The first film, released in 1969, sits in the mid-upper tier of movies made by its star, John Wayne (as well as winning him his only Oscar), and as such has achieved a kind of classic status among both Wayne fans and lovers of good westerns. There is a brand of theatergoer who maintains that there is no need to craft fresh takes on successful pictures, any more than we need new painters to dutifully re-imagine a masterwork like Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

On the other side of the debate are those who see good reasons for taking another swing at this piñata. Ever since the appearance of Wayne’s Grit, many fans of the novel — which first appeared forty-two years ago as a Saturday Evening Post serial written by Charles Portis (1933–) — have been keen to see a cinematic version that hews far closer to the plot of the book. Others see remakes as akin to a contemporary orchestra re-recording — and in the process re-interpreting — a famous piece of classical music, imbuing it with their own particular sonic signature. Seen in this light, the announcement of a new True Grit was a welcome one.

So now that the movie is out, who is right? Is the remake ill-advised, or a welcome addition to the western canon? Does the 2010 version have what it takes to make it a classic in its own right, or is it destined to be forever overshadowed by the 1969 original?

For all of the talk by the Coens of keeping their movie closer to the plot of the novel, the differences between it and the 1969 film are fairly minor — so much so that enterprising fans have cut new YouTube trailers to the 1969 version that manage to almost exactly match the trailer for the 2010 one. Both pictures rely heavily on the dialogue penned by Portis (a good thing, as the meticulously crafted and exquisitely well-toned repartee between the characters is the best part of the book, and one only need look to Peter Jackson’s painfully inept adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s equally rarefied Lord of the Rings dialogue to see what happens when one strays too far from the original work of literature).

Both also make some of the same changes to the characters. In the novel, Rooster Cogburn is about forty years of age and sports an openly disfigured and useless eye. In both films, he is played by a sixty-one-year-old actor (Wayne and Bridges were the same age when they undertook their respective attempts at the role), with each wearing an eye patch nowhere to be found in the book. (“I noticed by the lamplight,” Mattie says at one point in Portis’ original, “that his bad left eye was not completely shut. A little crescent of white showed at the bottom and glistened in the light.”) The murderer Tom Cheney, meanwhile, changes from a twenty-five-year-old in the book to a 40-50ish man in both movies.

Neither cinematic version gives the girl, Mattie Ross, the fiery bible-quoting Christianity the novel uses to help explain her perseverance and courage (the Coens make a surface stab at this, including an epigraph card that quotes the first half of Proverbs 28:1, but they still fall far short of Portis’ immersive ideal). In the book, Mattie Ross is constantly quoting scripture with expertise and passion to justify her hardheaded prejudices and decisions, often going so far as to offer extended (and, to the degree they disagree with her own beliefs, humorously acerbic) asides on the differences in the ways Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Catholics interpret the Good Book.

This is the kind of earthy Christianity that anyone who has roamed the South is familiar with. (Once, about ten years ago while in rural Texas, I asked an old lady whether a mutual acquaintance was a Baptist or a Methodist, at which point another old woman overhearing the conversation piped up with, “My momma told me Jesus was a Methodist!”) When writer Charles Taylor wrote in the New York newspaper Newsday that Portis’ Mattie Ross, “springs from the blood and memory of the American past, her every word a hymn to the plain grace of Puritan forbearance” he was referring to that kind of deep faith, leavened by humor. Unfortunately, although the novel is filled with it, little seeped into either film beyond window dressing.

Setting aside the few non-crucial variances in plot between the two movies (things like the result of Mattie’s encounter with rattlesnakes, and the fate of the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf), it’s in other areas that the differences between the two pictures really manifest themselves. Neither can truly claim to have superior acting: I would rate Wayne, Robert Duvall, and Strother Martin in 1969 over Bridges, Barry Pepper, and Dakin Matthews from 2010, while 2010’s Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Brolin, and Matt Damon take the prize over 1969’s Kim Darby, Jeff Corey, and Glen Campbell. The Coens are far more cinematic and talented directors than the competent but seldom inspired journeyman Henry Hathaway, but their stand-in locations for Arkansas/Oklahoma are far less memorable than the lush Colorado vistas chosen in 1969, and Elmer Bernstein’s musical score from the 1969 movie is light-years ahead of anything Carter Burwell has done here in 2010, or indeed in his entire career.

In the end, the 2010 True Grit is valuable in its own right, but doesn’t seem poised to knock the 1969 film off its pedestal as the definitive go-to version. John Wayne’s centrality to the western genre, and the film’s centrality to his reputation as an actor, guarantees that. Jeff Bridges plays a competent drunken hombre, but Wayne dug deeper into cinematic history by aping the voice and mannerisms of the great Wallace Beery (profiled in Part 2 of last year’s For Conservative Movie Lovers look at 1931’s The Champ). It’s the kind of performance that tells us that the actor is having as much fun with it as we are.

Coming full in the face of the onset of the Vietnam War and the Hippie Era (not to mention Leone’s genre-altering spaghetti westerns and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, which was released a mere week after True Grit), this unabashedly entertaining and overblown character study was also a courageous thing to attempt, possessing a resonance extending well beyond the confines of the picture itself. Film critic Richard Schickel captured the full measure of Wayne’s contribution in his June 20, 1969 review of the movie in Life magazine when, talking of the story’s famous climax (capped by the salty declaration, “Fill your hand, you sonofabitch!”), he wrote:

Watching, one shouts, laughs and, unaccountably, feels tears beginning to tingle. For you feel you may be witnessing not just the beginning of a good movie’s climax but a full-throated valedictory for a tradition. Here is Wayne, the last of a great generation of western heroes, committing himself again to an action that at once affectionately parodies and joyously summarizes the hundreds — thousands — of similar moments that have preceded it in film history. And there is a tremendous sense of relief in the way he goes about it.

This “tremendous sense of relief” is extended in a final scene that doesn’t appear in either the book or in the 2010 Coen version, where Mattie Ross is allowed to offer her family’s grave plot to Rooster while he is still alive, cementing their friendship, and Rooster rides off into the sunset, jumping the fence Mattie said he was too old and fat to attempt while shouting, “Come see a fat old man sometime!” Like the young boy in Shane shouting “Come back!” (which likewise wasn’t in the book, but was only added later for the film), it’s a scene so possessive of dramatic satisfaction (what Schickel called his “tremendous sense of relief”) that we walk away from the 2010 version feeling cheated that it has been replaced by the comparatively predictable, bittersweet, and elegiac ending of the novel, the kind of dreariness we’ve long come to expect from “real art.”

Regardless of the gateway to True Grit you choose — 1968 book, 1969 film, or its 2010 cousin — it has once again proven that it is a story good enough to sustain multiple treatments. I recommend taking them on in order: Portis, Wayne, Coens.

With that in mind, here are five drool-worthy stocking stuffers for the cinemaphiles in your family, all of them due to be released in the next few weeks.

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1. Frank Sinatra: Concert Collection (November 2, 2010, $54.99 at Amazon)

Get hep to this, man: seven discs containing fourteen hours of TV specials and filmed concerts, with Ol’ Blue Eyes joined by Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Gene Kelly, Antonio Carlos Jobim, John Denver, Bing Crosby, and of course Dino. Four of the specials have never been released, and a host of isolated TV clips are thrown in for good measure. Top it all off with a 44-page booklet chock full of rare photos and scholarly commentary, and the Chairman of the Board is truly back in all his scotch-soaked glory.

The seventh “Bonus Disc” sounds like the perfect thing to have playing in the background while you are decorating your tree: a “Happy Holidays with Bing and Frank” color TV special.

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2. The Goonies: 25th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition (November 2, 2010, $34.99 at Amazon)

A story by a pre-pretentious Steven Spielberg, a script by Chris Columbus, and a typically satisfying directing job by Richard Donner in between his work on classics like Superman (1978) and Lethal Weapon (1987). The Goonies is one of those movies that instantly time-warps guys and gals of my generation back to 1985. Nestled among other films like Back to the Future, Rambo: First Blood Part II, The Breakfast Club, Real Genius, Cocoon, Rocky 4, Pale Rider, and Witness, it helped make that summer magical.

I remember first catching it on a triple-bill with Gremlins and some now-forgotten horror movie. This is one of those movies that, in hindsight, is seen to have assembled a particularly deep cast. Young Sean Astin (later to play Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings films) Josh Brolin, Eighties staple Corey Feldman, Ke Huey Quan (whose performance had been the best thing in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the year before) the always fun Joe Pantoliano, Eighties cuties Kerri Green and Martha Plimpton, and even one of Big Hollywood’s own, The Mighty Robert Davi! I’m not sure how they managed to fit so much awesome onto only fifty gigs of Blu-ray, but that’s technology for you.

Whereas so many special DVD sets have extras that don’t impress, I dig the inclusion of a new board game in this Goonies Ultimate Edition — given the treasure hunt motif, it’s something that your kids will likely have fun playing after experiencing the movie for the first time. There’s also the requisite documentary, outtakes, Cyndi Lauper video, souvenir booklets, and even a rare commentary track that manages to reassemble all seven main actors along with the director twenty-five years later.

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3. The Night of the Hunter (The Criterion Collection) (November 16, 2010, $36.49 at Amazon)

The great actor Charles Laughton is already being represented on Blu-ray this winter via 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty, but you’ll also want to pick up this, his sole directorial effort. François Truffaut once wrote that Laughton’s strange film feels “like a horrifying news item retold by small children,” and noted that “it makes us fall in love again with an experimental cinema that truly experiments, and a cinema of discovery that, in fact, discovers.” What did he mean by that, you ask? Buy this new edition on Blu-ray and find out.

One of the things that attracted me to this new release is the massive 2.5 hours of outtakes included in this two-disc set. It’s a rarity to be privy to so much detritus where an old classic film is concerned, and I’m wondering what sort of illumination it will cast on Laughton’s directing methods.

Another boon is a video interview with actor Simon Callow, who in addition to being a fine thespian in his own right wrote a well-received biography of Laughton some years ago. Those of you who, like me, have been patiently waiting for Callow to finish the final tome in his magisterial three-volume biographical treatment of Orson Welles can content yourselves in the meantime with hunting down his Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (1988).

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4. The World at War (November 16, 2010, $112.49 at Amazon)

This ranks with Ken Burns’ The Civil War as one of the all-time great documentaries. Sprawling over nine discs and containing some thirty-five hours of material, it’s a must-see for all World War II buffs (and, in a better world, would be required viewing for schoolchildren). Narrated by the great Laurence Olivier and fully restored both visually (in 1080p HD) and aurally (in surround sound), each of the twenty-six episodes has never looked or sounded better — with one enormous caveat.

If you click over to this article on restoring the series for Blu-ray, you’ll note that the producers made the controversial decision to crop each disc’s image in order to make them fit comfortably onto the rectangular widescreen TVs which are commonplace in today’s living rooms. This has caused an uproar among cinema purists, who have damned the set with such ferocity that it now sports a paltry one-star ranking at Amazon despite its otherwise stellar production values.

Whether you mind losing 25% of the image in order to have it fit on your screen without black bars is an open question — I know plenty of people who hit the “zoom” button on their TVs as a matter of course, which effectively crops old movies the same way, so perhaps it’s not a big deal to many of you. But if it is, and you want the full image presented in the OAR (original aspect ratio), you’ll want to skip the Blu-ray entirely and buy the 30th anniversary DVD set released in 2009.

Either way, you’ll want to see this epic series if you haven’t yet been exposed to it.

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5. True Grit (December 11, 2010, $17.99 at Amazon)

As one commenter said on the Blu-ray.com forums when this title was announced, “Nothing makes a format viable like a large selection of John Wayne films.” Amen, brother.

This is, of course, a play at marketing synergy by Paramount, who is releasing John Wayne’s 1969 original on Blu-ray in order to coincide with the release this Christmas of the (admittedly promising) Coen Brothers remake starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and The Goonies’ Josh Brolin. But who cares about the excuse? It’s enough that Wayne’s Oscar-winning performance will be shining on your TV screen in high-def, with Elmer Bernstein’s wonderful score thundering through your speakers.

Don’t make ol’ Rooster Cogburn tell you twice to “Fill yer hands!” with this one.

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Is there anything else coming out on Blu-ray this Christmas that you’re particularly excited about? If so, share it with us in the comments below.

#1: Us Citizens.

#2: You elected officials.

I really prefer writing long pieces on why Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and Johnny Rotten rule. It’s more fun to talk about how everything in popular culture that everyone else likes actually sucks, and I’m even going to provide some inspirational music selections below. But duty calls. Right now, a bunch of people whose salaries you and I pay and who work for us are telling us to shut up and do as we’re told.

That’s just not gonna happen.

Message to our representatives: Hey Bub, I didn’t swear allegiance to the Constitution and deploy twice to defend it to shrug my shoulders and say, “Well, guess that old First Amendment thing doesn’t apply to me” just because you’re tired of hearing about how completely and thoroughly your plan to turn our health care system into another DMV sucks. Here’s how it’s going to be: Like it or not, you’re going to stand there, zip your pie hole for once, and listen to your constituents.

You may not like us mere citizens daring to question you. You may turn to your entourage, gasping in horror because some mere business owner has the nerve to ask you why you think shooting his taxes up over 60% so some deadbeat who doesn’t want to fork over the money to buy his own policy can get covered for free is a good idea. I know it must be a shock to realize that you aren’t some minor potentate, immune to criticism and answering only to yourself. But that’s too damn bad. This is a democracy, and you work for us.

It’s time to remember that the key word in the phrase “public servant” is “servant.” You’re not our “masters,” not our “rulers,” and not even our “new insect overlords.” You’re our servants. So serve. Start off by bringing me a draft Dos Equis lager, with a lime, pronto. Oh, and vote against socialized medicine.

And another thing, Mac. Like the rest of your employers, I don’t dig being called a “Nazi” by one of your little lefty functionaries. First, it’s inaccurate. Maybe your flunkie’s commie professor at Bennington never taught him enough to know that the Nazis were on his side of the poli-sci spectrum and not mine. The word “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist,” not “National Free-Market Supply-Side Libertarian with a Strong Grounding in Traditional Values.” Perhaps I could be called a “Nfmsslwasgitvi,” but I’m sure as hell not a “Nazi.” Second, me and my ancestors have protected this country from Nazis, commies, thugs and other assorted scumbags for generations, and if someone freaking calls me a Nazi to my face someone’s getting knocked on his fifth point of contact.

And stop impugning my motives, Dude. Supposedly all of us who aren’t thrilled about this health care reform abomination are speaking up only because we’re in the pay of the evil Big Insurance and Big Pharmaceuticals. To that, I ask a question – Where’s my check? I don’t want to be saying that this is idiotic for free like a sucker.

Now, if we speak, will they listen? Oh yeah. In 1986, I spent the summer drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls in Washington, activities I interrupted occasionally to intern on the Hill for Congressman Duncan Hunter (Duncan ruled – he kept a 12 gauge in his office closet and thought we should give the Contras the Bomb). The point is that I remember the intense interest the representatives had in constituent contacts – they counted every letter, categorized them and paid very, very, very close attention to the mood of the voters.

You better believe that every member who doesn’t represent a district to the left of Berkeley is feeling the heat and shuddering in terror at the prospect of having to find a real job in January 2011 if he or she votes wrong on this one. Not everyone gets to run for re-election in a district where 72.5% of the voters agree with the proposition “U.S. out of North America.“ Write, call, fax, email, and best of all, show up at a town hall meeting or at the local office – it matters.

And when you speak out – and you must speak out, even if your name goes into the big database of wrongthinkers at Central Committee headquarters (Note to der Commissar: There are two “H’s” in “Schlichter”) – here are some basic principles that you should demand that any health care reform plan incorporate:

1. Health care is not a right. You are not entitled to someone else handing it to you for free any more than you are entitled to free Special K, a free condo in Maui or a free Nintendo Wii.

2. Everyone is responsible for obtaining and paying for his own and his family’s health care. But isn’t it true that some folks just don’t have the money? Well, here’s a powerful wealth-building strategy that I’ll let the freeloaders out there in on for nothing: Get a job. Then you can buy your own damn health insurance. I work three jobs and I’m getting a masters degree. I’m not loving the idea of paying your freight too, so roll off the couch, do a push-up, and start eyeballing the Craigslist want ads.

3. I actually sort of respect illegal aliens – anyone who will swim a river, cross a desert and dodge cops to work for minimum wage cooking me Big Macs is the kind of guy I want in America. But that doesn’t mean I want to pick up the tab when one gets a rash. Go home, get in line, then welcome back when your turn comes.

4. The government is so wrapped up in health care that right now you effectively have no choices.  I know this because I pay for my employees’ health care and I have a wide variety of one choice at one price among two companies. Thanks for “helping” me choose by eliminating all choice, California.

5. As a lawyer, let me draw the fire of my peers. The malpractice system is nearly as big a scam as global warming – the only difference is a few people actually believe in global warming. Everyone in the legal field knows that the malpractice system is a racket.

6. The government must have nothing to do with providing health care. Nada. Zero. Zip. There’s no need to extend its unbroken track record of failure right into my doctor’s office. Time to get yourself pumped up and ready – and to give me something to talk about that tangentially relates to pop culture.

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Here are six great tunes to get you in the frame of mind to do your job as an American citizen – to make yourself heard:

1. Get a Job by The Silhouettes. Obeying this concise directive would go a huge distance in solving the problem of the uninsured.

2. The Ballad of the Green Berets by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. This, the most literal song of all time, is a potent reminder that the right to speak out we are exercising didn’t come free and didn’t come cheap. Don’t waste your rights – dissent is almost as patriotic as fighting your country’s enemies or backing up those that do.

3. Fight the Power by Public Enemy. Embrace the chorus and ignore the rest of the lyrics, along with the silly Malcolm X imagery. Catchy, motivating and who can resist old school Flavor Flav!

4. The Theme to the Magnificent Seven by Elmer Bernstein. The ultimate psyche-up music for Americans fighting against all odds. But as the Seven showed, when we’re united we’re invincible – and we’re not about to let ourselves be vinced by a bunch of collectivist doofuses, lefty hacks and their union thugs.

5. God Bless The U.S.A. by Lee Greenwood. The best thing about this song is the way its raw sentimentality and naked patriotism tends to make liberals so uncomfortable. That’s the spirit animating this campaign to preserve our country as we know it, and a little faith in our country’s principles is nothing to be ashamed of. I just wish it had some snarling guitars.

6. I Fought the Law by the Clash. Okay, here’re the snarling guitars. And yeah, I know the Clash thought they were leftists. I don’t care. Anyway, here’s my tortured reasoning as to why this song is relevant here: The law is our Constitution and the First Amendment, the liberals are fighting it, and we’re going to win. Okay, it’s just a really great song that I use to get me amped up for court.

So, ignore the people telling you to sit down and shut up, get pumped, move out and make your voice heard. And I’d sure appreciate it if someone out there could let me know where I can pick up my check from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Here are my 5 favorites in all their YouTube glory.

1. Dimitri Tomkin – Red River (1949): Sweeping, epic, majestic and impossible to believe never nominated for an Oscar. An important part of scoring is deciding where to put the music and ”Red River” has some of the best spotting choices I’ve ever seen. It kicks in precisely when it should, not just to enhance a moment, but also to change moods and start fresh. Watch the scene again where John Wayne (who’s absolutely brilliant in his most unsympathetic role) tells Montgomery Clift (every bit as good as Wayne) he’s gonna kill him. This is “the” moment in the film and you expect dark, melodramatic music, but when Clift walks away and gets on his horse the score soars with adventure completely changing the mood and stripping the melodrama from the moment.

Bonus Points: Can anyone name the iconic moment created in a later Howard Hawks/Dimitri Tomkin Western using part of this score? Hint: It involved a Rat Packer.

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2. Ennio Morricone – Once Upon a Time in the West (1968): There was never a more perfect pairing of composer and director than Morricone and Sergio Leone. Each film seemed to be a warm up for the next until perfection was reached in 1984 with “Once Upon a Time in America,” which has one of the finest scores of all time. This piece from “West” is the theme for Charles Bronson’s haunted character Harmonica, and not only is it stand-alone gorgeous, but also equal parts haunting, lyrical and pure badass.

Bonus Points: Bronson’s character is haunted by the murder of his older brother. Can anyone name the 90’s Western that paid homage to this now iconic moment?

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3. Elmer Bernstein - The Magnificent Seven (1960): Good heavens, if this piece of music doesn’t make you want to save a poor Mexican village from rampaging marauders, you must be a girl or a soccer fan. I love a score that has you subconsciously waiting for it to kick in, and when it does … cinematic perfection.

Bonus Points: James Coburn’s knife-thrower Britt, has the best line in the film, “Nobody throws me my gun and says run… Nobody,” but how many lines did he have total? And who had nearly as few?

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4. Maurice Jarre – The Professionals (1966): We just lost Maurice Jarre, but what a legacy. He might be best known for his work on “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Dr. Zhivago,” but his contribution to “The Professionals” can’t be understated. The music’s affection for Mexico is crucial in foreshadowing the story’s touching final twist and manages to convey both the Burt Lancaster character’s robust lust for life and Lee Marvin’s stoic, violent professionalism.

Bonus Points: Sorry, don’t have one. Instead, take this moment to remember the awesomeness of Lee Marvin, Woody Strode, Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, and Robert Ryan. Yes, once upon a time men made movies.

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5. Ennio Morricone – For a Few Dollars More (1965): This is the second film in the “Dollars” trilogy, and my favorite of the three. The first, “A Fistful of Dollars” is just lean and mean; the third “The Good the Bad and the Ugly,” is full out operatic; but this one is a little of both and kind of perfect that way. You can sense director Sergio Leone leading up to bigger things, finding his way into the creation of mythology that will ultimately lead to his masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Same with composer Morricone.  Confident artists, but still a raw confidence.

Tough choice between this and “Dr. Zhivago” (1965). Maurice Jarre won well-deserved Oscars for both (and “A Passage To India” in 1984). Other memorable, hummable, off-the-top-of-my-head favorites include “The Train” (1964), “The Professionals” (1966) and ”Witness” (1985).

When you mix sound for a film – score, effects, dialogue – not taking the audience out of the story is a very difficult part of the job and just one way to begin to appreciate the talent and craftsmanship required to do what Jarre did; to craft lush, large, and rousing scores that not only don’t distract, but enhance everything on such an emotional level you can’t imagine the film without it. You don’t hear great film scores, you feel them, and as the above clip proves, Jarre’s best work didn’t need anything to accomplish this — not even the film.   

The man was a giant when giants like Miklos Rosza, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein and Bernard Hermann walked the earth. No small thing.

Maurice Jarre was 84.