MOVIE REVIEW

How I feel about: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo... the American version.
Not to sound like a prick, but I saw The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (TGWTDT) before it was cool. Sort of. A friend and I saw it summer 2010 because her parents had seen it, and they liked it. Naturally I was disturbed yet intrigued. I asked for the book series for my birthday, and the movies on DVD for Christmas. I got the books but not the movies.
So when I started seeing billboards along local highways advertising for TGWTDT, I was curious and confused. Why would someone advertise for a book? Someone who isn't James Patterson? And then I started seeing the movie trailers online... and then the TV interviews...
My dad called me a week ago Monday:

"Hey, have you heard of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo?" I responded truthfully... "Yes... why?" "Don't you have those books?" I responded truthfully... "Yes... why?" "May I read them?" I responded truthfully... "Yes... but I don't have the third one because it wasn't out in paperback yet, and Mom didn't want to buy me a hardcover book. But it's been a year, so it's probably out in paperback now." 

And that was that. I got home last week Thursday and saw some books on our bookshelf downstairs.

"Dad?!" "Yes?" "Did you buy new The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books?" "Yes. I was traveling and I didn't want to wait to read them until I got home. The movie comes out next Tuesday." "Dad, the movie has been out for over two years I think." "But not the American version!"

And that was that. I tried to tell him how pompous, lazy, and arrogant Americans are for redoing a perfectly good movie just so they wouldn't have to read subtitles. He sided with the pompous.

"I don't want to spend a whole movie reading subtitles!" 

Ugh. It almost made me want to move to Canada.
But besides Canada, eh, I saw the movie with the family (minus Katie and Mike). It was... not that bad. I was expecting worse. But some things I actually liked a little better. Most things not, but some were better. All in all I prefer the original Swedish version with subtitles, but maybe that is just my young, cliche, starving for a little bit of culture self trying to rid my mind of all things boring and American. Or maybe it is just my appreciation for the movie in its original tongue. The world may never know.
Everything else in my life seems to be going pretty smoothly. Libbey and I have spent our days snuggled in bed listening to Lykke Li and Tracy Chapman, drinking vegan egg nog, and reading Gossip Girl (I bought the whole series for 50 cents a book at Goodwill last summer, and it's been taunting me from my bookshelf ever since) between learning how to knit a purl stitch (I think that's how you would phrase that). (As if that sentence could have had any more parenthesis).
Just a small five days away from seeing W.