Until a month ago, when severe thunderstorms and strong wind gusts devastated electric power service to most of Columbus, I’d never heard of a “derecho.”
It turns out that a derecho is a line of thunderstorms that produces widespread, damaging “straight line” winds. Today, when another black, gusty thunderstorm cell rolled through town, people were talking about derechos again. (Whether Columbusites are pronouncing the word correctly is another question.)
Isn’t it kind of late in human history to be coming up with new names for weather? I’ve lived in the Midwest for most of my life, and severe thunderstorms are not uncommon during the summer months. Until now, they’ve just been called severe thunderstorms, which seems like a more than adequate descriptive phrase. Why not stick with that, rather than coming up with an unpronounceable, unknown term?
And while we’re at it, why do new weather systems always get Spanish-sounding names? First El Nino, then La Nina, now derecho. It sounds like the name of John Wayne’s ranch in The Sons of Katie Elder, or perhaps the moniker for a new Taco Bell faux Mexican concoction. A derecho probably would involve browned meat, smoked bacon, Velveeta cheese, habanero sauce, and ranch dressing, sprinkled with crushed Doritos and wrapped in a soft taco shell.
No doubt some college student would drive hundreds of miles, through countless severe thunderstorm cells, to give it a try.
Who would have thought that they would remake any John Wayne movie, much less True Grit? Have they remade Sands of Iwo Jima, or The Searchers, or for that matter The Sons of Katie Elder? Wayne was such a huge personality that it often was difficult to separate him from the story. The Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, took on that challenge, however, and the results are strikingly good. It is a beautifully photographed movie, with an excellent soundtrack and a stunning script. To me, the biggest star of the movie is the English language. Were the mud-spattered, tobacco-crusted residents of the old West really so articulate, with vocabularies as sweeping as the broad western vistas? Whether they were or weren’t, it is a pleasure to listen to the actors speak the lines and appreciate the expressive richness of the spoken word.
The acting is pretty good, too. Hailee Steinfeld, who plays precocious and iron-willed 14-year-old Mattie Ross, has a breakout performance. The remake succeeds, in part, because the focus of the film is on Mattie Ross and her quest to avenge her father, and it wouldn’t have worked if the actor playing Ross had not delivered. Steinfeld does, in spades. Jeff Bridges has by now perfected the grizzled, whiskey-soaked hero role, and he is terrific — funny, pathetic, maddening, and then awesomely heroic when the chips are down. Matt Damon is excellent as LaBoeuf, the talkative Texas Ranger. Watching Damon convincingly playing a man of the frontier, you realize that he is developing a portfolio of fine performances in a wide variety of roles. Damon is one of the most versatile actors of his generation, and this film gives him another chance to display his talents. There are a number of other great performances; my personal favorite was the beleaguered stable owner who comes to regret negotiating with the single-minded Mattie bent on properly settling her dead father’s affairs.
Webner House 