An interview with director Václav Marhoul about his adaptation of Jerzy Kosínski's The Painted Bird.
An essay about James Ivory's "A Room with a View," as excerpted from the latest edition of the online magazine, Bright Wall/Dark Room.
The latest and greatest on Blu-ray, DVD, and streaming including "Magic Mike XXL," "The Duke of Burgundy," "The Connection," and three Criterion releases.
"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" has been a 2005 book (the first part of the late Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy," translated into English in 2008), a 2009 Swedish-language feature film by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, and a 2011 English-language Hollywood movie. In 2012 it will also become a DC graphic novel, but my feeling while watching the new movie was that the material had reached its apotheosis as A David Fincher Film.
I haven't read the novels (I've paged through some of "Dragon Tattoo" in English), but even fans I've talked to don't make any claims for Larsson as a great writer (albeit in translation), and the Swedish movie version struck me as little more than a straightforward work of adaptation: "OK, we're going to take this story and put it on the screen." It did that, but except for the presence of Noomi Rapace as the titular Lisbeth Salander I didn't find it very exciting to watch.
So, I wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing another version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." I was only curious because of Fincher, whose "Fight Club," "Zodiac" and "The Social Network" I think very highly of. I saw the Fincher movie The Way It Was Meant To Be Seen™ (in Sony 4K Digital Video projection!) and, I admit, I was literally rocking out in my rocking theater seat from the first riffs of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's biting cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" -- an icy blast of frigid air over a deep black credits sequence in which our Girl Lisbeth endlessly shape-changes into various forms and substances -- all of them integral to who she is. ("Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! We come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow..." Too on-the-nose? Maybe. But the squall of sound practically rips open the screen.)
Marie writes: I attended three different elementary schools; St. Peter's, Our Lady of Mercy (which was anything but) and finally St. Micheal's; where I met my Canadian-Italian chum, Marta Chiavacci (key-a-vah-chee) who was born here to Italian immigrants. We lost touch after high school, moving in different directions til in the wake of a trip to Venice and eager to practice my bad Italian and bore friends with tales of my travels abroad, I sought her out again.We've kept in touch ever since, meeting whenever schedules permit; Marta traveling more than most (she's a wine Sommelier) living partly in Lucca, Italy, and happily in sin with her significant other, the great Francesco. I saw her recently and took photos so that I might show and tell, in here. For of all the friends I have, she's the most different from myself; the contrast between us, a never-ending source of delight. Besides, it was a nice afternoon in Vancouver and her condo has a view of False Creek...smile...
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PARK CITY, Utah Of course I've seen all the wrong films so far at the Sundance Film Festival, according to the touts who whisper in my ear before screenings. It is always this way. You think you're seeing wonderful films, and everybody assures you that you've missed the masterpieces and are hopelessly out of the loop.
America will be having a Hugh Grant festival this spring. The boyish British actor with the apologetic shrug is the star of three films being released almost simultaneously: "Sirens," "Four Weddings And A Funeral" and "Bitter Moon." All three are well-suited to his strengths as a likeable, diffident, chap who backs into situations apologetically, but usually prevails.
Great Movies
