One thing that fascinates me aesthetically is when people come up with interesting and plausible readings of a text that are consistent with everything the text says, but radically at odds with the author's intentions. Salon dot com has a really nice slideshow of ten prominent cases of this, where the another artwork reinterprets an earlier one, called "What if the villains actually were good?"
Given my descendence from the Oklahoma Cogburns, I'm supposed to like the original film adaptation of Charles Portis' True Grit as well as the sequel Rooster Cogburn. But from a very young age I've found John Wayne movies unwatchable. . .
So I'm very glad that the Coen brothers are bringing their interpretation to the novel. Just from the trailer it looks to be filled up with several pickup trucks full of awesomeness, manifesting the most awesome of all Western tropes, the sweet taste of revenge slowly turning poisonouly sour in the protagonists' mouths, with a building crescendo of inescapable mayhem. For what more could one ask?
And some more evidence of awesomeness here.
And of course, even more (if slightly predictable) awesomeness.
There ought to be a category for the kind of popular anthropology at which Lileks excels. He's a national treasure. His website is one of the best things on the interwebs, containing:
Matchbook Museum.Lovely examples of commercial art in its smallest, most portable form.
Comic Covers.Unusual or risable examples of old comic book cover art. Part of Comic Sins.
100 Mysteries. Chewing through a big box of public-domain Hollywood mystery movies, one at a time.
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