The Roll and Clatter: Raves and Rants: True Grit, Star Trek, and Carcassonne

I saw the Coen Bros' True Grit last night and i'm glad I did. Rarely do you see westerns nowadays, much less westerns that bring such critical acclaim to the table. Even rarer is the when you see a remake done so well that it brings you to tears, despite knowing what happens. True Grit did almost everything right when doing a remake, rather than trying to redo the old film shot by shot, and punching it up with CGI and modern film techniques, the Coen Brothers instead dug deeper into the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. What they dug up was a suspenseful tale of revenge and redemption and they wove it into a compelling film that is my current front runner for Best Picture (granted I have not seen Black Swan, 127 Hours, or The Social Network yet.) What interests me is whether or not Jeff Bridges wins best actor two years in a row (he would be among the elite company of Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracy if he would) I think that he gives a performance worthy of the accolade, and I think it would be the only time in history that two different actors would win the award for playing the same role. Also, if Hailee Steinfeld doesn't win Best Supporting Actress, I think it will be a crime. Speaking of Hailee Steinfeld, how would you like a film like this to be the first one of your career, some people get all the breaks! Speaking of lucky breaks!

After True Grit, my wife and I came home and played a game of Carcassonne, a great tile based game that saw a lot of play over the holiday break. Kathleen usually beats me at this game I admit, but last night I was absolutely clobbered. I forget the final score, but I know that she beat me by over one hundred points! After taking the customary time for a husband to mope over his defeat, I got to thinking. I am recognizing a definite pattern in the Carcassone final score. I realized that one rarely sees a game end decided by only a couple of points, and that they are mostly one sided blowouts. I think that this is in large part due to the new expansion that I received for Christmas, Abbeys and Mayors. Since receiving this expansion the games are being decided by wider and wider gaps. Either this is a flaw in the expansion design, or new strategies need to be conceived, time will tell. The biggest wrench in the expansion is the barns in my opinion. The barns remove other players farmers and can end up dominating huge tracts of land which can lead to massive point swings to whoever can place their barn first. I guess it adds an element of strategy, but it feels really un-carcassony. Speaking of beatings!

Finally, we watched the J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, mostly because we love the musical score for the film and thought it was time to give it another shot. All I will say is that they never should have had a scene between Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy, because it's really obvious that Quinto can't hold a candle to Nimoy's Spock. There's a number of other issues I have with the film, but when it comes down to it they are all resolved by realizing that this is a cheap thrill cash in of a film that capitalizes on a once great series that defined science fiction. Star Trek isn't meant to be sexy, nor does it need to be sexy, it just needs to be Star Trek.