Posts Tagged ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’

Short Take: Gets the atmosphere of the books, but not quite its most important aspect: its female lead.

Director: David Fincher

Screenwriters: Steven Zaillian (screenplay), Stieg Larsson (novel)

Cast: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Yorick van Wageningen

Length: 2 hours 38 minutes

Synopsis: Based on the international bestselling thriller of the same title, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the story of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Mara) as they investigate a decades-old mystery. In the 1960s, Harriet Vanger disappeared from her family’s private island home in Hedestad, Sweden. Blomkvist agrees to investigate her disappearance after losing a libel case that destroys his credibility. Salander soon becomes his research assistant and as their personal connection intensifies, they are nearly added to to its list of victims.

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"The Social Network" has gotten very high praise for its writing, but is it the best written movie so far this year?

So far this year we’ve enjoyed the emergence of several very well made movies, such as Toy Story 3, Inception, Shutter Island, How to Train Your Dragon, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Cyrus, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and the recently released The Social Network, among others. Exactly what makes these movies so well made are an innumerable amount of things both big and small, not the least of which are their direction, editing, acting quality, and art direction. But with every film, when you get right down to it, what really makes or breaks everything is the writing. A phenomenal director and editor tandem can sometimes get past a so-so script, such as with Steven Spielberg and Michael Kahn with Jurassic Park, but the vast majority of the time the quality of the writing is what determines how good everything else can potentially be.

So far it would appear that the two movies that are being praised the most for their writing quality are Chris Nolan’s Inception and Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network. It seems like every review of the latter has dedicated a whole paragraph to dote upon this particular aspect, crediting both Sorkin and his source material (Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires). The former has received sterling reviews as well, though because of how intentionally ambiguous the film is some critics were hesitant to award it prematurely. In those critics’ defense, it is indeed harder to defend a story’s craftsmanship when its coherence is questionable and the overall theme and thesis lend themselves to expansive debate.

Can the stories of these two movies be compared? Read the rest of this entry »

Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly's "Cyrus" has been one of the recent indie successes

According to Pamela McClintock of Variety.com the “specialty sector”, or independent film market, has received a recent boost in box-office grosses thanks to releases like Mark and Jay Duplass’ Cyrus starring Jonah Hill, John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, and Catherine Keener, a documentary that follows the raising of several children from all over the world titled Babies, as we as several others.

President of Fox Searchlight Steve Gilula says that the recent (relative) success of these independent films are indicative that there “is life in the [indie] market, even as audiences are being more selective.” Some other examples of these films include City Island, Exit Through the Gift Shop, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

These indie successes hope to continue their theatrical and VOD runs, because as with any film the longer the run the more money they make. However, with word of mouth being the primary propellant of their runs such success is almost completely reliant on audience buzz, which is means these films’ futures are harder to predict than most.

One aspect that’s being tentatively attributed to these films’ financial achievements is how there are fewer large-market films being released during the Spring and early Summer months. Also consider the recent Warner Bros. flop Jonah Hex, for example, and it can be said that independent films have had less competition than usual.

The momentum that the “specialty sector” is building right now will be important for the current releases in creating Oscar buzz come Fall and Winter, as well as help later indie releases like Bill Murray and Robert Duvall’s Get Low, which will open July 30th, to do the same by holding the attention of audiences who may become distracted by bigger films such as Inception, Predators, Twilight: Eclipse, Salt, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Tron.

Source: Variety