The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Movie Preview

Now if you are a book lover and a regular reader of the thriller action genre of books there's no way that you could have missed reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. This book made the literary circles and the bestseller lists of the world go ga-ga sometime ago.

The plot deals with the case of a young girl who has been missing for 30+ years and how the girl's grandfather hires an investigative journalist to trace the girl. Interspersed with the fact that the journalist himself is in the middle of a career threatening situation and in the company of a maverick young lady detective, the plot has all the elements that a thriller action book should have. An extremely compelling read, and this coming from somebody who had not actually read a book completely in quite a while.

Enough about the book because I could go on and on and my opinions on the book itself could make up yet another blog post by itself, or maybe even more than one because that was how impressed I was with the book. While I first heard that they were about to make an English movie based on this book, I was piqued as the Swedish Movie made on this book was apparently quite a hit and did justice to the complex book that this actually is. The English version stars none other than our very own gritty Daniel Craig. Now with the main character of Mikael Blomqvist being played by Craig, there is no way that I can afford to miss this movie when it does come down to India.

For now the YouTube version of the trailer has to suffice -

Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie

Wikipedia link to the book

Transformers : Dark of the moon - Movie Review

You know you are in for a ride when the movie begins with a panoramic view of the Earth from the other side, the dark side of the Moon. Quite a nice touch there, using the actual dark side of the Moon to mean much more than just literally the dark side of the moon, but then, hey we aren't discussing the philosophical side of this title are we? Because if we are, then that is pretty much the topic of an entirely different post or maybe even a whole blog devoted to that :)


In any case, if you have read my earlier reviews of Transformers and Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen , you can clearly see that I am quite a fan of the Transformers franchise and the characters itself. Something about the fact that these vehicles 'transform' into these awesomely huge robots which kick some serious butt is exciting and takes me back to my teenage days. Having said, I will start this review with the disclaimer that I will tend to be a little biased probably towards making this movie actually sound a lot better than most of the world probably found it to be.


The story begins in 1961 when a Cybertronian spacecraft called the Ark carrying an invention capable of rebuilding Cybertron crashes into the dark side of the Moon. In fact the movie claims that this is the main reason that JFK put all his money and resolve behind getting man on the moon before the Russians did so that they can recover the alien spacecraft and keep it for themselves. I loved this particular distortion of history for cinematic purposes, plus it probably gives a more plausible reason as to why the USA and the Russians were in such a hurry in the 1960s to get to the Moon. It was not like there was water on the Moon in any case :)


The Autobots, while investigating Decepticon activity in Chernobyl come across a fuel cell from the Ark. This in turn leads them to the dark side of the Moon where they find Sentinel Prime, former leader of the Primes guarding the rest of the fuel cells in the Ark. He however is in a coma and Optimus Prime uses the energy from the Matrix of Leadership to revive him and brings him back to Earth.


So far so good. However, it's only after Sentinel Prime lands on Earth that the real plot begins to unravel. Giving that part of the story up in this review would spoil the entire movie for anybody who's not yet watched the movie itself. In any case, suffice to say that good ol' Megatron is back for the party, Chicago as a city is almost wrecked and we have enough and more explosions and stunt sequences to keep the kids happy till they become teenagers.


All in all, this movie turns out to be a stock summer blockbuster just like the earlier two movies in this franchise, albeit marginally better than the second one though. That being said there's nothing really memorable about this instalment though. I guess the novelty kind of wears off and the fact that there's only so many times that you can actually see robots taking each other on in urban settings and get excited about it. In fact what works against this movie is the fact that given that most action movies have these awesome stunt sequences nowadays there's nothing really spectacular or different about this movie that makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd. That being said, if you are a fan of the Transformers franchise and the characters, this movie has enough to keep you excited. What is good about this franchise is that each movie almost seamlessly picks up from where the earlier one ends.


Related links - 
Wikipedia link to the movie
IMDB link to the movie


Trailer -