Millenium Ramblings

      

Friday was a sultry night of slow sweat, a window fan that sounded like a plane on approach and my tinnitus that decided it was going to practice its scales. So rather than toss and turn, I sat up and reached for the final book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, “The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet’s Nest”.

When I first read “The Girl With The Dragon” I knew; that as Hollywood is trying to cast the American version of this movie, I wanted to see Natalie Portman play Lisbeth Salanger. After all, isn’t Lisbeth just the grown up version of Mathilde from her movie “The Professional”? I don’t know about Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomquist, simply because Craig is too lean, too …James Bond. Blomquist is an “everyman” I can’t see Craig in that role, unless he packs some pounds on so he looks more like a middle-aged man.

Then I immediately thought how PERFECT Lauren Holly would be as Erika Berger, the Editor in Chief of the Millenium magazine, friend and some time lover of Mikael Blomquist. She plays smart, sexy and classy very well. Berger’s story is integral to who Blomquist is and I was disappointed that the Swedish version chose to cut most of Berger’s story. But the final book has a very juicy side story for Berger and I would love to see Lauren Holly sink her teeth into that role.

Today, I saw the Swedish movie version of the “Dragon”, the movie like the book was slow to start and over 2hrs long. Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch the movie w/o referencing the book, which obscures any thought of being objective on the merits of the movie alone.

But if anyone gets the chance, I would definitely recommend reading all 3 books. The 1st book was slow & despite having a murder mystery, to me a purely expository novel to introduce us to Mikael, Lisbeth(the ‘Girl’) and Erika, the three main characters that appear in all the books. It is slow and bears the atmospheric ambiance of an Ingmar Bergman movie.

The 2^nd book is more of an action thriller. I couldn’t read this book fast enough. This starts with a murder and ends with attempted murders. This movie would be a more of a Christopher Dolan action movie, Jason Bourne, except with a girl kicking some ass!

 

The 3^rd book is almost like two books. The 1^st half of the book is an exposition of Swedish law and political history, but it sets the stage for ending of the story.  The last half is straight out of a courtroom drama, a Joel Schumacher touch, similar to how he directed “The Client”.

I know this isn’t much of a book review, but I spent all night reading “Hornet’s” and didn’t sleep until 9am this morning. Then I woke up and watched the ‘Dragon’ movie. Books, movies, reality and distorted dreams have made me a bit of a confused mess today, so excuse my ramblings.