THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO news and tidbits

[Dunda]

A lot more here...

http://www.wildaboutmovies.com/behind_t ... DTHESCENES.

link doesn't work


Good read

http://www.wildaboutmovies.com/behind_t ... SCENES.php

[Dunda]

SG, that's a very intersting read...

about Bjurman

Playing Bjurman is Dutch actor Yorick van Wageningen. Fincher picked him for a very specific reason. “I felt the character shouldn’t be villainous, he needed to be worse than that,” says the director. “He needed to be someone who isn’t so much a rapist as a man who sees a girl who is spiky and sullen and doesn’t make eye contact, and decides she’s worthless. It becomes like quicksand for his own need to dominate someone. I didn’t want a mustache-twirling pervert at all. So when I saw Yorick, I saw someone who was a full-fledged human being and also a brilliant actor who could give him all of these things. He was able to bring his performance from a logical place in Bjurman’s mind and find the seething morass of darkness inside that.”

For van Wageningen, that complexity was the main reason he agreed to take on the graphic role. “This character goes through a lot and I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to go through all that,” van Wageningen admits. “I started out half way between the elation of getting to work with David Fincher and the dread of this character, but I was able to use both of those things. We both thought the most interesting route would be for Bjurman to seem half affable. The challenge was not in finding the freak violence in the guy but finding the humanity of him.”

Still, it was never anything resembling easy. “I often spent a good 15 minutes crying in my trailer between takes,” remembers van Wageningen. “I think a scene like the rape scene with Lisbeth only works if it becomes real for both parties. So the emotions had to be real in that scene, the thrusts had to be real. It was quite horrendous for me and then the big final scene between them . . . I don’t think I’ve yet recovered from that. It took me to a place that people don’t normally go and that no one is keen to go to.”

Van Wageningen and Mara agreed to have no contact outside of their scenes. “It was a daring thing to do when you have big scenes together, because the tendency is to want to talk your scenes to bits,” he says. “But I think we both already understood what Fincher wanted, and we knew what we wanted from our characters, and then we just let everything go in the scene. I think that gives it that reality you can feel.”

It was Fincher’s way of working with the cast that allowed that to happen, says van Wageningen. “David creates a space where you can dare to do that one thing you’ve never tried before in a take,” he summarizes.

[caramel]

SG, that's a very intersting read...
about Bjurman

Still, it was never anything resembling easy. “I often spent a good 15 minutes crying in my trailer between takes,” remembers van Wageningen. “I think a scene like the rape scene with Lisbeth only works if it becomes real for both parties. So the emotions had to be real in that scene, the thrusts had to be real. It was quite horrendous for me and then the big final scene between them . . . I don’t think I’ve yet recovered from that. It took me to a place that people don’t normally go and that no one is keen to go to.”

That tells us something about the mind-space they all need to get into to bring out the right emotions.... it has to be so hard to do such scenes especially if you have to emote the total antithesis of what you are.

[sf2la]

From the great article SG posted:
--------

While Lisbeth’s internally-motivated style is a centerpiece, it was equally essential for Summerville to create a stark contrast with Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist. “I had such a great time with Daniel because he’s so much fun to dress,” the costume designer notes. “We worked in a lot of sweaters and layers to make him look a bit heavier and slouchier. Everything Lisbeth wears is very worn in, but his clothes are more fitted, more of a uniform. Yet, they are still quite relaxed. He doesn’t iron his shirts and he wears them open at the collar and kind of half tucked-in. He always has the same jeans – these Scotch & Soda jeans that we bought 30 pairs of for Daniel.”

http://www.wildaboutmovies.com/behind_t ... SCENES.php

Now THAT'S a dream job

Hmmm. Whether DC's style copied the movie or the movie copied him, he sure dressed/dresses like MB.

[Germangirl]

Hmmm. Whether DC's style copied the movie or the movie copied him, he sure dressed/dresses like MB.

There will be some DC/MB drsss code, I asume

[Dunda]

Fincher on David Denby, film critics and embargoes

David Fincher weighs in on the controversy regarding The New Yorker's embargo-busting review of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

I talked to David Fincher this morning about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and asked him what he thought about the decision by David Denby to publish his review of the movie in this week's edition of The New Yorker.

Denby saw the film on Nov. 28 at a screening for the New York Film Critics Circle and signed a waiver promising to hold all reviews until Dec. 13 (the movie will be released on Dec. 21). After Denby's decision to ignore the embargo, producer Scott Rudin responded by banning the critic from all future screenings of his films.

In 1999, Denby wrote a review of Fincher's Fight Club so scathing (you can read a piece of it here) that it was quoted in the packaging of the DVD release ("I would deliver a long tirade against it if it weren't such a dog - such a laborious and foolish waste of time...")

Fincher didn't remember Denby's Fight Club review when I mentioned it to him ("Have you read Alexander Walker's review?" he asked.) But he did have something to say about the brouhaha that has erupted over Denby busting the Dragon Tattoo embargo:

"I think Scott [Rudin]'s response was totally correct. It's a hard thing for people outside our business to understand. It is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. But as silly as this may all look from the outside - privileged people bickering - I think it's important. Film critics are part of the business of getting movies made. You swim in the same water we swim in. And there is a business to letting people know your movie is coming out. It is not a charity business. It is a business-business.

"This is not about controlling the media. If people realized how much thought goes into deciding at what point can we allow our movie to be seen, they would understand. There are so many other things constantly screaming for people's attention. I started shooting this movie 25 days after I turned in The Social Network. We have been working really hard to make this release date. And when you’re trying to orchestrate a build-up of anticipation, it is extremely frustrating to have someone agree to something and then upturn the apple cart and change the rules – for everybody.

"Embargoes … look, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t show movies to anybody before they were released. I wouldn’t give clips to talk shows. I would do one trailer and three television spots and let the chips fall where they may. That’s how far in the other direction I am. If I had my way, the New York Film Critics Circle would not have seen this movie and then we would not be in this situation. I would be opening this movie on Wednesday Dec. 21 and I would have three screenings on Tuesday Dec. 20 and that would be it.

"That’s where [Rudin] and I get into some of our biggest fights. My whole thing is 'If people want to come, they’ll come.' But they should be completely virgin. I’m not of the mind to tell anybody anything about the movie they are going to see. And that kind of thought is ridiculous in this day and age. But by the same token, when you agree to go see something early and you give your word – as silly as that may sound in the information age and the movie business – there is a certain expectation. It’s unfortunate that the film critic business has become driven by scoops.

"Ultimately, movies live or die by word of mouth anyway. All that other stuff doesn’t matter. Nothing against film criticism. I think film critics are really valuable. But the most valuable film critics are usually those people who come see a movie with their Blackberry and then text their friends 'It sucked.' or 'It’s awesome. You should see it.' You know what I mean?"
source: http://www.miami.com/fincher-david-denb ... es-article

[sasha]

Another very interesting point:

Embargoes like the one Denby violated—though obviously set up to serve the interests of movie studios—actually serve some useful purposes for critics and filmgoers as well. The screenings make life easier for critics, giving them a few extra days, sometimes weeks, to get reviews together, and for film-section editors to get the reviews edited and their sections ready.

For one thing, they level the playing field: All credentialed critics have time to write considered reviews, which then appear at the same time. Those with the best reviews can shine, not those who got the thing into print (or up on the web) first.

Without such embargoes, the rush to be first would be far worse than it is now. I have little doubt we’d soon reach the point where critics were tweeting impressions of films while screenings were under way. That wouldn’t serve readers. Giving critics time to write serious reviews does.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/201 ... ight_.html

[tbossmc2000]

From the great article SG posted:
--------

While Lisbeth’s internally-motivated style is a centerpiece, it was equally essential for Summerville to create a stark contrast with Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist. “I had such a great time with Daniel because he’s so much fun to dress,” the costume designer notes. “We worked in a lot of sweaters and layers to make him look a bit heavier and slouchier. Everything Lisbeth wears is very worn in, but his clothes are more fitted, more of a uniform. Yet, they are still quite relaxed. He doesn’t iron his shirts and he wears them open at the collar and kind of half tucked-in. He always has the same jeans – these Scotch & Soda jeans that we bought 30 pairs of for Daniel.”

http://www.wildaboutmovies.com/behind_t ... SCENES.php

Now THAT'S a dream job

Hmmm. Whether DC's style copied the movie or the movie copied him, he sure dressed/dresses like MB.

30 pair of jeans, 1 for everyday for a month.

[caramel]

Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, stars of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, are making room on the red carpet for two fans to attend the movie’s premiere in New York City on December 14. You'll receive two tickets to the hottest premiere of the season, see the stars of the film and enjoy the very first look at this immensely thrilling adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s literary blockbuster .

Auction Runs
December 6 – 11, 2011

http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V ... trightnola

[Sylvia's girl]

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Film Premier

This spectacular red carpet event will take place on Monday 12 December at the Odeon Leicester Square. Doors open at 6.30pm and guests are to be seated by 7.15pm. We are anticipating that key members of the cast and crew will be attending.
Hoping to distance himself from the fallout of a libel conviction, journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) retreat’s to a remote island in Sweden’s far north where the unsolved murder of a young girl still haunts her uncle forty years later. Ensconced in a cottage on the island where the killer may still roam, Blomkvist’s investigation draws him into the secrets and lies of the rich and powerful and throws him together with one unlikely ally - tattooed, punk hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara).

Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Robin Virginia Wright, Christopher Plummer and Joely Richardson. Directed by: David Fincher

The film contains some extreme scenes of violence and the certificate is tbc.
Price per Stalls ticket only: £139 + VAT each (Dress Code – Smart/Black Tie)



http://cushiontheimpact.wordpress.com/2 ... m-premier/

[Dunda]

Obsession, Reignited

IN anticipation of the movie version of Stieg Larsson’s “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” which stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara and opens Dec. 21, Knopf has printed two different tie-in editions of the original novel, more than a million copies all told.
Over supper in New York recently David Fincher, the director of the film, said that he’d be happy if it sent new readers back to the book, but that he was more concerned about the people — in America, eight and a half million so far — who have already read the novel. While remaining generally faithful, his movie ventures to alter what is for many a text practically as sacred as the Harry Potter novels. Among other things, it changes the book’s ending, renders one of the two chief villains more creepy and seductive, and makes Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who is one of the story’s two main characters, less of a male bimbo.

That the movie also enlarges and deepens the role of the book’s other main character, Lisbeth Salander — an androgynous, punkish computer hacker with a photographic memory and a shortage of social skills — will probably come as welcome news to most fans of the Millennium trilogy, of which “Dragon Tattoo” is the first volume. But Mr. Fincher said that he still fretted over how viewers will react to his “reimaginings, compressions and reductions.”

“My balsamic reductions,” he amended, laughing.

How protective Larsson fans felt about the books became apparent to him only while he was trying to cast the part of Salander, the key figure in the Millennium trilogy and the one on whom the whole franchise depends. Among the actresses considered, or endlessly blogged about, for the part were Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Carey Mulligan and Noomi Rapace, who played Salander very effectively in a 2009 Swedish adaptation of the trilogy.

“She’s one of those characters, like Jesus Christ, Dracula and Batman, that everyone has his own ideas about who should play them,” Mr. Fincher said, treating himself to a single martini and a meal that consisted mostly of salad. “All of a sudden I’m getting phone calls from people I respect saying, ‘You can’t possibly cast X, Y or Z.’

“I wanted to say, ‘Are you really calling me to influence the casting of a movie?’ I was naïve about it, to be honest. It wasn’t like there were 5,000 girls in black leggings and goth skull makeup lining up outside on the street. But a lot of the press and the bloggers made it seem like the search for the next Scarlett O’Hara.”

In the end Mr. Fincher picked 26-year-old Rooney Mara. As her name suggests, Ms. Mara is a descendant of two great N.F.L. dynasties, the families that own the Steelers and the Giants, but except to fans of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise (she was Nancy in the 2010 remake) and to viewers who paid attention at the very beginning of Mr. Fincher’s “Social Network,” in which she appeared briefly but memorably as Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend, she is an unknown to most moviegoers. To Mr. Fincher that was part of her appeal.

The Salander character, he explained, never answers questions about herself, and at the beginning no one knows anything about her. “Lisbeth is not a Hot Topic goth,” he said. “She’s not Joan Jett. She’s somebody with a safety pin in her cheek. It’s original punk. She has created a way to be seen as trash. Part of that is a stay-away thing, and part of it is a self-conscious agreement with what everyone thinks of her. She thinks, ‘I’ll live with that if it means no one ever takes advantage of me.’ ”

So what he kept holding out for, Mr. Fincher went on, was someone who didn’t come trailing a lot of movie history and who could convey a sense of Lisbeth as a damaged child. He said, “I kept feeling that I was looking for someone who was in some ways still 13 years old, holding a jar of kerosene in one hand and a lighter in the other.”

Ms. Mara said: “I knew David was fighting for me. The character is such an enigma, he felt that someone with a big name couldn’t have played her.” She added, recalling what it was like to work with Mr. Fincher: “He’s in control of every single thing you see in the movie, and yet somehow I never felt controlled. I can’t imagine anyone else like him.”

Mr. Fincher these days is best known for his last two movies, “The Social Network” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which between them won six Oscars (though not for best director). But he made his reputation with films like “Seven” and “Fight Club”: smart, noirish, visually arresting thrillers set in a world of glamorous grunge, so murky that the sets seem to be illuminated by candles and so rain-drenched (“Seven” especially) that they appear to have been filmed during a deluge.

So in person you half-expect Mr. Fincher, 49, to be some sort of nocturnal, amphibious creature, the kind of man who wears sunglasses indoors and mumbles a lot. In fact he is tall and professorial looking. He’s also so affable, funny and enthusiastic about movies that he sometimes fails to finish a sentence before shooting off in another direction, and politely, relentlessly contrarian. He’s like a very cool film studies prof who gently considers your most cherished notions about moviemaking and explains that actually the opposite is true.

Scott Rudin, the producer of “Dragon Tattoo,” said he hired Mr. Fincher because he “understands outsiders, alienation, isolation, marginalization — those are his themes.” He added, “Those are subjects he owns, and there’s no better living filmmaker.”

The story’s thriller element, he said — a series of related murders — seemed to him much less interesting than the relationship between Blomkvist and Salander. Mr. Fincher had already made two movies about serial killers, “Seven” and “Zodiac,” and that for him was reason enough not to make the movie, and after reading the book he had even more reservations. “I was appalled, for all the right reasons,” he said, referring to the story’s darkness and especially to a brutal scene of anal rape that he wasn’t sure was filmable in today’s climate.

What tipped the balance was the opportunity to overturn the conventional Hollywood wisdom that says franchise movies, like the Harry Potter films and the James Bond series, have to be rated PG-13. Mr. Rudin; Amy Pascal, the co-chairwoman of Sony Pictures; and Michael Lynton, Sony’s chairman and chief executive, all urged him to “go deep,” Mr. Fincher said — to make an unflinching, R-rated movie. “I don’t need another serial-killer movie,” he said, “but I liked the chance to make a franchise movie for adults.”

(He is open to making the next two installments, he added, but that discussion hasn’t happened yet. The two remaining novels, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” will be shot starting in the next year or year and a half, and if a messy dispute over the estate of Larsson, who died in 2004, can ever be resolved, there is even the possibility of a fourth novel and film.)

Mr. Fincher’s relationship with Hollywood is a curious one. He is famously stubborn and hates movie executives who are governed by what he calls the “checklist.” “Part of my testiness is that I feel I make 50 compromises a day,” he said. “When people come to me and say, ‘Why can’t you compromise?’ I’m like: ‘What are you talking about? The fact that we’re having this conversation means that we’ve compromised.’ ”

He is also famous for shooting as many as 90 takes of a single scene, and then for reshooting the scenes sometimes. And by Hollywood standards his movies are long, seldom coming in at less than two hours. Every now and then, he said, he sees one of his films on HBO and thinks with chagrin that he could have cut it by maybe a minute and a half — not exactly the kind of trim that gladdens an executive’s heart.

Mr. Fincher behaves, in short, like an indie filmmaker, turning out movies that are original and idiosyncratic, and yet he works for studios and with big budgets. He said he believes in what he calls “the herd” — the wisdom of the audience — but he also likes to say that if 11 people can agree about something, then it’s probably not worth doing. Mr. Rudin said: “I’ve made two movies with David, and he’s been a fantastic collaborator. But even if he weren’t, who cares when the work is that good? I couldn’t care less if he swung from the treetops.”

Mr. Fincher’s singleness of purpose probably comes from the fact that he has been making movies since he was 8 and never wanted to do anything else. He grew up in Marin County, Calif., where his father worked for Life magazine. George Lucas lived two doors down, and the filmmaker John Korty (“The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman”), for whom Mr. Fincher went to work right after high school, was a short bus ride away.

“All of my friends wanted to be directors,” he said. “I’m not talking about just two or three of my closest confidants. Everyone did.”

What animated them all were the great movies of the ’70s: “Jaws,” “All the President’s Men,” “All That Jazz,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and, above all, “American Graffiti,” which was set in their world. Even now Mr. Fincher gets excited talking about those movies. “When that kid who was in ‘American Graffiti’ became the star of ‘Happy Days,’ it was as if someone had pilfered one of our favorite things,” he said.

After being a cameraman for Mr. Korty, Mr. Fincher did special effects for George Lucas — a period he likes to call his film school — and then began making music videos (for Madonna, among others) and commercials. One of his most famous, for the American Cancer Society, showed a fetus calmly smoking a cigarette in the womb. He made his first feature, “Alien3,” when he was just 25 and got into a famous wrangle with the studio over the final cut. “In those days I was unwilling to own my own mistakes,” he said.

A common thread in all Mr. Fincher’s movies, “Benjamin Button” excepted, is people who are obsessed with something — solving a crime, tricking an uptight older brother into loosening up, creating a culture of bare-knuckled fighting, starting a social media Web site — and Mr. Fincher agreed that the description probably applies to himself as well. He said that he preferred to make a distinction between obsession and professionalism, but added, “My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people’s idea of obsessive.”

Yet he also resisted the notion that he is a perfectionist. “Movies are living things,” he said. “They evolve. They’re never finished, just abandoned.”


source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/movie ... wanted=all

[Germangirl]

I find it a bid sad, he didn't let Daniel be the male bimbo, that MB was in the book, because the swedish version didn't show it either.
Not because of getting more flesh ( ) but because this is how the character is in the book and what gives him a certain edge. I hope, they didn't make him too nice.

[sasha]

Thanks Dunda, very good one. So many interesting interviews lately, hard to stay on top.
I liked this one:

He’s like a very cool film studies prof who gently considers your most cherished notions about moviemaking and explains that actually the opposite is true.

I can see him doing it! But it becomes very exasperating after a while.

[sf2la]

Thanks, Dunda. What a treat to wake up to - this and the DC's Time Out interview. I'm in awe of this man. He's still my solid #2. As Rachel says, talent is sexy. I also find him handsome. Oh, and he's friends with #1 .

[Dunda]

little interview bits with David, Rooney and Stellan

http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles ... interviews