler for the journey.

The dialogue is just the right kind of old timey where it doesn’t sound like us, but we can follow what they say. The cinematography still has some Coen touches. The opening shot with house lamps on a dead body at the door step under the snow. Then there are the heroic low angle shots and the score will swell to the hero moments like when LaBeouf shows up again at exactly the moment he’s needed.

True Grit is just quality filmmaking. It captures exactly what the filmmakers were going for and delivers a show full of different aspects for audiences to enjoy.

Directors: The Coen Brothers

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Hailee Steinfeld

Synopsis: A tough U.S. Marshal helps a stubborn young woman track down her father’s murderer.

Release Date: December 22, 2010

Releasing one bad-ass poster for True Grit just isn’t enough to appease those Coen Brothers. As the film’s December release draws near, the marketing team is beginning their full press. In addition to the earlier broadsheet, we now have five new posters — four character posters and one group shot. The shots show each character ready to tussle in the name of retribution or have retribution dispensed on them. Collect all five to adorn your moody Western revenge drama themed man cave. They look cool and all, but I’d like to see one for Bear On Horseback. He’s the real star. (via IMDb and Empire)

^{What is this? ‘The Wicker Man‘?}

Hot on the heels of last week’s True Grit teaser comes the full length jump off. This time around we see a lot more of Bridges’s Cogburn, Damon’s La Beouf, and Brolin‘s cowardly Chaney. We also see someone dressed as a bear on horseback. What kind of crazy scheme are they trying to pull?

LA BEOUF: Alright. When Chaney sees me approach dressed as a bear, he’ll think I’m just after his pic-a-nic basket. That’s when we take him in.

Female bear with a bow in her hair mounts La Beouf. Cue “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

COCKBURN: Ah, raped by a bear. Seen it hundreds o’ times. Tis a shame.

Note that I haven’t read the script, so the events detailed above may not actually happen.

Check out the full length trailer after the jump…

The teaser for Joel and Ethan Coen‘s True Grit just rode into town, and it looks like a good one. The action follows Hailee Steinfeld’s Mattie Ross as she teams with Jeff Bridges to hunt down the coward that killed her pappy. You might be quick to say that the Coens are trying to recapture the magic of No Country For Old Men, but that I really don’t see the similarities. For instance, this teaser keeps it fresh with sun-bleached Western scenery, gunfights, Josh Brolin, and dorky haircuts. Oh.

Check out the teaser after the jump…

True Grit: Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

(Apple)

Yesterday we saw Colin Farrell sporting a combover for Horrible Bosses, and now we’ve got a first look at Jeff Bridges wearing an eye patch for The Coen Brothers‘ True Grit. Oh those silly actors and their dress-up make believe fun time. Bridges plays alcoholic U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn in the re-adaptation of the Charles Portis novel.

The original adaptation starred John Wayne in the role of Rooster, who teams up with a 14-year old girl to avenge her father’s murder. Hailey Steinfeld plays the girl, Mattie Ross, this time around, and Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are also on board as a Texas Ranger and the murderer respectively. The film opens Christmas Day. I just basically wrote the formula for an Oscar nomination. Especially since Bridges has the drunk character thing on lock. If you win an Oscar twice for playing a drunk do you have to go to AAA? That’s Acting Alcoholics Anonymous for all you sober non-thespians out there. Don’t worry, my writing packet is already in the mail to Leno. 

Check out more pics of Bridges as Rooster after the jump.

(FilmDrunk)

After casting a nationwide net, Joel and Ethan Coen have found an actress to portray the young protagonist in their true grit remake. Thirteen-year old Hailee Steinfeld will be joining forces with Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon to hunt down Josh Brolin. Though Steinfeld isn’t as popular as her co-stars, all of that is going to change. Her character, the fourteen-year old Mattie Ross, is described as a “simple, tough as nails, young woman in post-Civil War Arkansas. Her unusually steely nerves and straightforward manner are often surprising to those she meets. She possessed plenty on true grit and determination."

Let’s hope that Hailee Steinfeld is every bit as precocious as the character calls for. Remember, fourteen-year olds in Arkansas are considered mature for their age. They’re at least mature enough to legally wed. (Deadline)