I’d just got out of a meeting when I saw people tweeting about the above trailer. I’d planned to stay somewhere nice and cool until dark (it’s stupidly unseasonably hot here in LA), but as the wifi I was on was a stuttering mess I braved a blast-furnace cab ride to get back and watch the thing properly.

Looks, feels and sounds perfect.

I read the novel on my last visit here and quoted from it. Funnily enough I borrowed “double tough” as a working title for another project in the same way that the Coens lifted the phrase “blood simple” from Hammett’s Red Harvest.  I adore the original movie, but I was sure the new version would be closer to the text and the trailer is pushing all the right buttons.

Just about all the new stuff I’m pitching this trip is Western at heart so it’s great to see a character as quintessential as Rooster Cogburn back on the big screen. But the Coens are right in pushing Mattie front and forward. True Grit was always about her.

Roll on Christmas…