Harry Bingham is a bestselling novelist, He also runs The Writers’ Workshop (http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk) which helps with manuscript evaluation (http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/manuscript-evaluation-what-to-expect/) and finding literary agents.

Manuscript evaluation is the art and science of giving tough, constructive advice on a draft manuscript (typically, but not always, a novel). What you should expect is:

1) An expert reviewer. The only reviewers worth their salt are (a) professional authors who have published with major publishers, or (b) commissioning editors at major publishing houses (typically fully or semi-retired, as they won’t have time otherwise). Authors are generally more valuable when writers still have technical skills to learn (that’s 98% of writers, by the way). Commissioning editors come into their own when writers are nearing publication quality, but need to tune their manuscript for the market.

2) A long, diligent editorial report. A good consultancy should guarantee a minimum length report (typically 3000 words), but reports should be as long as they need to be, not as short as they can be. If an editor comes back with 10,000 words of advice, that’s a strong sign that they’ve really taken apart your book in intricate detail. What matters is that the evaluation of your manuscript is thorough, honest and constructive.

3) A willingness to be brutal. There’s just no point paying for a service where your editor will shield you from harsh truths. Sure, it’s nice for the ego to be flattered, but it’ll do nothing for your publishing career. So you want to make sure you work with people who are prepared to be tough.

4) Knowledge of your market. If you’re writing Young Adult Urban Fantasy, then you don’t want a reviewer who only writes literary fiction. Obviously. Make sure who you’ll be assigned beforehand – or ask to see the biogs of those on the editorial team.

5) An expectation of dialogue. You need to be able to talk with or email with your editor to follow up on their manuscript evaluation. What did they mean by X? Would it be all right if you addressed point Y by doing Z? That kind of thing. There shouldn’t really be any preset time limit on that discussion. It just needs to be done right.

6) Links with literary agents. No, don’t get all excited. Those links with agents are only going to matter IF and WHEN your work is strong enough to sell. That point may not happen in this lifetime … but if it does, then you want to work with a consultancy that can deliver the goods. That means strong, demonstrable links with leading agents. Again: if in doubt, ask. It’s your money and you have a right to know.

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Are you interested in giving article marketing a try? Whether you are a website owner who is trying to promote your own site or you are an article writer who is just getting started with your best article submission service, here are some tips that can help you succeed.

But first things first, you do understand that when you are writing an article with the main purpose of submitting it to the article directories that you are writing for your human readers, and not for the search engine spiders. This is important because if you aim for the latter then most likely your article would be hard to read.

And why should you do that? It is because more internet marketers or online article writers tend to write more with the search engines in mind. They do search engine optimization on their articles that their keywords are all over it, making it almost unreadable for human readers. Do not do that because at the end of the day, it will be people who will be judging the worth of your article and of the website that it promotes.

You should also not just write and write, but if you are going to send it out to the different article directories, you should also have an article marketing strategy in mind. And if you are going through a complete SEO course, then chances are there is such a strategy that is included with it. Make full use of it because if it worked for the creator of the course, certainly it would work for you.

Another great tip that I can give you, and this is surprisingly being overlooked by many writers, is that you should make sure your article is free from grammar and spelling errors. You would be surprised at the number of supposed to be great article writers who do not even run spell check on their word processors. They think that if they are being paid for peanuts writing an article (which many are) that they should not exert an effort to double check the quality of their written work. Just do not do that. Avoid such a practice at all costs because it is your writing business that will eventually be affected.

There you have it. These are just some of the basic article writing tips that you should know today. These are very important particularly if you are planning to eventually provide article submission services which many internet marketers are currently in need of.

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If you have been around the internet marketing circuit then you are already familiar with the benefits that you can get out of the best article submission or writing technique that you can learn. This is because even though article marketing is an old promotion technique, the fact remains that it still works.

One thing that you should understand, and this is highly important, is that you should always think about your human readers when you are writing your articles. You should avoid the trap of trying to please just the search engine spiders because this will lead you into writing articles that are very hard for people to read and to understand.

And here is why you should not write for the search engines: your articles will often read like crap. Yes, I’ve said it outright. Since when you do SEO on your article it often means being conscious of the keyword density. They say the higher the keyword density the better for search engine optimization. That maybe true years ago but not anymore. Because if you that, and believe me that many people are still doing that, your article will be very hard to read and understand.

You should also get your hands on an article marketing strategy and often you can get one from an internet marketing or an SEO course. Most of these courses, no doubt, also teach article marketing because it is still a very much effective technique in promoting a website. So instead of you trying to spend a lot of time devising your own, you might as well make use of someone else’s tried and tested technique. Is there any shame in that? Of course not. Your goal is to do effective article marketing, not to create your own process.

And last but not the last, you should always check your articles for any grammar and spelling error. Of course it is understood that every now and then there would be mistakes that you would not notice, but to do it habitually is a sign that you are not putting much love on your work. Do not fall into the statistics of the countless number of online article writers who do not put much effort into their article writing that they do not even proofread it. That is a very poor writing practice and one that will surely affect their reputation in the long run.

These are just a few of the basic article marketing tips that you should try and I assure you that if you practice them, your article writing or your article submission services will become popular with many internet marketers out there.

Harry Bingham is a bestselling novelist, who knows how to find a literary agent (http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/how-do-you-find-a-literary-agent/). His company, The Writers’ Workshop, can help you secure a literary agent (http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/ ).

Finding a literary agent is easy – it’s writing the book that’s hard. So here’s what you need to know.

1) Figure out if you need an agent
You probably do, but you may not. Roughly speaking, if your book is written for a mainstream audience (ie: might sit at the front of the shop or be a bestseller) then you need an agent. If your book is very niche, then you don’t.

2) Write a good book
No, don’t smirk. That’s the only bit in this whole post that really matters. If you write a good book, and you aren’t a total numpty about approaching agents, then you’ll be fine. If, on the other hand, you are amazingly good at approaching agents but your book isn’t up to scratch, you won’t get anywhere. So write a good book. No – scratch that – not a good book. A stunning one. A dazzling one. One that echoes in the consciousness. One that makes a professional reader (ie: agent/editor) sit up late with tears in their eyes. That’s how good you have to be.

3) Get hold of a good listings directory
In the UK/Ireland, that means you need to get hold of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. In the US/Canada, that means you need to get hold of Writers’ Market. These directories are universally recognised as the authoritative works in their fields. (And if you write for children or young adults, then there are specialist versions available for you.)

4) Select your hit list
It’s fine these days to make multiple submissions to agents, and I strongly recommend that you do just that.

a) How many agents to approach?
My own view is that you should send your work to no more than 8-12 agents, in 1-2 waves of submissions. If you’ve gone out to 12 agents and haven’t yet found someone who loves your book, that’s 99% likely – probably 99.5% likely – because your book isn’t yet strong enough to sell, in which case you need to address your manuscript, not chase after more agents.

b) How to pick agents – the complicated method
If you want, you can research agents in a lot of detail. Research your favourite authors (not always necessarily in the genre you’re writing in) and find out who represents them. (Try author websites and/or acknowledgements pages for this info.) Make a list of notable authors in your genre and look at who represents them. From this info, make a list of your target agents. And if you do all this research, feel free to show that you’ve done your homework. You can write to Alison Agent saying, ‘Dear AA, I’m writing to you because you represent Charlotte Chicklit, whom I adore, and I think that your sense of humour may well be similar to my own. I’ve written …’

c) How to pick agents – the lazy method
Personally, though, I’m a fan of a simpler, lazier method. The thing to remember is that literary agents are very generalist. My own agent represents crime writers, chick-lit writers, literary authors, dead authors, serious non-fiction writers, popular non-fiction writers … indeed, there’s no category at all he would not represent if the right book came along. Nearly all agents are the same.

So here’s the lazy method: make sure that the agents you are about to approach don’t specialise in something completely different from your own manuscript. Apart from that, just get your stuff out there and see what happens. My agent has recently done a fantastic job selling my crime novel in the UK, the US, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and a fair few other places too. Yet there’s no way you’d look at his track record and figure him as a crime agent. He isn’t a crime agent. He just loved my book and knew how to sell it. Most agents are the same.

5) Write a good query letter
Americans can make their query letter a little more sales-y, a little more pushy. Brits should make their letters a little more businesslike. But the essence either way is to keep the letter short, informative and well-written.

6) Write a good synopsis
A synopsis is a short (1-2 page) summary of your plot. Basically, you are giving your story away, in full. You are not writing a sales blurb. You are not writing the stuff to appear on the back of the book.

7) Present your manuscript in a way that won’t make agents scream
Mostly that means writing in a decent sized font (12 is the standard), in a normal type face, with decent line spacing (1.5 or 2), and normal margins. Remember to number your pages. Punctuate properly and proofread your work before sending it out.

8 ) Don’t bother ‘copyright protecting’ your work
You don’t need to do it at all if you’re British, and you only need to do it once you’ve got a publishing contract if you’re North American. In the latter case a publisher will do it for you.

9) Light candles, tie a black cat into a knot – and go for it
Get your manuscript out there. See what happens.

10) How long to wait?
A really good agency will respond in 2 weeks or so. 6-8 weeks is more typical. Over 10 weeks is pathetic. Personally, I think it’s OK to nudge after 8-10 weeks.

11) What might they say?
There are basically four categories of response:

a) go away, we hate you. Maybe 90% of writers will get a standard-form response from a given agency, one that just rejects your work without giving you any reason why.

b) go away, but we don’t hate you. If agents are interested enough in your work that they ask to see the whole manuscript, you may get a personalised response which says, ‘I don’t want to represent you, but there were certain qualities in your work which I did like’. That’s a ‘positive rejection’. Congratulations!

c) we’re currently unsure if we hate you or not, so can we have a second date? If an agent doesn’t think your work is saleable, but they are keen to work with you, they may send back some editorial gripes and ask you to resubmit. In which case, work on your manuscript, then do just that.

d) we love you, we adore you, we want to have your (literary) babies. Yes: sometimes agents take on new authors. It’s happened to me, and could easily happen to you.

12) If I do all this and don’t get anywhere?
If you follow all this good advice and don’t get taken on by an agent … then may I gently suggest that you have not yet completed Step 2 – the one about writing a good book. In which case, you should get professional help: pay a literary consultant to read your book, tell you what’s wrong with it and give advice on how to fix it. Good luck!

Find out the article marketing strategy that works today. Visit us at http://www.bestarticlesubmissions.com for more info.

There are probably a hundred and one reasons why you would be interested in article writing. Perhaps you have your own website and you want to send out articles through an article distribution service to help promote it. Or maybe you would like to offer your article writing service. Either way the tips I will be presenting here should help you.

However, let us clarify one very important thing. And that is you should always write with your human readers in mind and not the search spiders sent out by the search engines. This is because you will be creating nothing but crap articles if you just want a whole text that is optimized for the search engines and not for people readers.

And why should you focus more on writing for people instead of the search engines? Simple, because when you write with the search engines in mind you tend to create a garbage article. Garbage in the sense that since you need to do search engine optimization on it, your article end up heavily laden with keywords, which is not a good thing. This is because it is usually a lot harder to understand since when you intentionally place keywords there, it becomes less natural to read.

By any chance are you currently going through an SEO course? I know that it is not that easy to understand everything all at once, but if you can find out that the course has a chapter about article marketing, then go straight to that page or video so that you can learn more about it. This is because it would greatly help you if you know how to approach this article marketing business or gig so that you will be more efficient and effective even if you are just getting started with it.

This other tip that I will be giving you is based on common sense. And you would be surprised that many article writers today are neglecting it. You should always do a grammar and spelling check with your article. Even the word processors have a spell checking feature, so make good use of that. The reason behind this is that there are a lot of article writers out there who are being paid very low for writing an article. And they think that since they are not getting a good rate, that they should just write and do not check their articles for any errors. Of course that is a bad practice.

So there you go. The article writing tips I have presented here should be more than enough to get you started on the right track with your writing business. These are essential especially if you are going to put up your own article submission services.

Harry Bingham is a bestselling novelist. He also runs The Writers’ Workshop (http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk), a source of advice regarding literary agents, including info about finding literary agents (http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/do-i-need-a-literary-agent/) and more.

This is a common question for all new writers – and the answer, almost always, is yes. But let’s start by reviewing what agents are there to do. They have several main roles:

A) selecting saleable manuscripts from all those submitted. Bear in mind that well under 1% of manuscripts are strong enough to sell.
B) working with the author to get the manuscript in perfect condition to sell. That can mean extensive editorial work, quite likely lasting over a period of months.
C) identifying the right editors at the right publishing houses for your book. That means that the agent needs to have excellent contacts and to keep those contacts bang up to date. It also means understanding the current market for fiction and non-fiction and making sure that your book is in tune with that market.
D) conducting an auction. There’s no single way to sell a book. Your agent needs to choose the right way, then sell it professionally and with drive and conviction.
E) negotiating a contract. Publishing contracts are long and technical. Additionally, with the advent of ebooks, those contracts are changing fast and key terms are constantly moving. So you do need an expert on your side.
F) making foreign sales, and handling film and TV rights. Again, that’s a complex business involving expertise and strong contacts. Not a game for newbies.
G) guiding your career. Longer term, a really good agent should be nudging your career in the right directions and keeping you away from wrong turnings. Writing is a heck of an insecure business, so a good agent can make a massive amount of difference.

All that might make you think that you HAVE to have an agent under all circumstances – but remember that agents make their fees on sales they make. (Typically they take a 15% commission for sales in the domestic market, and 20% for sales made overseas.) Because agents work for money not for love, they simply won’t have an interest in representing you if there is no realistic prospect of them making any money. So you need to be realistic about whether your book is likely to get an agent or not.

You DO need an agent if: you are writing a novel; you’re writing a mainstream non-fiction manuscript (the sort of thing that might be sold at the front of a shop, or feature on a bestseller list); you are writing fiction for children; you are writing a ‘how to’ type book in a major category (eg: health or diet)

You DO NOT need an agent if: you are intending to self-publish; you are writing poetry; you are writing one-off short stories; you are writing journalism; you are writing specialist non-fiction (eg: “how to train your horse”). In all these cases, there simply won’t be enough money to interest an agent and you should simply approach the appropriate publishers directly.

There are a couple of intermediate categories too. You MIGHT WANT an agent if: you are writing children’s picture books or you are writing a themed collection of short stories. In the first instance, I’d generally recommend using an agent at least until you have found your feet. As for the short stories, such collections are tough to sell, but not impossible. A really good collection will attract an agent. Anything less than wonderful certainly won’t.

And as always, whatever you’re writing, it’s the quality that counts.

Sally’s Cottages looks at the Lady behind the books

Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English author, illustrator, mycologist and conservationist best known for children’s books featuring anthropomorphic characters such as in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and rural lifestyle.

Born into a privileged household, Potter, along with her younger brother, Walter Bertram, grew up with few friends outside her large extended family. As children they had numerous pets and spent holidays in the south of England, in Scotland, and in the English Lake District. There she developed a love of the natural world which she closely observed and painted from an early age. Her parents were artistic and interested in nature and the out of doors. While Beatrix was happily never sent off to boarding school, her education in languages, literature, science and history was broad and she was an eager student.

Although she was provided with private art lessons, Beatrix preferred to develop her own style, particularly favouring watercolour. In her twenties, she concentrated on the study of fungi mycology, of ancient artefacts archaeology, and of geology, and achieved a measure of respect from the scientific establishment for her reproduction of fungi spores and her scientific illustrations. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit publishing it privately, and then in 1902 as a small, three-colour illustrated book with Frederick Warne & Co. Between 1902 and 1918 she published over twenty popular children’s books.

With the proceeds from the books and a small legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, a tiny village in the English Lake District near Ambleside. Over the next several decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape. In 1913 at the age of 47 she married William Heelis, a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead. Potter became a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation.

She continued to write and illustrate children’s’ books for Warne after her marriage until the duties of land management and diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue. Beatrix Potter published over twenty-three books, the best are those written between 1902 and 1918. Potter died on 22 December 1943 at Castle Cottage, Near Sawrey, leaving almost all of her property to National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now comprises the Lake District National Park.

Potter’s books continue to sell throughout the world, in multiple languages. Her stories have been retold in song, film, ballet and animation.
Potter’s paternal ancestors were Unitarians from Glossop in Derbyshire. Her father, Rupert William Potter (1832-1914), son of the industrialist and Member of Parliament, Edmund Potter, was educated in Manchester and trained as a barrister in London. He married Helen Leech (1839-1932), the daughter of a cotton merchant, at Gee Cross on 8 August 1863. The couple settled in London, living on inherited wealth. They bought a home in Bolton Gardens South Kensington, where Helen Beatrix was born on 28 July 1866.

Beatrix was educated at home by several private governesses with occasional excursions to public gardens, markets, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. A brother, Walter Bertram, was born in 1871.

On childhood holidays in rural Scotland and the north of England, she sketched and kept small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians as pets, sometimes taking them from the wild and contributing to their deaths by disregarding their needs. Some were boiled and their skeletons reconstructed. Ruth MacDonald writes, “This willingness to capture wild animals, either on paper or in a cage, is characteristic of Potter’s frame of mind … to intrude herself on nature was a part of her need to master her surroundings, to exert what little power and possession she could, given that her parents were determined to keep her powerless and impoverished.”

MacDonald observes that later in life, Potter “could admire nature without intruding herself upon it or destroying it. But until that point in her life where she felt herself in control, the reader of her journal and the student of her work notes this willingness to destroy, by dissection or disruption, the nature she found around her, to sacrifice it in the pursuit of her art or ownership.” Potter matured into a spinsterish young woman whose parents groomed her to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their home.

Potter’s parents discouraged higher education, but Potter longed to lead a life independent of her parents and considered mycology as career, inspired perhaps by her acquaintance with Charles McIntosh, a Scottish mycologist she met while summering in Perthshire. Her uncle tried to introduce her as a student at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, but she was rejected because she was a woman. Potter was later one of the first to suggest that lichens were a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae. As, at the time, the only way to record microscopic images was by painting them, Potter made numerous drawings of lichens and fungi. As the result of her observations, she was widely respected throughout England as an expert mycologist. She also studied spore germination and life cycles of fungi. Potter’s set of detailed watercolours of fungi, numbering some 270 completed by 1901, is in the Armitt Library, Ambleside.

In 1897, her paper “On the Germination of Spores of Agaricineae” was presented to the Linnean Society by her uncle Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, as women were barred from attending meetings. (In 1997, the Society issued a posthumous official apology to Potter for the way she had been treated). The Royal Society also declined to publish at least one of her technical papers. She lectured at the London School of Economics several times.

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The flexibility and endurance of banner vinyl means that it can be used almost anywhere, for any purpose, and will last much longer than other kinds of media. For these among others reasons it is fast becoming the printing method of choice for wide format digital printing.

Digital vinyl can be printed onto multiple types of surfaces, from wood and cardboard, to metals and plastics. This versatility means that it can be used for all kinds of project including flooring, wall coverings, corporate banners and sign making.

Banner vinyl can even be wrapped over vehicles such as buses, taxis and cars. You may have seen digital vinyl printing on the taxis in your city.

The size capabilities of digital vinyl mean that it can be used on projects of almost any size. Advertising to cover the eyesore of scaffolding and construction sites is just one of the popular uses of digital vinyl.

There are innovative digital vinyl products being released into the marketplace on a regular basis. For example stay flat vinyl, and varying lengths of rolls of vinyl. All resulting in less wastage and longer life span.

Changeable temperatures and varying weather conditions of heat rain and so on is another reason to use this form of media. It can weather many conditions that other more traditional media forms cannot.

Typical printing methods for wide format printing can become brittle and start to deteriorate in extreme weather. Furthermore, protective chemicals can be added to digital vinyl which makes the product more resistant to heat, and banners can be made water resistant to boot.

Another quality of digital vinyl is its ability to be backlit which can add that extra bit of atmosphere and mood to your corporate conference or show stand.

Digital designing and printing is a particularly efficient process as everything can be processed on computer. The major benefit of this is the cost to the buyer.

With its ease of production, digital vinyl printing means less sources are needed to produce signs and banners, and thus the process can be made quicker and at a lower cost with less waste product. This quality goes hand in hand with the extended lifespan and durability when promoting the advantages of digital vinyl printing to clients.

A very smart cost effective move is seeking a supplier that offers a warranty on generic inks if you are looking to save money in this way. There are a couple of suppliers only in the UK who will supply affordable wide format printer breakdown cover and warranty for any printer, with no machine inspection required, and generic ink use is allowed, which goes against all typical points of traditional printer cover.

Next time you are looking to expand your horizons why no consider digital vinyl also known as digital floor vinyl, digital wall vinyl, digital vinyl media. and banner vinyl.

Jack R. Landry is a business marketing specialist with over twenty years of business marketing experience. He resides in Salt Lake City and recommends (http://www.alphagraphics.com/centers/salt-lake-city-utah-us431/index.html) for all your business printing and marketing needs.

As you are preparing for your wedding it is very important that you take the time to understand how you are going to accomplish all that you need to without getting too stressed. Be sure that you understand even the smallest details that you will have to worry about.

When you are taking the time to understand what you need to do you will have to remember that you have to send out invitations. This is something that needs to be done while you are engaged and you must give those you are inviting enough time to plan for your wedding.

As you are writing your invitations you want to make sure that you are writing them properly. Take the time to understand how you are going to write an invitation that is not only proper but is also original.

First, you want to make sure that you know who is announcing the wedding. You want to be sure that you are taking the time to understand if the grooms’ parents, the bride’s parents or the couple will be announcing the wedding.

You have to make sure that you are taking the time to understand how you want your invitation to be phrased. There are some people that want their invitations to be very formal while there are other people that want them to be more casual.

You can use titles throughout the invitation or you can just use individuals’ names. When you are deciding if you are going to be formal or informal you have to make sure that you understand how you want the feel of your reception and wedding to be.

As you are listing the names of the couple it is tradition to list the brides name first. You want to make sure that you list her first and middle name together after the bride’s parents’ names and their family name.

After you write the brides name down you should then make sure that you write the full name of the groom. You may give the groom’s parents names and when you write out the grooms name you must include the family name rather than just the first and middle name.

When you are writing out the date it is traditional to write out all of the words for the date. You want to make sure that when you list the date that you are also listing the time of the ceremony and the time of the reception.

Within the invitation you should make sure that you provide a location for the event and a full address for the event. You should make sure that you are also taking the time to include a map and a self-addressed reply card.

If you want to differ from tradition you want to make sure that you understand how you are going to make your invitations respectful and classy. Take the time to talk with a consultant to be sure that your invitations will suffice.

While you are writing your invitations there may be special circumstances in which you will have to write sensitive information. If you do not want children at your reception you will have to be sure that you write this on the invitation.

There are a lot of people that have a hard time understanding how they are going to write on their invitation that they do not want children. You should be sure that you are taking the time to understand how you can have some tact as you exclude children.

As you are writing this information you have to be sure that you explain your reasoning before you include that children will not be included. There are many people that do not include this information and their reasoning and sound insensitive.

Be sure that you take the time to be clear about the reason that you do not want children there. If there is going to be alcohol served or if the service is going to go late into the night you want to be sure that you explain this on the invitation.

Finally, you should be wise about the printer that you choose to go with. Make sure that you take the time to understand how you are going to find a printer that will work well in your price range and will also give you good quality invitations.

Preparing for your wedding can go smoothly. Be sure that you take the time to understand how you are going to make even your invitations go smoothly.

Steve Exeter is a passionate cinephile and screenwriter, he edits and regularly contributes to the Online-Inquirer blog site.

It’s uncertain whether Joel and Ethan Coen set out to make their most commercially successful film in a 30 year career by electing to remake the classic John Wayne Western True Grit as their 15th feature, however it has been by far their biggest grossing domestic picture to date, taking twice as much at the box office than their previous Oscar winner No Country For Old Men which kick-started their partnership with Paramount producer Scott Rudin a few years back.

Having never been much of a Western fan, aside from the superior ‘Spaghetti’ variety of Sergio Leone especially the “Dollars Trilogy” which propelled Clint Eastwood to international stardom, I wasn’t the first in line to see this new version despite it being the latest offering from the Coen Brothers. Admittedly, I tend to prefer their original comedies but I was intrigued to see this primarily for the acclaimed performances of Jeff Bridges as ‘Rooster’ Cogburn and Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross both of whom earned Academy Award nominations.

When her father is brutally murdered in Fort Smith, Arkansas by the cowardly outlaw Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), 14 year old Mattie Ross comes to town to collect his body and hire a U.S. Marshal to track down the killer and bring him to justice. Out of the Sheriff’s recommendations she selects ‘Rooster’ Cogburn as he has the reputation of being the most ruthless. Mattie is exceptionally astute for her years and has a commanding knowledge of the laws of business enabling her to run rings around the local inhabitants outwitting them in a series of trades over her late father’s effects, raising sufficient money to bankroll her revenge.

There aren’t that many structural differences from the Hal Wallis production, both are true to the spirit of the Charles Portis novel. Jeff Bridge’s Cogburn is clearly a cold-blooded slayer and a broken man; much less avuncular or amusingly soused than John Wayne and without his immediate warmth or charm. Hailee Steinfeld is the same age as her character and despite her smarts she is obviously still a vulnerable young girl, whereas Kim Darby was 21 when she played a hardier, tomboyish Mattie Ross in the 1969 original.

Although the biggest difference in casting is Matt Damon in the role of the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf who hopes to claim the bounty out on Chaney for killing a State Senator. The part initially played by country singer Glenn Campbell was very much a cameo whereas the Coens have transferred a lot of the affability from the Duke’s take on Cogburn to Damon’s LaBoeuf making him more sympathetic thus transforming the story from a basic two-hander into a more complex triangle.

The Blu-ray edition reveals the huge visual accomplishment achieved by the Coen Brother’s regular cinematographer Roger Deakins. The colour palette is distinctly different to the previous version which was bathed in California sunshine so typical of Westerns made at the time; instead we have bitter cold, steely blue skies starkly contrasted with delicate snowflakes. The 1080p picture sports faultless clarity and high detail particularly noticeable in hair and skin tones, whilst the DTS-HD 5.1 soundtrack crackles with the ambient sounds of the great outdoors, wind and water are well represented and the surprisingly few gunshots deeply resonate.

It’s also worth mentioning Carter Burwell’s disarmingly simplistic score which riffs around the two spiritual tunes “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” and “Lean On Jesus” which were first used to striking effect in Charles Laughton’s classic film noir The Night of the Hunter, clearly a massive influence on the Coen Brothers. There is a small selection of fairly standard extras the one exception being the 30 minute documentary Charles Portis: The Greatest Writer You’ve Never Heard Of… which profiles the life and work of the author and compares both film versions to the original text.

True Grit is a milestone picture for the Coen Brothers that not only provides them with their first unabashed box office hit but demonstrates an assured maturity and artistic commitment which is no longer confined to the low budget obscurity that prevented so many of their significant early films from reaching justifiably larger audiences.