Blog

Ugh.  It’s been almost 4 weeks since my last post.  I don’t understand how that’s possible.  Well, okay, that’s not true.  I do understand how it’s possible:  I’ve been writing in a white-hot blaze for about the past 6 weeks.

But I hate it when I let the blog lie fallow for so long.  Sometimes it’s just inevitable, though.  Especially when I’m working like mad.  And I have, lately — working like a possessed thing.  And I’m pretty damn pleased… even if it means that certain important things, like news and website updates, have fallen by the wayside.

I’m not the kind of person who makes New Year’s resolutions.

The very idea depresses me.  If personal resolutions work for other people, encouraging them to strive for self-betterment or greater personal success, that’s terrific.  And I can certainly understand the urge to make a new start as the calendar rolls over.  I’m not immune to the personal and aesthetic appeal of a clean slate.  But I don’t make resolutions. 

A long time ago I wrote a short story that involved robot sharks.  It was one of the first pieces I sold, and I admit I still like that story, years later. 

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover today’s Dilbert comic features a similar idea.

A couple of summers ago, I wrote a blog post comparing the Stieg Larsson novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (actually Men Who Hate Women in the original Swedish, from what I understand) to the Swedish film adaptation directed by Niels Arden Oplev and starring Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace.  I wrote that just for fun, and as an exercise in writing analysis for myself.  In the year and a half since then, that post has brought more random Google searches to my website than any other.  (Hello and welcome, Stieg Larsson fans and haters!)  Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised; the Larsson books are enormous international megabestsellers.   When I peruse my Google Analytics data, I see many queries regarding the book and the film, and confusion about the fate of one of the ancillary characters.  [By the way, dear Internet, that is an example of how one can gracefully hide spoilers beneath a link.  See below.]

Now that the American adaptation of the book has hit theaters, I’m seeing another surge in website traffic.  But now people are probably looking for information about the David Fincher/Daniel Craig/Rooney Mara film.  To anybody who read my previous Dragon Tattoo blog post about the Swedish film thinking I was actually talking about the American version instead, sorry about that.  I’ll bet that was a bit confusing.  But we’ll laugh about it someday, yes we will. 

I saw the American version, directed by David Fincher, on New Year’s Day.  For the most part, I enjoyed it more than I expected to, given that (1) it’s almost 3 hours long, (2) I’d already read the book, AND (3) I’d already seen one film adaptation. But Fincher is quite a director, and both leads were quite good in their roles.  (Even if James Bond Daniel Craig exudes more rugged manliness than the Blomqvist character in the book.)

Every film adaptation of a book has to make choices, and this screenplay made different choices from those in the Swedish film.  It makes for an interesting comparison.

From here on out, it’s spoiler city: spoilers for the book and both films.  (And by the way, Melinda Snodgrass has already posted her thoughts here.)