Word: larsson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Stieg Larsson's international bestseller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has already been made into a movie in Sweden, but it is almost certainly going to be remade in English by Americans. There's already a producer attached, (Scott Rudin), a director being discussed (David Fincher) and rumors circulating about who might play the female lead, Lisbeth Salander - a tattooed hacker with major issues and loads of unusual sex appeal. Will the part of the reed-thin computer genius go to Natalie Portman? Maybe Kiera Knightley? Kristen Stewart? (See photos of great buddy-cop pairings in history...
...movie, helmed by Danish TV director Niels Arden Oplev, is a much-streamlined version of Larsson's book. (It's also the first of a franchise; cinematic adaptations of Larsson's two sequels were also released in Europe last year.) The basics are there: a disgraced journalist named Mikael Blomkvist (played just right by Swedish star Michael Nyqvist) is hired by an elderly industrialist, Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), to investigate the disappearance of his 16-year old niece Harriet 40 years ago on a remote island. Henrik believes Harriet was killed by a member of her large and thoroughly...
...read the book, you can't help comparing and contrasting both versions constantly. Oplev's movie whisks key characters right out of the plot, either by death or omission. Much of the journalistic intrigue is gone (sadly, since presumably this was an element precious to Larsson, who like Blomkvist was a financial journalist before his death in 2004.) The changes may jar those viewers well-versed in Larsson's work, but because of them Oplev is able to tease more thrills out of the material than they might expect. Blomkvist twice stumbles unwittingly into suspenseful situations involving spooky houses...
...male co-star. This Lisbeth is proactive. She inserts herself into Blomkvist's detective work before she's asked. Where you might expect a movie to also make her sassier, this one makes her, if anything, angrier, more furtive, more darkly funny. Shorn of the competing love interests Larsson gave him in the book, Blomkvist only has eyes for Lisbeth now, which makes him more likeable, but less interesting - a shame because Nyqvist could easily handle the nuance...
...good reason - you probably haven't encountered many. Translations of foreign-language works make up a mere 3% to 5% of the books published in the U.S. annually, and that includes new editions of classics like Anna Karenina. Except for a few recent breakouts - Roberto Bolaņo, Stieg Larsson, Per Petterson - translated authors tend to deliver anemic sales, which makes mainstream American publishers loath to gamble on them. And Bolaņo and Larsson were dead (both prematurely, at the age of 50) by the time their books hit big in the States. This is not a great incentive to break...