May 26th would have been John Wayne’s 100th birthday, and appropriately, the major studios are rushing out product over the next few weeks to commemorate one of the most popular, enduring stars in motion picture history. On Tuesday, Paramount will release True Grit: Special Collector’s Edition, which features a sparkling new transfer, a new 5.1 audio mix, and some terrific extras for the Duke’s one and only Oscar win for Best Actor. As fresh and funny and exciting as it was almost forty years ago, True Grit remains one of the Duke’s fans’ favorite titles, featuring a marvelously skilled comedic performance by Wayne that most deservedly won the 1969 Oscar.

The plot is of the utmost simplicity (as all good Westerns should be). In post-Civil War Arkansas, Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), a no-nonsense, sensible, yet annoying and controlling 14-year-old, sends her father Frank Ross (John Pickard) off with spending money for his business trip to buy breeding horses. Taking along shifty ranch hand Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), Frank arrives in Fort Smith, and tries to keep the gambling Chaney out of trouble, but the shifty Chaney loses control and shoots Frank dead in the street. Accompanied by hired hand Yarnell (Ken Renard), Mattie arrives at Fort Smith to retrieve her father’s body, and to see what’s being done about finding his murderer.

Once she learns that Chaney has thrown in with “Lucky” Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and his gang, now hiding in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), she realizes she needs a U.S. Marshall to track Chaney down. Looking for a man with “true grit,” she’s told Marshall Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn (John Wayne), is the meanest, most determined marshal in the state, and she demands that he help her – for a fee, of course. Rooster, an ornery old cuss with only one eye and predilection for getting drunk, agrees to her proposal – and then promptly abandons her (after spending her money) when Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) offers quite a bit more money to track down Chaney, who’s wanted in Texas for the murder of a state senator. Mattie, disgusted as much with Rooster’s loose living as with his subterfuge, tries to tag along, but the men ditch her. Showing her determination, and earning the growing respect of Rooster, Mattie fords a deep river on horseback, and tracks them down, eventually convincing the duo that she should come along on their trackdown.

But the initial high spirits of this adventuresome group quickly dies down, as the seriousness of their mission becomes clear. Encountering two of Ned’s gang in a ramshackle cabin by the river (Dennis Hopper and Jeremy Slate, as Moon and Emmett Quincy), Rooster baits them, trying to get information about when Ned is due to meet up with them. In his growing rage, Emmett fatally stabs Moon before being shot, and Moon gives up the information about Ned before he dies. Laying in wait at the cabin for Ned, La Boeuf jumps the gun and fires on the group, scattering them, and allowing Ned to escape. With Ned now wise to Rooster’s prescence, Rooster, Mattie and La Boeuf have a much more difficult time in tracking down the cornered Ned, resulting in an action-filled climax that has tragic results for one of our heroes.

As anyone who follows Oscar history knows, the accepted mantra for John Wayne’s True Grit Best Actor win is that somehow he “stole” it from the more deserving Dustin Hoffman turn as Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. Always pitted in articles and books as some kind of reactionary “career vote” from old timers in the Academy who resented new talent “hippies” like Hoffman, what those authors always forget is that Jon Voight was also nominated for Midnight Cowboy, and that more than likely, they split their votes, allowing Wayne a clear shot at victory (Richard Burton, for Anne of a Thousand Days, and Peter O’Toole for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, never had a chance). As well, the party line also seems to want say that Wayne wasn’t nearly as “deserving” as Hoffman, because he just merely parodied his own screen legend. After all, Wayne was still coming out of the critical nadir of his career, where he had earned universal scorn from the largely liberal movie critics who saw his previous film, The Green Berets, as a buffoonish call-to-arms in support of the Vietnam War. Clearly, the critics (who at the time grudgingly enjoyed True Grit) saw Wayne’s win as some kind of further betrayal by an actor who they increasingly either openly disliked or condescendingly patted on the back.

Which, of course, is all hogwash, because there’s nothing artless or simplistic in Wayne’s performance here. In Rooster Cogburn, Wayne distilled almost forty years of acting experience into one of his most memorable performances, creating a character that was a skillful combination of his rugged, loner hero from films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and the big, loveable lug comedian from such he-man spoofs as North to Alaska and McLintock!. Quite a bit of the backhanded compliments Wayne received for the award mentioned he won it only because he was willing to look old and fat while wearing an eye patch (a notion perhaps exacerbated by Wayne’s own words during his Oscar acceptance speech, where he said he should have put on that eye patch a long time ago). There’s no denying that the Academy loves to give out awards for actors who significantly alter their appearance in their bids for Oscar gold (Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, Charlize Theron in Monster); even Hoffman exploited the extreme wardrobe and hairstyles of Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy.

Watching Wayne here, he doesn’t look any fatter or thinner than he did in other films, but he does use that eye patch to marvelous effect, goggling that one good eye around, swiveling his head about like a wounded bear, and jutting out his jaw like some pugnacious brawler. His whole physical being in True Grit is a sight to behold. Far looser (and even more confident in his instrument, if that’s possible) than in previous films, Wayne becomes the character actor he always should have been. Standing like a peg-legged gargoyle in the cabin scene with Moon, baiting him into giving out information on Ned, or whining an imitation of Mattie, screeching, “Mama! Mama!“, Wayne the superstar lead becomes Wayne the masterful character actor. Watching him do his celebrated “rat speech” (“Now, this is a rat writ, writ for a rat…”), or hearing him booming about not being “afraid of no boogerman,” you start to wish that Wayne could have left his standard “John Wayne” performance more often for comedic diversions in character parts. There’s nothing simplistic or easy in this accomplished farceur’s performance here; seen today, Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn more than matches Hoffman (if that’s even fair to compare, anyway, considering how different the roles and actors are).

If we only had Wayne’s performance to recommend True Grit, I’m not sure it would have the enduring popularity it enjoys to this day. Director Henry Hathaway, who had worked before with Duke (North to Alaska, The Sons of Katie Elder, among others), has an elemental simplicity to his compositions, a gravity and squareness to his blocking, that creates almost a mythical environment in which his characters interact. With stunning, deep depth-of-field cinematography by Lucien Ballard, many scenes in True Grit pop out with an almost 3D effect. This is the West the way we imagine the “West” to be in movies; it’s a fantasy land of whispering Aspens and jagged peaks, outsized to match the iconic image of Wayne topping the hill on his big American stud horse (even though the story is set in Oklahoma, they filmed it in Colorado). The sky is crystal blue, the clouds purest white, and the rivers all sparkle.

And that conspicuously hyper-realistic production design sets up an intriguing contrast with the relatively gritty screenplay of True Grit. Based on the popular novel by Charles Portis, Marguerite Roberts’ screenplay, despite all the stops along the way for Wayne to delight us with his expert mugging, never strays from the central seriousness of the group’s endeavor. Aided immensely by Kim Darby’s charming, winning performance as Mattie (something that can’t be said about Glen Campbell’s awkward first time in front of the camera), Robert’s screenplay never avoids the harsher realities of life in the old west (the death of her father, and the plainness and matter-of-factness of his funeral), nor, significantly, the brutal violence always ready to break out. A particular favorite with families when it was released, True Grit is the damnedest G-rated film you ever saw. Even though the original trailer indicated the film was first rated “M” for mature audiences, it ran in wide release under a “G” rating, with all the violence still intact (I’d be curious to know what they cut out, if anything). Most notorious, certainly, is the gruesome maiming of Moon by Emmett (watch those finger tips fly right off the table), and the subsequent gory stabbing of Emmett by Moon (it’s a scene worthy of Peckinpah).

While some critics questioned this depiction of extreme violence in an ostensibly comedic family film (as they would always question the violence in Wayne’s films), I can assure you that most Midwestern audiences at least, back in the late ’60s, saw nothing wrong in this rather sturdy Old Testament depiction of righteous retribution in Wayne’s films. Call it reactionary, or quaint, or a philosophical sop for nervous audiences who saw all aspects of society in upheaval in 1969, when Wayne discusses what to do with rats/criminals (“You can’t serve papers on a rat. You either have to kill him or let him be.”), many citizens nodded silently along with Rooster in their dark theaters. The film’s most iconic sequence, where Rooster faces down Ned and three other bandits, firing a pistol in one hand and a rifle in the other, with his horse’s reigns in his teeth, epitomizes not only this take-no-prisoners form of justice, but also neatly spoofs – and amazingly at the same time, enlarges – Wayne’s mythic image. I can clearly remember sitting at the drive-in, watching this scene, and when Duvall calls out Wayne, telling him, “I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man,” the other viewers, muffled in their cars, yelling and laughing when Wayne responded, “Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!” Improbable, magical scenes such as that are why Wayne was always the larger-than-life fantasy hero to the average filmgoer, forming a powerful attraction with viewers based on wish-fulfillment and nostalgia that most film critics never completely understood.

The DVD:

The Video:
The True Grit: Special Collector’s Edition sports an improved widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 TVs transfer, correcting the tendency to shift to red that occurs in the previous 2000 DVD release. Looking as if it was shot yesterday, grain is non-existent; overall, the True Grit: Special Collector’s Edition is a big improvement over the previous DVD release.

The Audio:
The addition of a remixed Dolby Digital English 5.1 is most welcome in this True Grit: Special Collector’s Edition. The gunfights now have a real kick, with the pistols sounding like cannons. Most of the action is in the front speakers, but all of them get a work out during the more active scenes. The original English mono soundtrack is also available, along with a French mono track. English subtitles are available, along with close-captioning.

The Extras:
There’s a slew of extras for this True Grit: Special Collector’s Edition. First, a full-length commentary track, featuring Jeb Rosebrook, Bob Boze Bell, and J. Stuart Rosebrook. It’s informative and lively, although some of the conclusions reached about the significance of the film may be stretching things. Next, there’s a four minute featurette, True Writing, that looks at the original source novel by Charles Portis. Working With the Duke is a ten minute extra that pays tribute to the Duke by some of the people who worked with him in films. It’s entertaining, without being fawning. Aspen Gold: Locations of True Grit is an interesting return visit to the small Colorado town that served as the backdrop for the film (it doesn’t look all that much different, actually). And The Law and the Lawless, a five minute featurette that looks at the real-life lawmen and criminals who populated the Old West. The original trailer is included, as well.

Final Thoughts:
True Grit is a masterpiece of elemental, Western mythos aligned with Wayne’s masterful burlesque of his two most recognizable screen incarnations: the rugged, melancholy loner and the big-hearted farceur. Director Henry Hathaway creates an iconic mixture of family adventure and comedy, while never shying away from the brutal violence and Old Testament retribution of the righteous in this hugely entertaining evocation of the cinematic Old West. The new transfer and 5.1 audio mix of the True Grit: Special Collector’s Edition make this a must for Duke fans. If you’ve heard about it, but have never seen it, I urge you to buy it. I highly recommend True Grit: Special Collector’s Edition.

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Paul Mavis is an internationally published smokescreen and television historian, a colleague of the Online Film Critics Society, and the initiator of The Espionage Filmography.

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“It’s films like this that give
B-films and Southern hillbillies a bad name.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The king of schlock, Herschel Gordon Lewis (“Blood Fest”), is at
it again in this cheesy horror/comedy film. The production values were
nothing to write home about, the acting amateurish, and the story was torturous.
It’s about six (three couples) vacationing Yanks who are cheerfully lured
into being the reluctant guests for the town’s 1965 Centennial celebration
of the day a band of renegade Union troops destroyed the Southern town
of Pleasant Valley (the low-budget film was shot in St. Cloud, Florida
for about $65,000). This revenge theme is taken from the Broadway play
Brigadoon, as producer David F. Friedman stole the idea about ghosts seeking
revenge and substituted Pleasant Valley for the Scottish village that comes
out of the mist every hundred years. 

It’s films like this that give B-films and Southern hillbillies a
bad name. The town appears creepy from the moment it puts out detour signs
to lure the travelling Yank tourists. The respectable locals (all ghosts),
such as the mayor, are so gleefully taking part in this ritualized slaughter,
that they seem almost as frightening to behold coaxing the tourists to
their death as they are when they commit the mutilations. Two Thousand
Maniacs! is rife with graphic gore. To start the ball rolling, one woman
is hacked apart with an axe, her husband has his arms and legs tied to
four horses that are sent galloping in different directions, another man
is rolled down a hill in a barrel from whose sides sharp nails project,
and his wife is tied to a platform and has a boulder dropped on her. Connie
Mason and Thomas Wood are the only guests who escape. 

To add to the folksy country atmosphere (ugh!) some solid bluegrass
music is played throughout and there’s a melodious theme song called “The
Rebel Yell” (composed and sung by the director himself). 

The film was carefully scripted and allocated a bigger budget than
most Herschel Gordon Lewis films. It did well in the box-office, but not
as well as the shoddier and more low-budget Blood Fest (filmed for about
$24,000). Lewis must have thought, why bother trying to fancy things up
as he went back to making his trademark bad film that wows them in the
drive-in. This is a must-see for cult fans of this so-far undiscovered
B-film auteur director, others should proceed with caution as the film
might prove entertaining but in a deleterious campy and kitschy way. 

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Windhorse begins a piece adore a PBS documentary. Shot in television-style video – which has the harsh regardless glossy look inseparable associates with documentaries – the surroundings is a Tibetan village where people unassumingly walk by the camera, goats are being herded and children can be seen playing. No rhyme seems to be a principal character. Or more rigidly everyone is the leading character. The at best thing leading us to believe we are watching a story is that there is a voice-over that describes the sequence of events and what is about to chance. Then some Chinese policemen hit town and shoot a man who is praying.

The film cuts to modern day Tibet where we learn that the three children, all now grown, have gone their separate ways in life. Two are a brother and sister the other their cousin. They are Dolkar (Dadon) a karaoke singer in a local Tibetan club, her brother Dorjee (Jampa Kelsang) who is sullen and out-of-work and their cousin Pema (no name in credits) a Buddhist nun.

While everything seems somewhat normal in their lives what becomes quickly evident is that all of Tibetans are living under the harsh rule of the Chinese who do not respect their sovereignty or recognize their country leaders. Most particularly they do not recognize the Dalai Lama and they don’t want anyone displaying photos of the Dalai Lama – who was banished from Tibet in 1959 but who today still remains the spiritual leader of most Tibetans.

The two main characters in the film are the brother and sister, Dorjee and Dolkar, both of whom live at home with their mother father and grandmother. Dolkar has just had a bit of luck and has been chosen – with the help of her Chinese boyfriend – for a record deal in which she must sing pro-Chinese songs. Dorjee, on the other hand, is frequently sought after by the Tibetan resistance movement but he has become indifferent and cynical to the struggles of his people.

Both at the crossroads of their lives they get word that their cousin Pema has been imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese authorities for protesting. Both Dorjee and Dolkar will have to look within themselves, come together with their family, make sacrifices and understand the necessity of courage and conviction within their lives and their culture in order to help their family and themselves. Faced with the impossible task of getting the word out about their cousin they recruit the help of an American tourist (Taije Silverman) with a video camera.

Director Paul Wagner and screenwriters Julia Elliott and Thupten Tsering have a straight forward agenda and that is to present to the Western world with what is going on in Tibet today. Unlike Kundun or Seven Years in Tibet which both came out about the same time – Windhorse is not about the Buddhist culture nor does it romanticize the Tibetan culture. Instead it presents a sober view of people who live under the oppressive communist Chinese government.

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Windhorse – whose title refers to Tibetan prayer flags – was shot on video for a couple of reasons. First is because of the production’s small budget but too the filmmakers used video because they wanted to shoot quickly in areas of the world where they didn’t want to be under the scrutiny of the Chinese authorities. While most of the film was shot in Katmandu, Nepal some of it was clandestinely shot in Lhasa, Tibet where the filmmakers had to pretend they were tourists to get their shots.

The cast is made up mostly of non-actors who fit their roles perfectly with a natural grace that a professional actor would have to force. Because of this nothing seems out of place in the film – or more precisely even though the acting is not award winning it is much more believable because everyone seems as though they are playing themselves. Due to this it makes it a bit easier to understand the struggles of the Tibetan people. And even though the story has an obvious plot line it is still effective and engaging from beginning to end. It also might be called a necessary film because it dares to confront and push a political issue that often gets lost in the romanticism and beauty most people associate with Tibet.

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Like “Pinky and the Brain,” each event of “Phineas and Ferb” begins the very surrender, with the two main characters wondering what to do. But rather than trying to bolt over the age in every part, as those lab mice did time and again, the boys use their imaginations to expand their everyone in order to make their 104-day summer vacation more fun.

This half-breed lifelike Disney Channel show from creators Dan Povenmire (“The Family Guy”) and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh draws inspiration from a number of different shows. In to boot to a tiny Pinky madness, it also has the zaniness and fluid leaps in logic of “The Fairly Oddparents,” and a conceptual framework that’s reminiscent of another popular Disney Channel explain, “Kim Possible.” Like that series, “Phineas and Ferb” offers a mixture of spy plug and teen angst, with another random animal tossed into the mix. In preference to of a in plain sight mole rat, it’s a platypus. And in this can, it’s the dearest who’s the secret agent. Sounds weird? It is, but it’s also a smartly written series that has more inventiveness and energy than most of the cartoon shows that are being produced these days. It celebrates the power of the imagination and revels in every one of those gigantic leaps in logic that frustrate gravity and demand the infrastructure destined for every junket. What’s more, Povenmire and Swamp seem to adore working without a returns.

Phineas Flynn (Vincent Martella) and Ferb Fletcher (Thomas Sangster) tangible with their parents–the infrequently-seen Linda Flynn (Caroline Rhea) and even more conspicuously absent Lawrence Fletcher (Richard O’Brien)–somewhere in the “Tri-State area.” The boys get along great and are regular magicians when it comes to the visualization and construction of large-escalade projects to blow up b coddle their summer days fun. Nothing is too pompously or too complicated for them, because if they can imagine it, they can raise or do it. In some of these episodes, for warning, they erect a haunted house to cure the hiccups of their friend Isabella (Alyson Stoner), they construct a rank seashore just outside their fenced-in backyard, and they become one-hit wonders just to come by a taste of the music business. Much more, and it would seem kidney work, not bet, and these guys like getting away with things. But what goes around comes in every direction, because just as they’re pulling a tied unified on their parents, these stepbrothers have no idea that the kith and kin pet is a secret agent who discretely saves the world every episode.

Dig so divers cartoon shows, there’s a sole nemesis, and for secret surrogate Perry the Platypus (call him “Agent P”) it’s a baddie who’s a hardly ever reminiscent of Gargamel from the expert “Smurfs” show. The damage Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (voiced by Povenmire) turned outlying to be the mad scientist that he is because, as we learn in one occurrence, he was feigned by his German chaplain to illustrate for hours and days at a time in their garden to replace the family’s stolen garden gnome. Such is the deliciously twisted humor of Povenmire and Fen. Power P goes after Doofenshmirtz in what almost feels like a reiterate (but someway intersecting) universe, then goes back to his regular life as the family pet. “There you are, Perry,” Phineas often says after Agent P has once again quietly triumphed. Postulated the boys’ own outlandish adventures, it’s a deceitful dose of imagination pushed to the brink.

The animation is a mixture of geometric shapes (Phineas’s crumpet is a simple triangle), a style that again falls somewhere between cruel angularity of “The Really Oddparents” and the softer world of “Kim Realizable.” It’s a pleasing-to-regard style that’s totally compatible with the manoeuvre inventions, wise-mock writing, and breakneck pacing. But what makes every episode really click is a event gag that last wishes as remind older viewers of the “Bewitched” TV series, where a neighbor who knew darned thoroughly that Samantha was making strange things turn up next door kept trying to get her husband to look. But every time he would, things would have returned repayment to typical. The changeless thing happens here, with Phineas’s older natural sibling Candace (Ashley Tisdale, “High School Musical”) obsessed with trying to near her innate to see the kinds of stunts that her brothers are pulling on a constantly basis. And the gag is even funnier transplanted to a situation involving an older sister and troublemaking younger brothers–something that so many kids across America can single out with.

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As a matter of in truth, this is everyone show that older siblings commitment enjoy watching with younger ones, and level pegging parents, who may be reminded of the old “Adventures of Unreliable and Bullwinkle” shows because of the irreverent, self-conscious style. The show has the same kind of energy too, and weird sensibility that stops short of the manic, up-the-pace nonsense that often drives the Cartoon Network shows. “Phineas and Ferb” is vast fun, and almost certainly whole of the best animated shows out there now. Here are the episodes included on this DVD:

“One Good Scare Ought to Do It!” Pts. 1&2