Decadent phase

[randy_byers]

Last night I walked to the Cinerama (it's about an hour walk) to watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) for the third time. Yeah, I guess I love that movie a little bit. Afterward I went to the Palace Kitchen, where holyoutlaw and I have eaten a couple of times before or after movies recently, and I sat at the bar and had a pint of Hale's Wee Heavy, a shot of Chivas, and the duck breast with winter squash dumplings appetizer. It was so freaking delicious I just about wet myself. I walked home around midnight, and the only mild disappointment was that it wasn't snowing. What a life.

Comments

[mszappata.livejournal.com]

Good grief:-)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

As far as grief goes, yeah, it was pretty good.

[mszappata.livejournal.com]

Good enough to enjoy?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

You might say so.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

That sounds very yummy.

For some reason, I suspected a trip to the Cinerama to see GWTDT was in your weekend. ;>

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's practically traditional at this point!

[daveon.livejournal.com]

So... I can assume that we have significantly more snow on the Hill than lower down? Because I don't think we could get our car out at the moment and it was bloody dangerous walking home from friends last night.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, "last night" in this case was Saturday night, before it snowed much around here. Still isn't much snow in Fremont, although it's plenty icy.

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

I just saw TGWTDT yesterday -- I liked it, but I didn't like it enough to run out and see it twice more before it leaves theaters. I'm curious what resonated with you so strongly?

(Or did you already write a more in-depth review that I missed?)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I wrote about some differences between this version and the Swedish movie (theatrical cut) on my blog. (Beware NSFW image.) As for what I like so much about this film, I think it's mostly on a purely cinematic level. I love the way it moves, I love the way it looks, I love the way it sounds, I love the way it's constructed, I love the rhythm of it, the way it doles out information, the often non-verbal way it communicates character. (I love the way the cuts come faster when Lisbeth is on screen, for example, and the appalled look she gives Mikael when he works his computer more slowly than she would.) I love the sense of humor.

I was thinking the other day that my three favorite movies of 2011 (the ones I saw more than once in the theater) were Contagion, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Skin I Live In and that they are all horror movies of a kind. Well, I liked Rango too, but not as much as those three.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Funny - i found Contagion pretty underwhelming. I'm not even sure I wrote it up..

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I walked out of it feeling underwhelmed, but it was one of those movies that grew in my mind afterward, so I went to see it again. I think I wrote about both viewings at Dreamland Cafe. Maybe it helps to live in the US, where the depiction of science and bureaucracy overcoming a catastrophe felt like a pointed critique of the anti-government know-nothing Tea Party. I was quite taken by Jennifer Ehle's beatific scientist. Not sure I've ever seen anything quite like that character in a movie before.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I do remember liking her.Part saint, part Nobel Prize hog. It reminded me a bit of these KSR climate change scientist novels I've been reading..