If any of the readers of this post have read the book 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and intend to watch the movie sometime soon (albeit not in Indian theatres given that the Indian Govt has decided to ban its release in India, will soon write a separate post on that topic), request you folks to read this review with great caution as there are quite a few spoilers ahead which might end up ruining the entire movie watching experience for you.

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CAUTION - MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD
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When I first heard that Daniel Craig was going to be portraying the role of Mikael Blomkvist, to be honest I didn't know how to react. While Craig brought the smartness and tough-as-nails personality to the character, whether he would be able to portray the more sensitive, thoughtful part of Blomkvist still remained a question to me. However, given that David Fincher (of The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fight Club fame) has taken liberties with the original script from the book as well as a few liberties with the character sketches themselves meant that Craig does more than an admirable job of translating Blomkvist's character in the movie.

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander was, is and I guess will remain pretty much of an unknown entity, at least until all three movies of the Millennium trilogy are released. I am pretty sure that by the end of the trilogy she will become quite the sensation over the world with her well researched, and well crafted portrayal of the complicated character that Salander has been made to be by Stieg Larsson.

Christopher Plummer as Henrik Vanger is extraordinarily competent and manages to breathe life into the character despite the fact that the movie does not spend as much time with him as the book does. The fact that he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in 2012 (albeit for a different movie, Beginners) means that he brings a lot of competence and life to this character. Although I wish that the screenplay had devoted more time to the character, well, to be honest I wish the screenplay had devoted more time to all the other characters as well, but then the movie would have ended up being a 4 hr movie then.

In any case, am not going into more details of the plot of the movie here but will restrict myself to saying that the primary premise of the movie deals with the investigation of the missing case of Harriet Vanger who disappeared approximately 40 yrs ago and Henrik Vanger uses the services of fallen journalist Mikael Blomkvist to try and find out what really happened to Harriet. How Mikael comes to use the assistance of Lisbeth Salander, how he unravels the mystery using old photographs, how the story unfurls makes the crux of the movie.

Like I mentioned before the only couple of things that I had complaints with was the fact that the screenplay chose to gloss over almost all the characters, including the leading ones of Blomkvist and Salander. While I am Ok with the Vangers being overlooked, my personal opinion was the character sketches of Blomkvist, Salander and Erica Berger should have been dealt with in a little more detail, even at the cost of lengthening the movie. Given that there are two more movies to follow with these characters, it would have helped the cause of the trilogy.

Apart from that, notable mention must be made of the fact that the background score for the movie adds a lot to its entire character. Trent Razor and Atticus Ross have done an awesome job of ensuring that the edginess and quirkiness of the Salander character is aptly captured in the music as well. Overall the entire sound recording and the background score of the movie add a lot to its already wonderful premise.

Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie
Movie preview of this movie
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A couple of reasons why I watched ‘Before the Rains’ were Santosh Sivan, its director and Nandita Das, its lead character. While I am a huge fan of Santosh Sivan’s cinematography in almost all of the movies in which he collaborated with Mani Ratnam (Roja, Iruvar, Dil Se, Raavanan, need I say more), the fact that I had seen quite a few interviews of his and he came across as this amazingly imaginative person who knows how to get the maximum detail in each and every frame of his piqued my interest in him. Santosh Sivan is almost like an university of cinematography and the script that he picked up for this movie lent itself to be filmed extraordinarily beautifully.

The second reason that I watched this movie was Nandita Das.
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These days Tamil cinema is in the middle of a silent revolution. While movies continue being made with big budgets, big stars (such as Singam 2, poised to release on 5th July), there is this entire other stream of movies being made with smaller budgets, smaller ‘stars’ which give much more weightage to crisp scripts, taut screenplays, and an overall appreciation to the different facets of film-making.
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I don't remember when I first heard of this movie, but for whatever reason it eluded me until Asianet finally decided to play it again (or was it the first time on TV?) on Sunday, Jan 6th. I guess the fact that this was one of the legendary Thilakan's last movies or this was one of Dulquer Salman's (Mammootty's son) first few movies played large in keeping the name 'Ustad Hotel' right on the top of my 'to watch list' of Malayalam movies.
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"Unknown" was just that, an unknown choice of a movie to watch on a Sunday afternoon. When the Missus, my cousin and me decided to sit down to watch some nice movie, the onus of choice of the movie was left to me. Browsing through my cousin's collection of movies, I happened to come across "Unknown". Not knowing anything else about the movie other than the fact that Liam Neeson starred in it, the three of us sat down to watch it.

In a departure from normal protocol, Agent Ethan Hunt is not necessarily given a choice to accept the mission in this instalment of Mission Impossible.
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At the outset "The Descendants" is a movie based on two, maybe three thin threads of stories with common characters.

The first one deals with Matt King who is the Managing Trustee of a trust which controls 25000 acres of virgin untouched land in the island of Ka'aui in Hawaii. King and his family members (read cousins, extended cousins, etc) are in the process of finalizing a deal to sell off the land and make a fortune.
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If any of the readers of this post have read the book 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and intend to watch the movie sometime soon (albeit not in Indian theatres given that the Indian Govt has decided to ban its release in India, will soon write a separate post on that topic), request you folks to read this review with great caution as there are quite a few spoilers ahead which might end up ruining the entire movie watching experience for you.
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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.
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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.
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While the posters of Vaanam bandied around Anushka dressed glamorously, Bharath posing with a guitar and Simbu in various poses, it gave me the impression that this was a run of the mill masala movie with the usual mass elements such as songs, dances, fights, glamour, etc etc. However, people who actually went to the theatre and watched the movie gave quite decent reviews and asked me to watch it at least once due to the fact that it was quite a different movie, in a nice way.
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