Fincher' remaking The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo!
thats interesting house I’ll never read the book then…I was the only one in the theater that day without a smile on my face when I left. My friends thought I was a lunatic but that story just didn’t grab me.
Yes, I knock Scorcese for the remake thing, and for not making challenging films anymore (though I did like Aviator for what it was).
Dimitris—I’ve actually been musing over filming my own film in ancient Greek, even though it’s a true story about a fairly recent event, for several reasons. First, it’s thematically prescient, since I’ve titled it with the name of an important Grecian mythological character, but also to remove it from the direct juxtaposition to the events themselves and make it more universal to Western civilization. It’s sort of a fun thing I’m imagining at the moment.
EDIT: It would be a modern US setting but with ancient Grecian dialog. I would love to do that.
…the fact Hollywood will be popularizing European best-sellers and high-class comic strips is frankly DISGUSTING!
The books, without any help from Hollywood, are already very popular in America. Hollywood is merely capitalizing on that popularity. It’s called “built-in audience”.
I wonder if there would AS much publicity if a Hemingway or a Flannery O’Connor novel was to be made in Serbian or Hungarian…I do wonder that…
I like Francois Truffaut’s version of Fahrenheit 451. I think it would be really cool if other countries wanted to adopt American fiction. Can we get a Angolan adaptation of Middlesex, please?
^ that was intended for Dimitris but I read it and am already excited and I know nothing about it…
Dimitris, yes I couldnt believe when Let Me In was released. And now Silent House (that Mexican one-take horror film) is being remade with Elizabeth Olsen and the original hasnt even came out yet…
Let the Right One In is an excellent film and having seen it I have no interest in the remake. I don’t see how it can improve. The children’s performances are lightning in a bottle.
12 Angry Men was adapted to a Russian situation.
Your right House. I saw the remake and the differences were slight but everything was a downgrade. More violence and less humanity and heart. Not as effective it was originally intended to have on audiences.
I didn’t mind Let Me In at all, it didn’t need to be made, but it was a strong film on it’s own. Let the Right One In is the better film, but Let Me In works fine.
I just saw Tarkovsky’s version of Hemingway’s ‘The Killers’ the other day. I quite enjoyed it.
And I do plan on watching the Swedish films before Fincher’s version. But I didn’t want to watch ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ before I finished reading the books and since finishing ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’ I haven’t had time to watch three two and a half hour films.
No matter how good any adaptation is the Millennium Trilogy will always be books first and movies second in my heart.
And yes the trailer is cut to be “cool”, but in the end it is a teaser and I think it completely fulfills the job of “the teaser trailer”.
JR,
Okay now tell me how the films inform you about the world inside you. Yes technology is what we live on and yes it will affect us, but how does that damage or better your soul?
When I watch and Anderson film or a Paul Thomas Anderson film I learn about the world, about people and how we are. Whe I watch Fincher I only learn about things, things like Facebook, things that are not important when all is said and done.
Uli: I have the Russian 12 in my Q. I was waiting to see the original, which I did recently (amazing film—talk about relevance).
Berj—For both films, the relation to my internal humanity is obvious since I live in the times the films comment on. If it feels obvious to me and not to you then we may be at an impasse. No big deal.
I actually love ‘The Social Network’ more for its comment on friendship and how ambition among friends leads to jealousy which leads to hurt. It’s a film about what success truly means. The fact that the man with the most FaceBook friends has lost all of his true friends is more than simple irony. It’s the theme of the film.
And then there is the relevance JR is discussing which personally strikes me as rather up front in the sense that we all participate in the social network being discussed and function in the society being presented.
I found the “Girl” films to be so loose and boring in so many sections. The first one was great, but mainly due to Noomi Rapace. Amazing performance and just stunning presence. The less active she came to be in each film film the worse they got. The plots could be so tv mystery and deceptively convoluted in their simplicity. I REALLY hope fincher has chosen well with Rooney Mara and can really hone this into a tight, meaningful, and powerful film. Will it be a compressed one-off? I hope so.
Drew—The “friendship” angle is very important. Kudos for bringing it up. Friendships are honored and betrayed everyday for reasons big and small.
JR,
… I guess thats the thing about his films. They comment on things that are passing, but being the filmmaker that he is I doubt that his intentions are to point that out. If its passing is it human?
Human history passes. What is not passing? Have the sexes evolved past changing? Have societies reached benchmarks?
It’s all passing, and those films will be relevant for as long as people continue to communicate with each other.
So that’s my take, which I’ve defended a couple of times. Your turn. You tell me why they’re not.
“I think it would be really cool if other countries wanted to adopt American fiction. Can we get a Angolan adaptation of Middlesex, please?”
I’ll take that as sarcasm because:
A: Angola would have to struggle a lot for such “ambitions” in terms of cost / production without another African country as a financial aid
and B: out of all the legendary Cinematic countries like Egypt, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, India, you chose Angola…now tell if that’s not irony because your quota above looks like pure nationalist shit.
JR
The things that make us human don’t pass.
Okay, lets take Zodiac, the procedural. To me it could be about persistance and the vanality of evil. There are two things that are not passing, but I don’t think Fincher makes those points. Instead Fincher focuses on how San Fancisco got new buildings and the police new DNA testing. As a simple, narrative, entertaining film this works just like any other CSI episode. I actually find a good Monk episode more memorable than this film.
Drew,
Yes but how does that change our lives? Can having a Facebook profile really be that important?
Well to each their own. To some extent we see what we want to see. With Fincher’s films being so mainstream it’s not hard to write them off as shallow. For me those particular films are worth more than that (not Social Network as much, since I think there will be better films on the subject), but I think Zodiac accomplishes its goals. It’s certainly trying less hard to be accepted by the cool kids.
JR,
I don’t write off his films as shallow. They are well crafted and entertaining. I remember how in awe I was the first time I saw Fight Club. But his other films not so much. I can appreciate The Game as a character study, but again I don’t see Fincher leading me that way.
How often have you thought about his films in you normal everyday life?
Berjuan,
Zodiac is so much more than a procedural. If you dont see that the film is solely about the destructive force of obsession, and what it does to ones life, I think you need to rewatch. The reason Fincher is so successful, and quite often beloved, is because of the fact that he takes formulaic genres and upends them to bring them new depth.
Christopherjohn,
I do remember that element of the film. But there is so much going on that it would be hard to focus on that element alone and say that the movie is about that. What I’m looking for is for Fincher to be more direct and clear. As I mentioned before The Game would have been a great character study if Fincher had given more time and depht to the main character. I can’t say 100% sure that The Game can be considered that because for Fincher, sadly, plot is king.
“They are well crafted and entertaining.”
That’s because Fincher is primarily a music video artist and THEN a film director. His Madonna and Nine Inch Nails video clips are 100% more original than anything he made as a feature film director, including Seven!
“Zodiac is so much more than a procedural. If you dont see that the film is solely about the destructive force of obsession, and what it does to ones life, I think you need to rewatch.”
Agreed. If Zodiac was just a procedural then it wouldn’t hold even half as much interest for me. As a look at obsession it is excellent, in part because you get involved with the obsession to begin with as well. The details come so thick and fast and you want to know more and more, to find out who the killer is, to see more clues etc. Then as the years roll on we see the interest dry up among many of these people (yet they have that mark on their life from the case), but the main character continues searching. He has to know, no matter who he ends up pushing away during the process he has to know. For me this film is far more significant than Fight Club and The Social Network (both of which are good).
“for Fincher, sadly, plot is king.”
Wow . . . I strongly, strongly disagree with that.
““Zodiac is so much more than a procedural. If you dont see that the film is solely about the destructive force of obsession, and what it does to ones life, I think you need to rewatch.”
really? Did the main character look particularly stressed to you? did his life really seem that out of shape? His wife leaving him was treated about as seriously as a fart in an elevator.
I WISH that was the film he made. but i don’t see it.
I think M.Parks interpretation is much closer to the ‘truth’ than the one about obsession.
MATT PARKS: character is king of late. maybe Girl will be a return to narrative cinema?
Dimitris Psachos
^ The cast of Departed only had Nicholson. The cast of Infernal Affairs was practically stellar.
Even so, the remake mania is honestly T-I-R-I-N-G and the fact Hollywood will be popularizing European best-sellers and high-class comic strips is frankly DISGUSTING!
I wonder if there would be AS much publicity if a Hemingway or a Flannery O’Connor novel was to be made in Serbian or Hungarian…I do wonder that…