Filmbook: "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (2010)

I walked out of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" last night with possibly the best feeling you can get from an adaptation, namely: "I've got to read that book again." Quite the contrast from earlier in the film when I was thinking, "What the what have I gotten myself into?"

I read the bestselling Swedish crime thriller in 2008, when it was just one of many imports from foreign markets hoping to hit it big among American readers. I was riveted straight through to the second and third books* with only the delays of publishing schedules. There was a fair amount I had forgotten about the first book, though, prominent among them how incredibly violent and brutal it is. I know my tolerance for described violence is much higher for depicted violence, but some of the scenes, even though they were familiar, were shocking to me.**

I held my head thinking of the many people to whom I had recommended this book and whether my encouragement to go forth and read past the really depraved parts could be seen as an endorsement of the depraved parts. But even for that, I wanted to go back to the book and roll up the additional character development I know Larsson left there, to re-evaluate the paths each character took to their actions and whether (this is a major theme of the book) they were justified. So maybe the source of this discomfort was, to use a Nathan Rabinism, a Secret Success, because it pulled me into that world, instead of taking me out.***

As a thriller, "...Dragon Tattoo" suffers from a slight overuse of Ominous Music and a slow-to-pick-up story early on. But there are three great reasons to see this movie: Two are the leads, actors totally unknown to me who were fantastic. Michael Nyqvist as Blomkvist is sort of a cross between Jeremy Renner and Alec Baldwin, and Noomi Rapace is just the right amount of powerful and awkward as Lisbeth Salander. They've already wrapped the trilogy of movies ("The Girl Who Played With Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" came out last fall in Sweden) so for the Swedish public they are Kalle Bastard and Lisbeth.

The third reason is that David Fincher has signed on for the English-language remake, with filming to start after his Facebook movie comes out, and it will be very interesting to compare them. It's possible his version will be much more innovative than this one; then again, it can't just look good.

Filmbook verdict: Read the book first, despite misgivings; then see the movie.

---
* Oh yeah, that happened! I received the third book, and sleep got overrated for a little there.
** I even had to look away once -- to avoid giving spoilers I will say: the photos in the cellar, holy hell. But what a great visual match between that scene and the one in Henrik's attic, right? Creepy as fuck, but effective.
*** My relationship with superviolent movies has progressed from "hate them all" to "it's complicated." As with the last violent movie I saw, Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet," there were evidently those in the audience at "...Dragon Tattoo" who were not prepared for its nastier moments. "A Prophet" also uses its violence effectively, particularly in an incredible scene on the streets of Paris, but is a better movie overall.

iHavemydoubts

The Apple iPad ships this week; have you placed your order? Soon-to-be-owners may be interested to know it will stock 30,000 free books in its store right off the bat. Addy Dugdale speculates in Fast Company that the iPad will make reading spread faster than ever, "if in three years' time the iPad is as ubiquitous as the iPhone is." I hope that happens, because an army of touchpad clutchers will look quite silly.

Stephenie Meyer got out of her bathtub full of cash long enough to write a novella related to the third Twilight book ECLIPSE, which will be released in June. Well, it's nice to see the word "novella" getting some air?

The record for the most expensive comic book ever was broken yesterday when a copy of Action Comics No. 1, Superman's debut (published in 1938), sold for $1.5 million. The buyer is described in the Washington Post as "a hardcore comic book fan."

Here's a very timely list of Passover books from the Christian Science Monitor. I wasn't a fan of her last book, but that Dara Horn alternate Civil War history sounds super.

Finally, the movie "How To Train Your Dragon" topped the box office this weekend based on a British YA novel. Because I am amused, a list of all the titles in the series so far:

How to Train Your Dragon
How to Be a Pirate
How to Speak Dragonese
How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse
How to Twist a Dragon's Tale
A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons
How to Ride a Dragon's Storm
How to Break a Dragon's Heart

Dazzle the 9-year-olds of your acquaintance today.

Mostly useless Star Wars bookends via SlipperyBrick.com

Jonathan Franzen Cover Unveiled

No, that's my homage to Bubleraptor. This is the real one.


I'll make sure to attach this file to my umpteenth request for Photoshop access for the department. I can't use MS Paint, I'm an artist.

Fitzgerald, at last

"Gatz," the 6-hour adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" I wrote about last year as a gift for the book lover you love, will open the Public Theater's 2010-2011 season next fall. First calendar item for September 2010!

I'm over at Wrapped Up in Books this week for book club (or will be in a few hours) so come by and talk about THE WRESTLER'S CRUEL STUDY.

James Franco: Serious Author

James Franco has published a story in this month's Esquire called "Just Before The Black." It is a story about a few friends in L.A. driving around, doing drugs and fighting with each other. At least in this corner, his appearance shall admit no discourse to his mediocrity.

An editor from People told me once that the magazine focused on "extraordinary people doing ordinary things, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things." I guess Franco's story would fall into that former category because I have read a fair amount of stories like that in fiction classes past, although mostly I was spared the stretches of homophobic conversation. (For this relief, much thanks.) The writer alters the familiar dictum to read "write what you know, but cooler," with the aggressive language to match, which really bothered Whitney Pastorek of Entertainment Weekly... and she has a point. The protagonist wants to get into a car accident! Edgy!

Maybe he just hasn't found his Gordon Lish. Franco is 31 years old and has taken MFA classes at Columbia, although (from what I could find) he never finished the degree. He was a student there when he got his book deal for the forthcoming collection of stories PALO ALTO (Scribner, October). Would I like to have a book deal and an Esquire clip under my belt by the time I'm 31? Absolutely. But in an age when most magazines don't publish any fiction at all, it's depressing to see one of the few that does making space for a "celebrity author," with quotes fully intended. Even among the field of authors originally famous for doing other things, Esquire could do better. I hear good things about that Nick Cave novel that came out last year. They have a lot of good writers in their stable; why waste the space on a guy whose fan base (of which I am not one, even before this started) won't buy the magazine for this story anyway?

And I couldn't end this post if I didn't also label him a tremendous douche for accepting the subhed "Author (and actor)." I mean, game over.

Submitted name change: "Casual Library"

I saw one of those leave-one, take-one bookshelves today in a place where it made perfect sense: at the end of a hallway in the English department at Barnard College here in New York. Who has more books lying around than English majors and/or professors? That is some essential furniture. (I'll spare you my blurry documentation of what is basically a brown wooden shelf with a printout taped to it. And a complete audio set of INTO THIN AIR for some reason.)

I wish I had a leave-one-take-one I could study up close, being generally obsessed with how people behave around books as I am. Here are a few other places I think would benefit from these shelves:

My apartment building. When I have gotten to books people have left out (they tend to disappear in under an hour), the unwanted volumes are often of very high quality. That's how I got my copy of WRITTEN ON THE BODY (recommend!) It could sit right in front of the bricked-in fireplace.

My office. This may be the only way to figure out whether and what my coworkers read without having to ask them and risk being outed as more of a nerd than as I am already known. Maybe I can lobby for it when we move floors, a relocation that was supposed to be completed by the end of February and is now forecasted for late May. (It could be worse; rumor has it the department next to us is moving to one floor for a few months and then rejoining us on our new floor. Sorry, is this the tip line for Corporate Displacement Weekly?)

My parents' house. Wait, wait, hear me out. There are books spilling out of our house and my mom has them organized somehow -- but casually browsing through them I have no way of knowing whether she's waiting to read those books or trying to shed them. Besides, when we're all at home we tend to discombobulate each other, which I'm sure is how the "family" copy of the "Indiana Jones" trilogy DVDs "accidentally" went to college with my youngest sister.

Subway and train stations and airports. I've put this one last because I recognize that with the security risks involved, this will probably not happen. (Bomb-sniffing library dog?) But it would be convenient to have a place to yield books you finish in transit, and also pick out a new one instead of staring blankly at a magazine wall. It would also give an otherwise often sterile and deeply uncomfortable environment a shred of personality, as a bonus. Barcelona and Paris have book vending machines in the subway, but that's not the same.

And Now, The Keira Knightley Literary Adaptation Beat Report

In terms of starring in adaptations, Keira Knightley is definitely headed down the Thompson/Moore/Paltrow path of frequent offenders, and it's working out well for her. So it's not at all surprising that she's signed on for the adaptation of Claire Messud's THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN, about nearly-30-somethings in New York City just before 9/11. Richard Gere has also been cast, and if you've read the book, you'll perhaps share my disinterest in seeing him play Murray Thwaite. The movie will be directed by Noah Baumbach, who I largely like (though I haven't seen "Greenberg" yet) but it almost seems like too perfect a subject match -- "Kicking and Screaming 2: The Kickening."

The long-discussed adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's NEVER LET ME GO starring Knightley (or as I like to call her, McCheekbones), Carey Mulligan, Sally Hawkins and Charlotte Rampling is due out late this year in Oscar-bait season. (When I went to IMDb to look this up, it suggested a story in which Mulligan expressed an interest in doing the English-language remake of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." Get out of my head, Internet!)

Incidentally, NEVER LET ME GO and THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN in my opinion are both novels that suffer from weaknesses related to character development, or a mishandling of such. In one of these books, there is a plausible reason for that! For that reason I wasn't a huge fan of either one so it's possible I may like the movies better. I hope we can still be friends.

UK cover of THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN (New Yorkers, name the location): Fantasticfiction.co.uk

AV Club in Los Angeles April 1: It's No Joke

Well, there will probably be a lot of jokes. But if you think I'm pulling your leg about this AV Club reading in L.A., you will be very sorry on the 2nd.

Go meet my coworkers, friends and heroes at Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd, at 7:30PM on the 1st. (That's between Silver Lake and Echo Park, near Dodger Stadium -- thanks, Google Maps!) You can buy your advance tickets here. Bring your copy of INVENTORY, still available in the best bookstores everywhere, and I bet they'll sign it.

I coulda been a contender in that sport

Kentucky players are leery of the news media's angle projecting the Big Red as the heady players against the talented but less savvy Wildcats.

DeMarcus Cousins, the star Wildcat freshman big man, said the game would not be determined by "who can read the fastest."

Cousins added: "We’re here to play basketball. It’s not a spelling bee."

New York Times: "Cornell Counts on Closeness Against Kentucky." (Thanks, Nikki!) If I didn't need Kentucky to win for bracket's sake...

They can't even include the notebook for that price?

This is a real writing course offered at a New York-area university you would recognize by name. Goldberg wept:

Paying $165 to do this kind of exercise supervised, no matter how useful it is, is completely bonkers. I would never discourage anyone from taking a writing class if s/he wanted to, but if you are seriously considering this, maybe we can work something out in the "fancy cup of coffee" price range.

Three delightful things

David Mamet's quick and dirty writing tips, via a memo he sent to the writers of the show "The Unit." Mamet himself has broken most of these, but they're still entertaining. Love that he clearly knows he's writing in all caps yet he seems UNABLE TO STOP.

Maybe it's a little too cutesy that Brooklyn's new poet laureate supposedly read "The Waste Land" to her unborn son. But I immediately thought of Betty Smith's A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, in which the poor Irish mother decides to read her kids a page from the Bible and a page from Shakespeare every night. If you like plucky heroines, turn-of-the-century historical fiction or tales of surviving through economic distress, it's a must-read -- I've probably done so at least 20 times.

Finally, this isn't new, but how am I not going to post a video of a folk band jammed into a bookstore playing? The band is called Mumford & Sons, the store is unknown:

There are several reasons to do this. One is curiosity. Another is just tasting what's in the water in the culture you're living in. If you fear it will be bad, consider the fact that if the book is actually bad, you can say the book is bad and actually know what you're talking about, instead of relying on the many other people who say the book is bad. If you're going to crack on it, you might as well have something informed to say. Another is that if the book is 90 percent bad and 10 percent good, you will be surprised by the 10 percent.

And, of course, some of you will like the book. At least, you may come to understand what it is that appeals to people about it, or what manipulative powers it has, or what you think is destructive about it, or whatever greater understanding you might gain. I'm guessing it will make for an interesting, and/or amusing, and/or surprising discussion.

I bet you can guess what book NPR's (new to me) pop culture blog Monkey See picked for its first group read! They actually do a decent job making the case for why you would read a book you're pretty sure will be bad, although in this case at least I'm not sold.

New York Book Week: BEA for everyone?

The organizers of BookExpo America, the annual publishing trade show, are trying to expand their reach this year with the announcement of New York Book Week, events during and linked to BEA but open to everyone. The bill isn't filled yet for May 25th through 27th, but so far they have a short-story event featuring Ira Glass and a reading at the Brooklyn Public Library by Jonathan Franzen.

This is great news if you don't want to shell out for a BEA pass, can't take the time off (the decision to move to mid-week: why?) or just generally like book-related things. As far as an attendance driver for the show itself, I have my doubts, but it could happen; I attended BEA last year and had a grand old time, but I'll be watching the New York Book Week slate as well.

Homeric Tours -- An Odyssey Every Time!

Taken this afternoon on Ditmars Blvd. in the (predominately known as) Greek neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. Hope you saved a lot of vacation days.

As it happens I had a nice chat with a book cover designer while I was out in Queens. I told her I had a lot of burning questions about cover design and I hope she believed me. She said designers sometimes read the books they're designing, not always, but often they're curious anyway. She and the hostess of the party we were at mentioned Jedediah Berry's THE MANUAL OF DETECTION, hardcover edition, as an example of superlative cover design from last year.

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period --
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay --

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

--Emily Dickinson, in honor of the spring equinox or as I like to think of it, opening day of iced coffee season.

I used to find Dickinson fusty and mannered, so I only take her in small doses now.