I have to leave to do a Girl With The Dragon Tattoo interview and then a screening of Kevin Smith’s Cop Out. Apologies for the black-blanket effect that the Crazy Heart skin ad has been having on some browsers. It’s fine on Firefox and Safari but apparently Internet Explorer users have had difficulty. Is this pretty much the case?

Who cares if Nell Minnow — a.k.a., “Movie Mom” at belief.net — has a problem with the red-band Kickass trailer that features costar Chloe Moretz and other under-age actors going all potty-mouth? Where is the intrigue or value in lamenting the effect of redband trailers upon American youths? Most younger teenagers would laugh in derision if they read this article…hello?

N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes posted an article about this on 2.23. (It’s in today’s edition.) It’s extremely curious to see a piece in a world-class newspaper giving voice to concerns of people who don’t count and don’t matter.

“A trailer for the forthcoming film Kick-Ass that depicts the girl wielding a gun and using highly, highly profane language is igniting debate about how Hollywood advertises its R-rated films on the Web,” Barnes writes.

“Movie marketers in recent years have increasingly relied on raunchy ads known as red-band” trailers to stir interest in their films. While most trailers are approved for broad audiences by the Motion Picture Association of America, the red-labeled variety usually include nudity, profanity and other material deemed inappropriate for children. Many theaters refuse to run these trailers, but they are widely distributed online — and that is at the root of the current dust-up.”

On top of which the Times own attitudes are so blue-nosed that they haven’t even posted a link to the trailer that Barnes has written about. Or at least not that I noticed.

Nikki Finke‘s story about Matt Damon being attached to a Robert F. Kennedy biopic (based on a 2002 Evan Thomas biography) is a bit of a “meh.” I’d expect Damon to match Steven Culp‘s performance in Roger Donaldson‘s Thirteen Days, at least. But I’m not sure what this would come to.

The Coen Bros. obviously wouldn’t have chosen Hailee Steinfeld to play Mattie Ross in their True Grit remake if they didn’t think she had the necessary spunk, piss and vinegar. Or if they weren’t convinced that she’ll make their beautiful Old West dialogue sing just right. But surely they understand, being wise fellows, that genetically she’s about as Zane Grey as an iPad.

(l.) Hailee Steinfeld; (r.) Ethan, Joel Coen.

Steinfeld is fetching, all right, but in a radiant and (to me) almost dazzling-JAP sort of way — she’d be right at home on the slopes at Aspen. Whereas old photographs of wimmin of the Old West show they mostly had a hard-scrubbed, Plane Jane, almost beaten-down look. Perhaps a bit more Kim Darbyish than Steinfeldy, I’m sayin’.

I can roll with Steinfeld — don’t get me wrong. It’s just going to take a bit more in the way of disbelief-suspension. (Interestingly, in their open casting call print-out for the part the Coens wrote “no makeup model types.”)

The Coens and Steinfeld and costars Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin will begin shooting True Grit in New Mexico next month. The Scott Rudin-produced Paramount film will open on 12.25.10.

By the silver standard of the 1969 Henry Hathaway True Grit (which I need to see again), Steinfeld is Darby, Bridges is John Wayne, Brolin is Robert Duvall and Damon is Glenn Campbell.