The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - movie review

Every year I go on holiday with my parents, the resorts we stay at have a selection of the same kind of people. By the pool, of course, they read, and they all read the same things - my parents included. There's the same few editions of airport bought FHM magazines, copies of She and Elle and things, and always several of the same paperback novel that can be found on Waterstones chart shelf a few weeks before. This year, it was Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Done with my novels and short story complimations (oh my god. Noctures by Kazuo Ishiguro. let's get on to that later), I had nothing to read on the journey home. On the 5 hour flight, I couldn't sleep and read most of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The first novel of the Millenium trilogy is pretty brilliant. It is violence, mystery, sex, Sweden, feminism, love. It's also a 'who-dunnit' novel, which for once I did work out part of the answer to, but there's a second huge twist at the end. One of the main things I loved about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is that characters came alive in my mind, particularly Lisbeth Salander who I've talked about here before, and Mikael Blomkvist.
Last night, I watched the movie.
I wasn't expecting to love it and for it to be perfect, because that's never happened to me with a book's adaptation (Push/Precious is an exception). But there was a lot that annoyed me about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
I watched the movie with my mother, and it was avaliable in Swedish with subtitles or English and dubbed , which we argued over and ended up watching dubbed - she won.
Lisbeth was good, but the first thing I said was, "Mikael Blomkvist is all wrong". I'm not that sure how I pictured him in my head whilst I was reading the novel - I didn't have an idea for a while until I read a magazine that said George Clooney was considered for the part in the US movie adaptation, which suddenly seemed to fit. Not only did the slightly dead-eyed actor look nothing like I imagined Blomkvist, but the script failed to convey his personality, which despite being a hard-ass professional fianancial journalist/detective/crime fighter there was fun in. One of the things that was imporant to Blomkvist and Salander's relationship, and made Mikael a little more likeable, was the Elvis music mentioned, and the present Lisbeth buys for him at the end, which I think would have translated well to the screen.
Not only was Mikael's affair with Erika Berger, a huge plotpoint throughout all three books, pretty much unexplained and ignored, but Erika looked all wrong. In the version I'm casting in my head, she'd be played by Jaime Murray or perhaps Sarah Parish, and definitely would not be blonde or look like my exchange partner's mother. I started out not liking Erika but by the end of the second book, although small she was firmly in the place of my favourite character.
There were a few other issues. Martin Vanger wasn't slimy CEO-ish enough, he was old and fat and suspicious. Harriet shouldn't have been blonde. Miriam Wu, though we only saw her a second, was just right, though.
Aside from all that, most of the movie was spot on. The scenery - Hedeby Island and Stockholm were how I imagined, but not the Millenium offices.
I liked ranting about the movie here. More later on.

Lizzie

Having heroes, Lisbeth Salander and Who We All Really Are

I am the sort of person that has a lot of heroes.

Maybe it's a bad thing, or not. I think in some way pretty much all humans get inspired or influenced by other humans, usually not the ones around us but those far away. I always have a few, sometimes they change or stick arounnd a long while. I can name them from the top of my head, and most people that know me would probably say the same. Imogen Heap. Neil Gaiman. Amanda Palmer, Kina Grannis, Chris Corner.

Most of them are to do with music, oddly there's only one writer, but what these have in common I think is creativity and freedom. And travel a lot and have a lot of people that love them and care about what they think, and that at the moment is what I want the most, and I hope that I want that pretty much forever, and maybe even achieve it.

There are real people too. My best friend, because she is one of the most strong willed people I know, and can teach herself to do things like drink coffee or run a long way. Another of my friends, perhaps the most beautiful person I know for real and also most intelligent, who I envied for a while before I got comfrier with myself - that sounded tacky. My three online friends, who I'm collabowriting with, because each of them are geniuses.

I had a severe case of hero-influence when I was around 12/13, which was the time I was obsessed with the show Britannia High. There was a girl in it named Lola, who was bright and ditzy a dancer and unrealistically dumb, and for some reason I idolised her completley. I started buying yellow clothes. I acted stupid, on purpose. It was ridiculous.

A few months after that, and a little overlapping, came Stacie Monroe, who is still one of my favourite fictional characters of all-time; a sultry, sarcastic, independant rather kick-ass female con-artist in a group of testosterone fuelled males. The TV show she was in was called Hustle, and you should watch it because it is genius.

Recently, my father gave me a book called The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - big deal at the moment, I'm sure you've heard of it - and told me to read it because the female heroine was excellent. It's true, I'm halfway through and it is pretty brilliant, Lisbeth Salander (violent, intelligent yet deemed socially incompetent bisexual computer hacker) is wonderful and inspiring, and one of those characters that you feel crackling off the page. Yes, the book make me want to buy a Netbook. But she didn't make my list of people that are wonderful, partly because she isn't real and partly because I don't really have it anymore.

The point I was trying to make here was that I don't think I do this anymore, which is good. Yes, "heroes" influence me because they prove to me that I'm not going to be an accountant. That there's a point in writing down the things that happen in my head, that I can dress how I want to, that "music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry", and that there's people that maybe feel the same as me and if I ever get there, we will all be friends and have picnics in Berlin.


cats.

Lizzie

Love, and sandwiches (turkey breast, light mayonaise and cucumber on toasted hearty Italian, please)

One of the hundreds of things that annoys me about people my age (and there's lots, I'll write a list of them one day) is the way they use the world "love". Two of my friends are in relationships, as of recently, both with people they only met about a week before they started going out and already, apparently, they are in love. They all are.
Within hours, second only to changing their Facebook relationship status, it's screamed over their walls, latched onto their MSN name and at the end of every text. And yes, I'm inexperienced and my opinions are supported only by music and semi-famous people I don't know for real, but clearly they don't actually love this person? It's hard for me to understand how someone that's been in a relationship for an afternoon can believe they love someone, that they matter to them as much as their parents and siblings, and very close friends.
Recently, I battled inside my head with the feelings I had with someone and whether it was being in love. And I remembered an internet forum discussion about a similar thing, and someone saying something like "True love is like believeing you can find all your happiness in one person". And I thought, where is all my happiness? The answer was in writing, in hope that I'll do something useful one day and people will need me for something, and that I know on November 5th this year my best friend and I will go to London and see Imogen Heap.
The question came down to, would I rather the Imogen Heap tickets or a relationship with *insertnamehere*. I honestly had no idea. And that made me realise that if I had really been in love, it would be no contest.
That's what they all need to do.

Another thing that occured to me is that one of the main things I don't like about myself is that I don't really care what a stranger that stumbles on my blog thinks about me, but I care a lot what people at my school do. Recently, twice, I blurted out things I wished I could tell my friends about to two of my email penpals, both who live in America. Neither have replied yet.
Yesterday, I went to see a movie with my friends. I got the bus too early and had some time to kill, so got myself a Costa iced tea and a sandwich from Subway. Walking to the cinema with my sandwich, I saw some people I know, girls from my school that would be cheerleaders if we were American, and felt a sudden urge to hide my sandwich fast.
Why? I want to kick myself now. I care way too much what people think of me. I'm only painfully shy around people my own age that aren't my friends. Did I feel like I was a loser then because of my sandwich, or because I wasn't wearing half as much make-up then, or because I was alone?

I'm going to go now. But I'll come back soon, sooner than I did last time, with some more naked thinking and pointless theories about the world.
If you actually read this, I love you. (just realised that was really ironic). G'night.

Lizzie