The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I can recognize a tad of French, a smidgen of German, and a fragment of Spanish, but Swedish? Heck no. That's a whole 'nother ball of spit. I did recognize a few words that sound just like their English counterparts, but that was as far as it went. Anyway, thank goodness for subtitles once again.

I read this book just a few months ago. Once I've read a book, I am frequently eager to watch it come to life on screen, though it doesn't always do so successfully; sometimes it may flop around jerkily like a revenant, sometimes it may be unrecognizable in its new incarnation--but in this case, the adaptation was excellent. I had hoped the movie would eliminate a lot of the blah blah blah that I found at the beginning and end of the book; for the most part it did, although the ending seemed to be a little stretched out--but it had to be, to complete the story.

It's a shame that all adaptations can't follow the book as closely as this one. Evidently Sweden has more respect for their own son than Hollywood has for most authors. A few parts were left out, some others were streamlined, but overall the movie was very faithful to the book. (Well, what I remember of it, anyway). Speaking of Hollywood, of course they want a piece of the action and a remake is already in the works. I don't see how they can improve upon the original, though I bet the new version will reveal the dragon tattoo much sooner than this one. American audiences won't be patient enough to wait an hour and a half to see it.

I really needed to wash dishes and iron clothes tonight, but the only thing I managed to do while watching this movie was to drink wine, since I didn't need my eyes for that. The evening was more fun that way anyway. Though it does mean tomorrow will be less so. But there's a tradeoff. I picked up a cooking tip from this movie: the secret to making meatballs is to wet your hands first. I don't remember that from the book. Will have to try it.

I must admit I don't know much about Sweden. I mean, I know it's between Norway and Finland, and I assume it gets pretty cold there, and my parents and sister have vacationed there (without me, I might add), but that's about all I know. So I looked up Sweden online and learned a couple of facts that I will now pass on to you. The country is a little bit bigger than California (which surprised me--I would have guessed it was the size of Florida--I was way off) but its population isn't much greater than that of New York City. There, don't you feel smarter already?