True Grit.

On the first Saturday of the month my wife and I will get together with a group of friends to pray a Rosary for Our Lady of Fatima. The common thread we share is that nearly all the families involved have a connection to the Philippines - usually the wife.

This month, the first Saturday of the month also happened to be the first Saturday of the year.

The prayer - rightly called a "cenacle" consists of not only the Rosary (with elaborated Mysteries) but singing and a Litany to the Blessed Mother. It takes about an hour. Afterward, we eat. All the families bring food in addition to the usually large amount provided by the host family of the month. Everyone is well fed, with plenty of food to take home.

Depending on who is hosting the prayer, the Filipinas will most often sing karaoke when everyone has finished eating. The men will retire to another part of the house.....or outside on the porch if no other room is available. This past Saturday, when the women were getting ready for the karaoke, the men decided, instead to head off for the movies - there wasn't anywhere in the house we could go to and it was much too cold outside.

We had two choices for the movie.....True Grit and Little Fockers. A couple of the guys felt that a new version of True Grit would be a sacrilege against the Duke. I didn't agree with that view and I was completely against seeing the Fockers movie. I find the name too offensive and not the least bit funny.

True Grit won out. We were all pleased....even the die-hard John Wayne fans. I have to say I enjoyed this version more. The only draw back I saw was the use of the Lord's name in vain by Jeff Bridges. I understand that this is the way the character would probably speak, so I won't completely pan the movie because of this.

If you'd like to read a pretty good review of the film, you can check out True Grit and the Grace of God.
I'd recommend the movie for adults; I wouldn't take my five year old to see it. The old fashioned English might make it difficult for folks who speak English as a second language (like my wife) to understand. All in all, in was a good movie for a group of old farts to watch.