the girl with the dragon tattoo

a friend of mine read the book, "the girl with the dragon tattoo" and told me we had to see the movie. he is currently waiting for the second in the "millennium trilogy" and now i want to start reading it was well.

swedish writing meteor stieg larsson, wrote 3 books about a young tiny hacker girl who can handle herself. they are world wide best sellers. he died in 2004 before the third was published in 2007. american producer scott rudin just signed a deal for a 2012 hollywood version. rudin was hampered by the fact that larsson died without a will and his live in girlfriend who has no rights to his posessions, was hoarding larsson's laptop. meanwhile, the swede's were able to produce "Män som hatar kvinnor" and honestly no one needs to do it again. it's been done.

lisbeth salander is a punk hacker who befriends a convicted journalist and the two go after a 40 year old murder mystery. but there is so much more. the film is subtitled and i found the swedish language a little taxing at first but soon felt the rythym of it and forgot i was reading the film all together. now that's the mark of a good film! part of why this movie works is that we have never seen these actors before. lisbeth, played by noomi rapace, comes to us as a complete mystery with no preconceived notions as we have not experienced her in any other story. when i first saw the leading man i thought, gee movie stars aren't very pretty in sweden, mikal nyqvist is chubby with bad skin, but soon i realized that he is perfect for the role as the character shone through. and that's pretty much what it's supposed to be like.

see this movie in the swedish version. i am afraid hollywood will water it down just as they did "la femme nikita" by giving us the white bread "point of no return". and the two actresses rumored to be up for the role of lisbeth, kristen stewart ("twilight" and "the runaways") and ellan paige ("juno") are both very good, come to us with too much history. i just can't see them doing what lisbeth has to do. nor do i really want to.

the ghost writer

roman polanski, thanks to movie magic, filmed a movie that takes place mostly on martha's vineyard while banished from american soil- gotta love second units!!

"the ghost writer" is a beautiful film, suspenseful murder mystery and political thriller. ewan macgregor is hired to replace a recently deceased by mysterious "accidental" means ghost writer working with a former english prime minister on his memoirs. pearce brosnan plays the thinly vieled tony blair character who's living in the borrowed martha's vineyard home of an mega-giant american contractor "friend." olivia williams is again great ("an education") as his long suffering wife suspicous of her husband's affair with his robotically efficient yet sexy personal assistance, kim cattrall. the cast is full of familiar faces from a bald blustering jim belushi as ewan's publisher, to the underused timothy hutton, tom wilkerson as the bad guy or is he?, and did anyone know he was still alive eli wallach.

this is the second movie in two weeks i saw that shined a spotlight on bush's administration. brosnan's character is brought up on charges by an international tribunal for possible war crimes for handing over political prisoners to the cia for torture- in short for being the president's beck and call boy. pretty much the same as blair is currently being investigated for being in bush's back pocket. the immediacy of this issue drives the mystery of this story. god fobid this hired writer should just write! no, he has to find out what happened to the first ghost and he ends up running around telling everything to anyone who'll listen so that the audience is just as confused as he is. and a confused audience is just what you want in order to sustain a good suspense movie.

i am a polanski fan- always have been. this movie proves that he still has the juice of his earlier days, "rosemary's baby" and "chinatown". but i even like his most recent, " the 9th gate" although it ends rather abruptly as though they just walked away from it one day. even then it's better than most pablum presented these days. i'm not going to discuss his crimes, just his art. i'll leave the first to the courts and the second to me. if you miss this movie in the theaters, rent it.

the green zone

matt damon continues to prove he deserved his "sexiest man alive" title in "the green zone". he convincingly plays an army chief warrant officer charged with hunting and finding wmd in 2007 iraq. "the green zone" is an action thriller war film written by brian helgeland and directed by paul greengrass. the film is "credited as having been 'inspired' by" the non-fiction 2006 book "imperial life in the emerald city" by journalist rajiv chandrasekaran, which documented life in the green zone, baghdad. the green zone being the common name for the international zone of iraq— a 10-square-kilometer (3.8-square-mile) area in central baghdad, iraq, that was the center of the coalition provisional authority and remains the center of the international presence in the city.

this is a story about fictional people portraying a real occurrence in which real people searched for fictional weapons. matt does a great job as the disillusioned leader of wmd hunting squad, who cares more about the truth than his orders. he bucks the system, snakily played by greg kinnear, and teams up with cia operator brendon gleason (yes the cia is the good guy in this story) to find out who made deals with whom in order to get the u.s. into iraq. right wingers will say this movie is yet another example of liberal hollywood spinning it's conspiracy agenda. people who think for themselves will call it a history lesson.

kinnear and damon play off each other very well. at one point after watching damon throw kinnear around, i thought, next movie kinnear needs to add a line in his contract that'll allow him to throw damon around. but then my friend reminded me that the last time we saw these two on the screen together, they were literally glued to one another in "stuck on you" in which they played siamese twins! no wonder they have this great rhythm!

all though i am a peacenik, i love to see all the big toys our military has to play with. i love the big guns, helicopters, rockets, tanks- the works! and yes i am very glad if anyone has to have them that it is us!! i just wish they never used them...

also, my friend and i loved the scarf damon wore- very yasser arafat printed. i always felt guilty admiring arafat's scarf because he was the bad guy. but now that damon in the personage of this american maverick (a real maverick mr. mccain) wears one, that it is ok for me to openly like it! and maybe even buy one.

anyway, back to the movie: tight, suspenseful, and entertaining. if you miss it in the theaters, rent it.

avatar 3d

"avatar" is a wonderful ride, very entertaining and a great way to get across an important message- we are one with the earth and the universe. "avatar" is the story of a military man who goes native and helps his new family nation win against his old, evil empire. it is "dances with wolves"- if you liked that story then you'll like james cameron's version. cameron took jim harrison's story and updated it with all the bells and whistles necessary to keep the attention of this attention deficient next generation.

and what could be wrong with that?

a single man

simple, clean, elegant. tom ford, formerly the creative mind behind gucci, brings "a single man" to the screen. ford wrote the screenplay based on the novel by christopher isherwood, who's becoming my favorite new obsession. born in england in 1804, friend of auden, woolf , a collaborator with swami prabhavananda on a version of the bhagavad-gita, writer of the screenplay "rage in heaven" starring ingrid bergman, george sanders and robert montgomery and whose short stories about his life in berlin became the musical "cabaret", isherwood was a buddhist leaning gay activist who considered himself to be "a serious comic writer." so "a single man" has many of my favorite things: beautiful clothes, homes and gay men, set in 1961. throw in colin firth (woo-hoo mr. darcy as a gay man!) along with tom ford, the most gorgeous man to pick up a sewing needle, and you have a movie that oprah called "delicious".

"a single man" in the cinematic verson of a buddhist koan, only once death is accepted can one truly live. but don't worry, it's not preachy, it's subtle. the whole story is subtle despite the main character, colin firth living for 16 years in a committed relationship with another man in suburban pasadena literally in a glass house. what's wild to me is that these 2 men live together in 1961 in southern california, while in wyoming 2 cowboys have to fake fishing trips in order to spend stolen moments together for fear of being caught and dragged by their appendages until dead in a ditch or beaten to death with a tire iron (see brokeback mountain).

colin firth gives his best performance to date, probably of his career. any other year, firth would be winning all the awards instead of just being nominated, but jeff bridges is the sentimental pick this season. julianne moore is great as firth's life long friend. i hope that ford finds other storys about which he's just as passionate to bring to the screen. i have heard he's starting his own clothing line which will no doubt be great, but we need him in the medium of film where less is definitely more.

2010 golden globes

the golden globes are one of my favorite award shows.  everyone eats, drinks, kibbitzes and has fun. it was at the golden globes that brad pitt after winning for "13 monkeys" thanked the hollywood foreign press for "this maalox moment". another year after winning for best supporting actor, ving rhames, insisted that co nominee jack lemmon deserved the award, made him come on stage with him and take his statue. and jack did it!  all hijinx no one would dream of doing at the oscars.  this is the warm up act, the rules don't apply.

this has been a particularly weak year. i am at least looking forward to an award season in which no one is a sure winner. we may just hear more than one name for each category called over and over and over to the podium.  that would be a nice change.

my picks are:
best movie drama: the hurt locker
best movie comedy/musical: 500 days of summer
best director: kathryn bigelow for the hurt locker
best screenplay original: mark boal for the hurt locker
best screenplay adapted: nick hornby for an education
best actor drama: jeff bridges in crazy heart
best actor comedy/musical: joseph gordan -levitt in 500 days of summer
best actress drama: carey mulligan in an education
best actress comedy/musical: meryl streep in julie/julia
best supporting actor: christoph waltz in inglourious basterds
best supporting actress: anna kendrick in up in the air
best song: cinema italiano from nine
best documentary: my favorite wasn't nominated - it might get loud.

golden globes are on sunday, january 17, at 5, on nbc.

young victoria

hollywood royalty (martin scorcese) and actual royalty (sarah fergeson) have come together to produce a film about the longest reigning royal in english history- victoria.  this story starts when she is very young and ends when she is a little less young.  i wish they re assemble everyone from this movie and make "middle aged victoria", and "elderly victoria" and maybe even "dead victoria".  i'd watch them.

the rule for quite a while in oscar world has been: play an english queen and win a nomination and or an oscar- helen mirren played and won for elizabeth II, judy dench for elizabeth I and cate blanchett was nominated (and was robbed) for a younger elizabeth I. emily blount as victoria is beautiful (difficult in the bizarre hair and dress fashions of the early 1800's) and gives a lovely performance, but she should be happy with a nomination. it's not her fault, the script isn't very meaty despite all the dramatic opportunities in her early reign. there really isn't that much for her to do that oscar likes to reward.  the performance with which i was most taken was rupert friend who plays vicoria's much beloved  husband, alpert of germany.(she built a huge gold statue of him as just one of her tributes to him) rupert was earnest, elegant and also lovely.  he reminded me of a young omar shariff in "the mayerling" or louis jordan in "the swan" with his very chiseled features and gracious, believably royal demeanor.  paul bettany, miranda richardson, and mark strong, give good supporting performances as the evil self promoting adults who are meant to protect and guide victoria  in her earliest days.  mark strong needs to stop playing villians, he's good yes, but i have only seen him play bad guys- "sherlock holmes", "rocknrolla", "miss pettingrew lives for a day" and "stardust".  jim broadbent gets to have the most fun playing the spoiled, over privileged king william. just for grins, princess beatrice, 5th in line for the english throne, had a non-speaking role as an extra at the wedding of her great-great-great-great grandmother victoria. it helps having mommy as a producer.

the sets are beautiful- it was filmed in kensington palace where victoria acutally lived ( i've been there), windsor castle, blenheim palace, arundel castle and belvoir castle.(it helped having a duchess on the payroll)  the jewels and costumes are gorgeous.  there is not a lot to not like. but, the editing while sometimes is very fun, can be clumsy.  also, the movie seems to just stop. it gets running at a good pace and then drops you off a cliff. the end it's over.  which was disappointing because i could have watched much more of it.