From my review in Taki's Magazine of David Fincher's remake of the hit Swedish movie:
The more popular it is to worry over some organized threat, the less of a danger it likely is in reality. After all, if some group or institution were truly fearsome, most people would be terrified into silence or admiration.
For example, Dan Brown made a fortune off his The Da Vinci Code pulp novel during this low ebb of the Catholic Church’s powers with a tale of how a nearly omnipotent Church conspires to cover up the golden age of pagan feminism.
Of course, actual pagans traditionally complained that Christianity was too female-friendly. But Brown is practically Edward Gibbon compared to his successor as a global publishing sensation, the late Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or as it was originally titled in Sweden, Men Who Hate Women). Himself a hate-filled lefty nerd, Larsson concocted an elaborate fantasy world for true believers in the conventional wisdom.
Read the whole thing there.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo mania is one of these giant phenomena that is pretty funny when you get the joke, but almost nobody gets the joke (or, in this case, jokes).
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112 comments:
"And modern Sweden’s mild-mannered men are famous among the more aggressive sort of male tourists for their relative lack of apparent jealousy when their womenfolk amuse themselves by flirting with strangers."
Those girls don't just flirt. Never been to Scandinavia but I have been to those tropical beach paradises that Scandinavians love so much.
The guys had a dumbfounded expression but that's no different than how American or British guys would react.
Spot on. When I read the first book, my jaw dropped when I realized that Larson was setting up a fascist white male as the greatest threat to Sweden's survival (and to women in particular).
If the movie is faithful to the novel, there will be a cup of coffee in every characters' hands every scene. I can't recall any scene in the book that did not involve coffee being offered, requested, served, topped up, refilled, etc.
And it looks like Sweden is a measly sixth in per capita coffee consumption, behind ... well every other Scandinavian country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coffee_consumption_per_capita
The Finns have a sigificant 2 kg per year lead over even second-place contender Norway. Doesn't look like all that caffiene is doing much to bring down the Finnish suicide rates...
Dragon Tattoo bombed at the box office, coming in all of 4th and earning $19.4 million its first (long) weekend at the box office, behind Mission Impossible, Sherlock Holmes and, good lord, the Chipmunks sequel. The Swedish version did well (for a Swedish film) but all the pseudointellectuals already saw that, and no one else really wants to.
I find it hilarious that the fat-ass Stieg Larsson died at the age of 50 from a heart attack after climbing 7 - count 'em, seven! - whole flights of stairs.
Which Pagans protested the churches pro female policies? Pagan is rather large overarching category but my understanding is the evidence such as it is indicated that celtic and germanic pre-christian societies offered women superior legal status compared to the catholic church. My impression was omen in northern Europe have seemingly always had better legal status then in Mediterranean.
Doing some research now not finding much to support the idea that northern europe gave women rights that were denied elsewere seems to have have been very variable across time and region.
Still curious about the specific pagans you are talking about Steve.
Yeah, his Trotskyite political inclinations are the 800 pound gorilla in the room throughout the Millennium Trilogy (on which the movies were based,) of which I am somewhat embarrassed to say I have read.
I can't remember one bad character who wasn't either an ex white-power skinhead,some sort of misogynist, a sexual sadist or a rapist, and often being many of these things at one time. Having been the editor of a Swedish Antifa magazine, with these sorts of far-right nationalist excoriations being his bailiwick, its probably natural for him to write about such issues though.
Also, looking at his picture online, he doesn't look dissimilar to the other alienated losers that I see punting in the Socialist Parties & other radical left groupuscules in my own country.
This looks like the ultimate SWPL movie - It's foreign but in English. It has the panache of Fincher. It has the correct bad guys. I.E. it has enough high caste markers to off set the fact that it's just another action movie.
The studios mistake was that this stuff appeals to everyone. It doesn't and it can't. The whole point of SWPL stuff is to set yourself above.
I am Lugash.
Although Larsson was a long-time supporter of the Communist Workers League, his politics seldom got in the way of his lust for Apple products.
He had a similar fetish for Swedish real estate in the books.
Can someone explain what happened to Cousin Anita in the American film? She snuck Harriet Vanger out of Sweden to England, where Harriet lived under Anita's name, yet the Vanger clan in Sweden knew about her living there?
Ridiculous political views aside, I 've enjoyed the books and film. Lisbeth's character is an interesting deviation from what we usually see, and the 'Deep State' plot line was clever.
I am Lugash.
one of these giant phenomena... that is pretty funny when you get the joke, but almost nobody gets the joke...
Kinda like The Stepford Wives. Took me years to realize that that wasn't a sexual satire, like everybody thought, but a racial satire.
Remember, it was set in the Connecticut of Prescott Bush. That state's last Yankee Senator.
"And modern Sweden’s mild-mannered men are famous among the more aggressive sort of male tourists for their relative lack of apparent jealousy when their womenfolk amuse themselves by flirting with strangers."
The Swedish film "Together" shows something like this. The leader of a leftist commune passively tolerates the open relationship his girlfriend wants so she can whore around with alpha guys. He's "sensitive" and consoles her with soup and hugs after they pump and dump her. But eventually he flips out and throws her out on her ass, which the movie treats as just deserts.
Larsson fearlessly exposed the true plagues menacing contemporary Sweden: rich Nazis, Christian male chauvinists, rapist legal officials, and two generations of billionaire serial killers—the first preying on Jewish women, the second on immigrant women.
You're a laugh riot Steve!
Too true. Fascists come in all shapes, sizes, colors and genders (I dare you to count those these days). But, as QT says, sometimes a movie just calls for an anal rape scene or two.
The Author Stieg Larsson was one of the most leftist individuals you could find in Sweden. Architect of several left wing projects, one is the magazine "Expo" who's is hunting down anyone who is critic to mass immigration.
Stieg Larssons books was first published by a Swedish publisher with great sympathy for and promoting the extreme left. Money from the publishing goes to various new left wing projects. If you buy his book or watch the movies based on his books you help the world become a darker place much faster. I am not surprised left wing Hollywood liked his books.
Yes, Larsson loved himself some real estate porn. But, then, who doesn't?
"Can someone explain what happened to Cousin Anita in the American film?"
Uh, she died in a car crash 20 years ago? Or something like that. I couldn't quite follow it, but then I didn't have the Vanger family tree as a cheat sheet like readers did. Plus, I didn't care.
Steve Zallian seemed quite proud of the new ending he came up with. But I guessed it about two hours before the surprise twist ending and I almost never guess anything.
But readers of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, which has sold nearly 30 million books, know better. Larsson fearlessly exposed the true plagues menacing contemporary Sweden: rich Nazis, Christian male chauvinists, rapist legal officials, and two generations of billionaire serial killers—the first preying on Jewish women, the second on immigrant women.
Michael Connelly and his Harry Bosch/Micky Haller books are the L.A. equivalent: evil white males (EWM) oppressing saintly NAMs. There's only one thing certain in the nightmarish Hieronymus-Boschean dystopia of modern L.A.: if a NAM is jailed for a horrendous crime, an EWM is really responsible.
There is a Sly Stallone flick called Cobra. It is the quintessential B revenge movie. The first chapter of the first Larsson book struck me as employing the same crassly manipulative formula. I regifted it.
Gilbert Pinfold.
Reg Cæsar:
"Took me years to realize that that wasn't a sexual satire, like everybody thought, but a racial satire."
OK, I'll bite. How is Stepford Wives a racial satire?
you wrote:
"Himself a hate-filled lefty nerd,"
I agree with most of what you wrote in this entry. However, the quote above touches upon an issue that is near and dear to my heart (but which is apparently invisible to everyone else...):
so to be a leftist is to be very interested in feminist causes, environmentalism, political correctness, race, sexuality etc. Right? But leftism USED TO BE about labor solidarity and protecting jobs, and about wages,etc. Economic matters.
But something happened in the past few decades. They created a new leftism.
Now, howcum you aint innerested in that? You are remarkably incurious about such matters. You and every other "pundit" out there.
They swapped out real leftism for fake leftism over the past 40 years. And nobody seems to care.
You prefer to stick to the "mainstream" iconoclasm, don't you?
More of a future in it?
Seriously? Another fascist white male is the locus of all of the evil?
Thanks for telling me, I was planning to see the movie but now I will skip it.
Here's another not-so-positive review along the same lines as the Taki piece:
http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/12/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-the-remake/
The inspiration for Stieg Larsson's stories was a Swedish murder 25 years ago with distinct overtones of the 1980's sexual hysteria mixed with scorched earth female divorce tactics and toddler testimony coached by female psychologists and prosecutors.
PMS and hysteria writ large.
Watch your backs, gentlemen.
Quite a lovely young lesbian couple back in 1990.
The inspiration for Stieg Larsson's stories was a Swedish murder 25 years ago with distinct overtones of the 1980's sexual hysteria mixed with scorched earth female divorce tactics and toddler testimony coached by female psychologists and prosecutors.
PMS and hysteria writ large.
Watch your backs, gentlemen.
La Femme Nikita on steroids.
Is this funny?
The Nazi movie 'Jew Suss' was hysterically funny too, but its impact was not. It really did sway people.
So, though Dragon Girl might be funny to us, its social impact will be dire.
Btw, some will defend the movie as anti-Nazi. But this is more like Protocols of Elders of Teuton. What this movie is saying is that Nazism is a spiritual problem of all Teutonic/Nordic people.
The original movietitle of the Noomie Rapace-version in Swedish was "Män som hatar kvinnor" :
English translation: "Men who hates women."
Why not use this original title?
You see this stuff everywhere. I read a French novel from the late 80s where the existentialism-spouting detectives thwart an imminent Fascist takeover by some imaginary deep state, with the help of noble Maghrebian immigrants, of course.
I've always been struck since my teens how many with no experience with the Catholic church flagellate (no pun intended) the Catholic black legend thing. There's a whole subset of deathrock/goth junk culture that makes anti-catholicism their mother's milk. It's funny how you'll see young hipsters from some secular SWPL background where virtually no Catholics live make it their mission to parody it to death as some sort of culture war. I once pointed out to one of these types (who was probably escaping some Methodist-lite upbringing) how he probably knew only about Catholicism from what he say on record album sleeves. Using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat, as Allan Bloom observed.
The Swedish movietitle was Män som hatar kvinnor" whichs translated means
"Men who hates women".
Why was this title not used in the american version when everything else was copied neatly into detail?
Peace to the world from paganistic scandinavian girl with a non-jeleaous boyfriend;-)( Due to his high self esteem I suppose..)
Not really on the Michael Connelly thing. His usual thing is to take a small, underclass crime, have the investigation of it lead to some sort of high level corruption in Los Angeles power circles, but in the final twist make the corruption actually unrelated to the crime that kicked the whole thing off. He does that nearly every time.
Here's someone who's fallen for the whole schtick:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/27/the-dark-side-of-sweden/
"But this isn’t the 1990s anymore, so the appeal of such dusty clichés has drifted up the age range."
Fifty years ago you would have written:
"But this isn’t the 1940s anymore, so the appeal of such dusty clichés has long since faded."
Cennbeorc
"Celtic and germanic pre-christian societies offered women superior legal status compared to the catholic church."
I know that Salic (Frankish) law forbid inheritance on the female line, which doesn't sound too female friendly.
Certainly, pre-Christian ROMAN culture was notably non-feminist. It's said that not a single Roman woman is known to us except as the relative or lover of a more famous man, whereas the history Christianity is full of famous women. This point doesn't directly address the subject women's legal rights, but it does suggest the kind of spin that's been put on the subject in recent decades.
Cennbeorc
I think the karate chop all action girl goes back to the 60s and not the 90s - in the lovely shape of Honor Blackman & Diana Rigg in The Avengers along with Modesty Blaise (played by Monica Vitti the Italian actress who starred in several Antonioni movies of the decade popular with the subtitled European cinema crowd) and a number of James Bond sidekicks.
Neo-nazis as villains have appeared in several recent films (such as The Sum of all Fears) and back during the 70s we had actual not-so-ex Nazis still kicking around (The Odessa File, Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil).
Steve -- Brilliant. But you forgot to mention the movie itself is a flop, doing only about $19 million opening week as noted above. Pathetic.
The book climbed the best-seller lists, but that is fairly suspect since it seems most of the sales are outside the US.
Consider who buys most books: women age 35-54, IIRC. [Those Kindle ads on TV seem to reflect that.] There's no hunky, Alpha guy every woman wants to win over and tame (ala Twilight). Probably most of the sales of the books were in Europe where fantasies of Swedish Nazis fed comfortable dogma and illusions.
About Michael Connelly, the Irish in America are as much responsible for pushing population replacement as anyone, citing derogatory comments/policies as support for Mass Mexicanization (plus more Catholics!)
Some of the more fanatic are even happy to see this in Ireland itself, now threatened by ... Somali immigrants that the state unwisely took to make the EU happy and buy votes (as usual).
The whole thing about Apple porn is that it looks so dated. The machine Larsson drools over is a dinosaur today, barely able to boot up and surf the web.
I saw the movie. Couldn't make head nor tails out of it.
"I can't remember one bad character who wasn't either an ex white-power skinhead,some sort of misogynist, a sexual sadist or a rapist, and often being many of these things at one time"
Yeah, but look on the bright side, Champ; there were no black characters. That pretty much makes it a stormfront/amren must see, doesn't it?
Though I have not seen the remake, yet, I have been looking forward to it mostly for Trent Reznor’s score. I have some advice for the Steve-o-sphere: compartmentalize. I am used to seeing movies and listening to music with which I disagree on some level. In fact, I usually listen to the talk radio stations with which I most disagree. Smart whites are cultural dualists. Iconoclasm and the culture of critique may have posturing and insincere facets, but it is integral to modern white sensibilities. Part of this is just the desire for edginess without the obstacles of offensiveness. However, liberal sensibilities owe much to amygdala activation (or lack thereof), which is arguably more racially distinguishing than skin tone. So, let me enjoy my Nine Inch Nails torture-porn video in peace!
"Ridiculous political views aside, I 've enjoyed the books and film. Lisbeth's character is an interesting deviation from what we usually see, and the 'Deep State' plot line was clever."
My feelings exactly. Being rather Aspergery myself, I love police procedurals. All the mention of coffee drinking really appealed to my enjoyment of detail and Lisbeth was a fun character.
And I could read the books with a clear conscience and a sense of Schadenfreude, knowing Larsson died intestate and the profits from his trilogy did not go to the Communist party, as was, apparently, his intention.
Stieg Larsson was a professional "anti-fascist" - basically Sweden's answer to Morris Dees, Abe Foxman and Gerry Gable. He hated white European society and wished it destroyed, and his novels were his way of spreading the Eurocidal gospel.
And I'd hate (hate HATE) to sound like Whiskey here, but his books seem to be largely read by women, and I'm certain that they take his message more to heart than the men who do read them. They seem to revel in the propaganda they semi-know (but don't care) they're being fed. I suspect Roissy may have some theories as to why women enjoy the books so much, but let's not get into that here.
Self-loathing Jew: bad.
Self-loathing Nord: good.
Rather ironic since skinheads are really into tattoos and body piercings.
The inspiration of Larons books were not the 25 year old murder of a prostitute but his witnessing the brutal rape of a 15 year old girl.
And the guilt of not being a pussy and not stopping the rape haunted his entire life.
He's a coward with diplaced rage. I bet he hated to look in the mirror at the sad excuse for a human he had become.
World according to SPLC, ADL, Hollywood:
1. Muslim terrorists in every corner of America.
2. KKK about to take power.
3. China, I mean N. Korea, to invade the Detroit area. (new Red Dawn)
4. Epic Beard Man is now a mestizo beating up white bullies on a bus.
5. New version of Straw Dogs. Rednecks main sexual threat to white women in the South.
-------
Maybe the Lacrosse case will be made into a movie.
"Ho with the Ass Tattoo"
She be fighting privilege preppy Nazis in college who raped her.
I suspect Roissy may have some theories as to why women enjoy the books so much, but let's not get into that here.
No, let's do:
The books play to women's twin desires of grrl-power and sexual submission, but they actually say more about the author. Female rape fantasies (and Larsson's own male desire to do some vigorous dishing-it-out) rather embarrassingly involve men who look and act nothing like the carb-loaded Larsson, who couldn't climb seven stories without dying from a heart attack, much less have good hard sex. But Noble Womanhood transcends such tawdry concerns, right? It's the "inner person" they care about when they've got their legs spread for somebody.
Hence, Larsson's sock puppet wields his awesomely throbbing empathy powers to break down nerd-grrl's defenses (the mangina/white knight version of scaling the castle walls). And remember, these are really, really, really bad guys we're talking about so the sadistic erotica, er, excuse me, the evil has to be laid on really thick. I mean REALLY thick, and hard and pounding.
In sum, a bunch of conflicted, leftist, feminutty nonsense.
more skinhead bashing
Good review. My wife (no feminist) liked the book, but I thought it was trashy, contrived and full of leftist caricatures. In a 1977 will, Stieg Larsson left his estate to the Communist Workers League, but the will was unwitnessed and found to be invalid under Swedish law. The whole thing is apparently tied up in litigation between his live-in girlfriend and his family. Too bad, but it probably doesn't matter much. Come the revolution, private property will be abolished.
I've noted the pre-Christian matriarchal Germano-Celtic paradise comments. Far from being some lost culture, most of that stuff was invented by a mixture of wistful anthropologists and Order of the Golden Dawn dandies a century ago.
Here's some excerpts that academic feminist canon poem about "rediscovering the stolen legacy" by Adnrienne Rich. It's a set piece that lots of "womyn's" studies programs make as a kind of preamble:
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.....
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
I "discovered" these books a little bit before they became well known, and enjoyed them (taking a big mental discount re: the dire neo-Nazi threat).
The aftermath of the author's death is a study in lefty hypocrisy. He lived for about twenty five years with Eva Gabriellson. They were both committed communists, with a disdain for material wealth and the institution of marriage. They never expected the novels to be such a big deal.
With Stieg's death, Gabriellson went absolutely batshit crazy that he left no will and all that lovely money, including the proceeds from the books and movie sales, went to Larson's parents and brother, who are normal non-commie folk.
She has been on an intensive campaign to give non-married shack ups the same legal rights as married couples. The personal is always political with these people.
Of course, if you had asked her at any time during the twenty five years she lived with the guy why they didn't just get married, I'm sure she would have said either (1) they don't believe in such an oppressive institution; (2) they are independent adults (3) marriage is "just a piece of paper" and 4) money is not important to us.
Now with several million kroner in play, she can't get over the fact that she has to live by her life-long stated principals re: marriage and property. She is hell-bent on rearranging the Swedish legal system to salve her emotional wreckage.
It seems never have occurred to her that her long-time lover just didn't care enough about her to make an honest woman of her and assure her security if he died. If he were that into her, he would have married her. That's what she just can't get over, and the rest of the Swedish population will probably have to pay for it.
I thought the Swedish films were good despite Larsson's pantomime politics.
The fictional left wing magazine that the hero works for seems like the dullest publication on Earth though:
* In the second film the magazine's big story that is going to be the focus of their next issue is that men are using prostitutes. I know this is feminist Sweden but is that really news? There is dramatic talk of them confronting the punters with the kind of bullying prurience that resembles Iran's Revolutionary Guard investigating couples for holding hands.
* It would almost always out of date, despite one of the characters being an ace hacker, the Internet is unheard of among magazine staffers. They have to get their rapidly developing story to the printers a week in advance of printing it in order to get it out.
* As you would expect of earnest socialist Swedes, they don't believe in being pithy. As the journalists discuss writing up the big story in the 3rd film, you realise that they are talking about writing 30 to 50 pages each.
* Being socialists and Swedes they are devoid of humour, so this is 200 pages of an out of date story with no laughs in it whatsoever.
Of course being in a fictional universe, this magazine appears to have Sweden on tenterhooks.
Harry Potter and Sailor Moon for perverts(as if HP and SM weren't perverted to begin with).
I think you guys are taking this trilogy way too seriously. Read it/see it to be trendy and to see some Daniel Craig nudity (I hope there's lots of it).
Once you're past a certain age you only stay up on children's movies, signaling that you are a soccer parent. G w DT has enough complexity that a middle aged adult can bear watching it then be rewarded by not appearing so clueless because you have, in fact, seen a popular non-disney movie.
The idea of this movie is funny. Almost with the GOP paranoid fantasy that the biggest threat to the republic is... Ron Paul.
Maybe we should make a movie.
MAN WITH THE 'RACIST NEWSLETTER'.
The big twist of this series is it features a degenerate as hero.
In movies like BOURNE TRIOLOGY or THELMA AND LOUISE, we have attractive normal types fighting for justice. They give a positive face to certain values or positions. And BONNIE AND CLYDE featured two gorgeous people as rebels against the system.
Generally, bad guys have been depicted as ugly and hideous. Even in the PC Matrix, the good guys look hip and cool while the meanest killers were the freakish albino twins in part II.
Spielberg gave us wholesome Indy Jones fighting Nazis who seemed rather degenerate in the first one: especially the Himmler look alike.
GIRL WITH DRAGON TATTOO kinda reverses this by making a quasi-lesbian freak the main character and heroine.
Instead of evil = degeneracy, it says degeneracy = good.
Cool degeneracy has long been with us in underground culture, but it's gone fully mainstream.
I think part of the appeal of GIRL WITH DRAGON TATTOO is it's a kind of 'anti-fascist fascism'. Though the girl is ostensibly driven by 'justice', there's an element of Will to Power and the Attraction of the Dark Side in her character. She's like a wayward daughter of Darth Vader. She's like a punk-leather version of SS sado-masochism. People are attracted to her for irrational reasons. Though the movie is supposed for 'equality', she is appealing because she is of the 'superior breed'.
It's like punk Nazis vs rich Nazis.
Another appeal of this series is the left must be bored out of its mind cuz they run most of everything in Sweden. The left is supposed to be rebellious, but they got nothing to rebel against. And so they must create fictional enemies to perpetuate they myth that they are underdogs fighting an uphill battle.
But Americans play this game too. Though US is the most powerful nation on Earth and though 9/11 happened because we interfered too much in the Middle East, the narrative was 'Big powerful invincible Muslim terrorists are out to get us, and we are in big doo doo'.
But then, since excessive 'Islamophobia' might be construed as 'racist', TSA was told to inspect old white grannies as possible terrorists too. I mean you gotta watch out for them old coots. You don't what kind of diabological conspiracy they're hatchign at bingo gatherings.
Btw, since Sweden is about to be taken over by nazis, I suggest Jews stop worrying about Iran and call on decent Americans to invade Sweden lest there be WWIII and another Holocaust.
I watched the first 20 minutes of the first Swedish version and couldn't take it anymore.
PASSION OF THE PERVERT.
(It made something OLD BOY normal by comparison.)
But then PAN'S LABYRINTH, aka PASSION OF THE SPANISH COMMIE, was awful too.
In the first Harry Bosch novel I tried to read, author Connelly had a wise seasoned boss belittling a white male cop who wasn’t appreciative enough of a black female cop’s work.
This was in the first dozen pages, so I closed the book and haven’t opened one since. I’ll give Connelly credit for not wasting my time.
If you ever watch Scandinavian films you will realize that all men are portrayed as alcoholics, philanderers, beaters of females (daughters, wives, mom, the dog), and generally useless.
Also a man named Mads Mikkelsen is in every Danish movie made since the mid nineties.
If you've seen the Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord series about Northern England the main bad guy is a white, capitalist who loves shopping malls and raping children. He also says wogs and gypos a lot (so we know he's really, really racist).
Swedes do have a problem with racist serial killers occasionally cropping up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malm%C3%B6_shootings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ausonius
Sound's like someone oughta do a Roman a Clef about Steig Larson.
http://theleastobviousanswer.blogspot.com/2011/12/girl-with-dragon-tattoono-eyebrows.html
"Read it/see it to be trendy and to see some Daniel Craig nudity (I hope there's lots of it). "
Cut it out, Kylie, we know that's you.
One of the reasons, I recall, for the swift conversion to Christianity by the Romans was that Christians treated women and slaves better than they had been treated by the pagans. Women were seen as equal in dignity and the veneration of Mary was attractive, compared to that of, say, Jupiter, who had raped half of womankind in various guises, from swans to rays of light. At least Mary was *asked* before being impregnated by the Holy Spirit.
On a more serious note, it is clear that pre-Constantinian Christianity was more egalitarian than Roman culture at large and that was attractive for women and slaves.
Michael Connelly and his Harry Bosch/Micky Haller books are the L.A. equivalent: evil white males (EWM) oppressing saintly NAMs. There's only one thing certain in the nightmarish Hieronymus-Boschean dystopia of modern L.A.: if a NAM is jailed for a horrendous crime, an EWM is really responsible.
I watched a show on Investigation Discovery last night about the strangulation murder of a McDonald's manager in Tennessee. An admittedly weird white couple became suspects in her death, as they had argued with her over feeding feral cats in the restaurant parking lot. Lo and behold, the actual murderers turned out to be two ghetto gangbangers, cousins who formerly had worked at the restaurant.
The thing is, this was a true story. You would **never** see this plot being allowed in fiction. Never.
Peter
You have misused the term "sock puppet," here. I think you meant to use another fandom term, "Mary Sue." A sock puppet is an account created by someone embroiled in an online controversy to post comments giving the appearance of widespread support for her position. So in an argument about such important matters as, say, which Hogwarts student would be most likely to have illicit relations with Professor Snape, someone holding to the unpopular opinion that Professor Snape has no romantic feelings for underage wizards and therefore would not engage in such things might create multiple accounts and use them to create the appearance of many people agreeing with this obviously absurd position. But the term for a character in a work of fiction clearly intended as a more attractive version of the author, who gets to have experiences and relationships the author would like to have, is "Mary Sue."
Truth: "I can't remember one bad character who wasn't either an ex white-power skinhead,some sort of misogynist, a sexual sadist or a rapist, and often being many of these things at one time"
Yeah, but look on the bright side, Champ; there were no black characters. That pretty much makes it a stormfront/amren must see, doesn't it?"
A Scandinavian crime story without Blacks. That pretty much makes it piece of escapism.
Gilbert Pinfold.
There was an interesting article in the New Yorker on 1/10/11, "Man of Mystery: Why Do People Love Stieg Larsson's novels?"
There are theories that Gabrielsson or someone else actually wrote the books.
The real title of this book is "Men Who Hate Women". For some reason the publisher in America changed the original title.
In the story, the woman is raped by those evil white males - in fact, it looks like Sweden is full of perfidious, odious, eeeeeeevil white rapist males.
In the movie, she fights off a youth gang - a WHITE youth gang (neo nazi of course - weeeeeeeeeeeeeee).
Which is curious as the clear majority of rapes in Sweden - about 100% of them, with the error rate of +/- 0% is committed by everybody's favorite, black people.
Not just black people - MOSLEM black people.
Weeeee!
I have not seen more odious, perfidious, hypocritical piece of propaganda being foisted upon the idiot mass market masses since my days in an Eastern European communist "paradise" and books written by "approved" authors with stories of heroic school children snitching and apprehending evil American spies out to steal communist farming inventions.
1. Jeez, Larsson looked exactly like Max from "The Lost Boys".
2. The ____ with the ____ ____ - I think we have the latest iSteve running joke.
3. Daniel Craig. More confirmation, by the sound of things, that the man cannot do accents. Remember his comical appearance in "Munich"? In "Our Friends in the North" in the mid-1990s he couldn't even get close to a convincing Newcastle accent (which isn't a particularly hard one to do). In fact he's not really much of an *actor* - more of a *performer*. He's quite good as Bond, but mainly because he's in fearsome shape and adept at the physicality and the violence. A bit like Schwarzenegger ("the human special effect") less the steroids. He's above Affleck but a bit below Crowe.
Re: sockpuppetry, we have had an excellent example here in the past year or so. Johann Hari, a evil little lefty creep of a journalist (think Stieg Larsson crossed with Jayson Blair), has been exposed in the most humiliating way as a liar, a plagiarist and a general runt. He engaged in intensive sockpuppetry to doctor his wikipedia profile - whose discussion pages of course now function as a permanent record of his sockpuppetry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari
Whatever David Fincher's espoused politics might be, his cinema has been Foucaultism writ large.
From "Alien 3" on, he's expanded on Ridley Scott's sado-Teutonic aesthetic and given it a more stuffily self-serious air. Scott's best work (you know the two) can be experienced almost as updated silent era Lang visions, but Fincher usually feels too studied, even by that standard.
Curiously though, he seems to be up there with Almodovar in terms of the accolades his actresses give him. Weaver and Foster are effusive. At the same time, he had Weaver's head shaved and Rooney Mara starved and punked out (I suspect at least some of her piercings for the role were fake, but nonetheless)-- so if he likes to torture his actresses as much as Almodovar loves to flatter them, what's the attrac-- oh . . . .
...the true plagues menacing contemporary Sweden: ... rapist legal officials...
I thought that was Arkansas.
... two generations of billionaire serial killers...
I thought that was Texas.
OK, I'll bite. How is Stepford Wives a racial satire? --Lawful Neutral
Stepford is what those of Ira Levin's race imagine the world of Prescott Bush's race to be.
As Sandy Balfour said about the clue in a cryptic crossword, it "must say what it means, but it need not mean what it says".
(As in "lawful neutral"-- a great clue for HERMAPHRODITE! Paging Will Shortz...)
Larsson never married his long-time girlfriend because that supposedly would've required making his address public. That means she did not inherit the proceeds from his books.
Then Larsson's death from climbing 6-7 whole flights of stairs - 100 whole vertical feet, wow! - may have been due to his fear that the elevator in his building was booby-trapped.
Sometimes it's nice when lefty extremism and paranoia ruins only the lefties, and not the countries in which they live.
Sweden is a cult-like state, no doubt about that. But I love the place.
About Michael Connelly, the Irish in America are as much responsible for pushing population replacement as anyone, citing derogatory comments/policies as support for Mass Mexicanization (plus more Catholics!)
Wrong. Ashkenazis have everyone beat by a mile.
But the Irish are working on a distant second, I'll give you that.
IT's a fantasy world.. no different than the fantasy world splashed across the NYT every day.
a few months ago NYT ran an article about the rape epidemic in Scandinavia.. i thought... could it be.. they are recognizing the reality? It turned out the article was about how there had 'always been' a rape problem in Scandinavia.
I had to look up an article in afterposten to show it was all 3rd world immigrants, but liberal friend cited the NYT article :( people don't see what they don't want to see.
"Despite Fincher’s expertise, his Girl with the Dragon Tattoo winds up being The Da Vinci Code of the 2010s, only with more anal rape."
I don't go to see many movies and two of the last three that my wife dragged me to were The DaVinci Code and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!
I watched an hour of this movie on Netflix (the Swedish version with English subtitles) before giving up. It wasn't even bad, especially, just not very interesting. The female lead (Lizbeth?) was as far-fetched a character as I've ever seen on the screen.
About Michael Connelly, the Irish in America are as much responsible for pushing population replacement as anyone, citing derogatory comments/policies as support for Mass Mexicanization (plus more Catholics!)
First off, Mr Scotch-Irish, how is any of that "about" the author Michael Connelly, who does not have anything to say on the topic of population replacement in his books?
Secondly, it is factually untrue that "the Irish in America are as much responsible for pushing population replacement as anyone". Just off the top of my head I can think of a number of other groups who are much more responsible for it: the "Scotch-Irish" (aka Jews) of course, and also the Anglo-Americans.
Though I have not seen the remake, yet, I have been looking forward to it mostly for Trent Reznor’s score. I have some advice for the Steve-o-sphere: compartmentalize. I am used to seeing movies and listening to music with which I disagree on some level
It's a crap movie for reasons having nothing to do with the authors politics. In fact reading this thread was my first introduction to his politics. I turned it off after an hour's viewing because it managed to be both silly and boring at the same time.
apparently the guy was not feminist enough.
"of course, if we were to imagine that every film, every book, every everything in popular culture were entitled “men who hate women” everything would look differently wouldnt it? everything would start to make sense. and that we simply cannot have."
http://radicalhub.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo/#more-1725
"and screwed up his partner’s financial life by not bothering to do the basics, will, trust, life insurance. Geez guys, it’s not that difficult!
Remember how men will deliberately do a piss-poor job at kitchen duty, so their wife gets shafted with all the drudge work? Perhaps he deliberately made it impossible for her to inherit but allowed her to think he was leaving everything to her, so she would coddle his stupid ass while he was alive."
I think the girls are probably right that he had a "hidden boner" while writing the girl's rape revenge episode.
GIRL WITH DRAGON TATTOO suspended at movie theater with YOUTHS WITH BAD ATTITUDE.
Speaking of imaginary power, 80s were a hilarious time. RED DAWN's scenario was Soviets invading the US. RAMBO made Soviets running Vietnam.(Nothing could have been further from the truth). ROCKY IV would have believe Soviets had some plan to create the neo-Nazi-Aryan-man. There was also a TV show starring Kris Kristofferson where Soviets invaded a small American town. I forgot the title.
(And even the Cold War was clearly over, there were clowns on the right who insisted the Soviets were as powerful as ever. Buckley was one of the clowns, and on his side of the Firing Line debate were Gingrich, Haig, and Pearle. "Resolved: The Cold War Is Not Coming to an End")
Though PLATOON had its share of its BS, it was a corrective to all the mindless warmongering movies of the Reagan yrs. That mentality of 'we were stabbed in the back in Vietnam, and US is back to kick ass around the world' played into neocon foreign policy of the 90s and 2000s.
"Reg Cæsar said...
""OK, I'll bite. How is Stepford Wives a racial satire? --Lawful Neutral""
Stepford is what those of Ira Levin's race imagine the world of Prescott Bush's race to be."
That's an interesting take on that book. Or perhaps it was some kind of ethnic wish fullfillment on Levin's part - the idea of a wife who would occasionally shut the hell up.
Funniest Isteve review ever?
Supposedly Larson's inspiration for the series was thinking - what would happen to Pippi Longstocking if she had to grow up in today's Sweden? That would have been a good, and probably fairly libertarian, book, had he stuck to that theme. And a little of what could have been is still in the novel - mostly the way the State and Social Services try to crush Lisbeth, which were some of the most effective parts of the book. But the author's leftism proved to be too strong.
Funny and smart review.
As for the Swedish version ... I was so flabbergasted by how turgid, slow, witless and un-irreverent it was that I sat thru the whole thing. Was the bad guy REALLY going to turn out to be a rich white Nazi? Omigod, yes! Pretty decor and photography, though.
The film left me in a very Whiskey frame of mind, reflecting that something that gets many women hot is a rumpled, reluctant, leftist crusader-male (preferably in a leather jacket), and the thing (outside of Naziism) that women dislike most is anal sex when they aren't in the mood for it.
the Irish in America are as much responsible for pushing population replacement as anyone, citing derogatory comments/policies as support for Mass Mexicanization (plus more Catholics!)
Citing derogatory comments/policies as support for Mass Mexicanization? What does that even mean? You're not only stupid, you're incoherent.
I've never seen a scintilla of evidence to suggest that Irish-Americans are any more supportive of mass Mexicanization than any other group, very much including the actual Scotch-Irish.
"Daniel Craig. More confirmation, by the sound of things, that the man cannot do accents."
Or anything else, by my reckoning.
In fact he's not really much of an *actor* - more of a *performer*."
I wish he'd perform a disappearing act. He's neither attractive nor talented.
The film left me in a very Whiskey frame of mind
That's not a very healthy place to be.
reflecting that something that gets many women hot is a rumpled, reluctant, leftist crusader-male
Only if you think that leftist movies provide an accurate insight into reality.
and the thing (outside of Naziism) that women dislike most is anal sex when they aren't in the mood for it.
Those crazy broads, not wanting things shoved up their ass on a man's whim. Who can understand the ladies? I ask you.
meanwhile back in reality:
Norway: ALL Sexual Assaults ending in Rape commited by Non-Westerners
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h1DiIhg3kwc
I can't remember one bad character who wasn't either an ex white-power skinhead,some sort of misogynist, a sexual sadist or a rapist,
how else could it get any traction with the intellgenisia in the west?
I mean gosh, something about..oh i don't know.. the scots irish who run the banking systems.. and curiously enough, many of sweden's newspapers and TV stattions..
In Soviet Russia
imaginery power fight The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The heroine is an ace hacker who for some unknown reason cannot hack the account that she knows where her money is.
Who wrote this? Dan Browne?
Very enjoyable knee-capper, right up with the "Contagion" review and all the Wachowski demolitions. Saw the 1st Swedish movie and as you confirm this looks like a slavish but expensive & pointless remake.
I thought the original was anemic, full of scenes of the guy zooming in with a Photoshop window--apparently that is entrancing to older baby boomers. Partway in they revealed that a (non-billionaire) evil male is sexually degrading the cyberpunk savant, followed by her washing out her mouth. Kind of a minor plot point, and reminiscent of a typical day at a movie producer's office anyway but evidently it was so central to the premise to be showcased in the new preview trailer. Who knew the class of Woodstock was so puritanical/naive...
Not to pile on, but ex-smoker/breather Pope Hitchens praised this series almost effusively in Vanity Fair-- along w/ the John Edwards tribute I imagine that one hasn't aged well! Have not read any translated Stig Larson books myself, but aside from camp value they must be fairly crappy
How was "Red Dawn" all that unrealistic? If 82 IQ Afghan sheepherders could give the Soviets trouble, why not 100 IQ American high school & college students, led by a trained professional in the form of Powers Boothe's character?
It was unrealistic to think that the same Soviet Union which could not subdue those 82 IQ Afghan sheepherders could somehow take over the US.
This is what I love about critics of "Red Dwan." They thought the premise was a joke even at the same time that it was all playing out in Afghanistan, which the USSR couldn't conquer despite it being right next door.
So if the Russkies could not conquer Afghanistan despite sharing a border with it, why were we supposed to believe that they could defeat the US military and occupy large swathes of the continental US? The premise of the movie was dumb, you have to admit.
Anon claimed:
I've read a number of his books and this [saying white males are evil and NAMs oppressed] is a wildly inaccurate description of them. Many (not all by any means) of the wrong-doers are white males, but there are no saintly NAMS. In fact NAM's play an inconsequential role in his books.
That's a funny meaning you've given to "inconsequential" there. Bosch works extensively with partners Jerry Edgar (black), Kizmin 'Kiz' Rider (black lesbian) and Ignacio 'Iggy' Ferras (guess). In Angels Flight, he investigates the murder of "black lawyer Howard Elias. Elias has been found murdered on the eve of going to court on behalf of Michael Harris [black]: a man the LAPD believes guilty of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl." Guess whether Harris is really guilty. In other books, an ex-detective is married to a Hispanic woman, whose sister's heart he received in a transplant, and Micky Haller manages to free a Hispanic gangbanger unjustly jailed for a rape-murder. I could go on much longer. When you say you've read "a number" of Connelly's books, does n=0?
Uhm, the plausibility of Red Dawn's scenario is about as important as the plausibility of any given Bond movie. Or Raiders of the Lost Ark. We're talking about Hollywood here. Home of the army of black scientists and geniuses? The inverted world? Where all the stupid people are white? All the mild-mannered, self-effacing kids are Ashkenazi?
Now you want plausible, all of a sudden?
Anal rape: easier said than done!
Limp.. uh..-wristed rapists usually perform the unnatural act with a prop. Females too, like this Salander wench. My personal guards were experts. The times!
Well, back to my, admitedly tamer, 72 houri who take care of me in afterlife! Goodnight and happy new year for you infidels! May Allah curse the dollar!
Not to pile on, but ex-smoker/breather Pope Hitchens praised this series almost effusively in Vanity Fair
Hitchens was a self-described Marxist - a frequently self-described Marxist - so it's no great surprise that he praised the ideas of his fellow traveler.
"It was unrealistic to think that the same Soviet Union which could not subdue those 82 IQ Afghan sheepherders could somehow take over the US."
You are awake, right?
We can't subdue those 82 IQ sheepherders either.
"Have not read any translated Stig Larson books myself, but aside from camp value they must be fairly crappy."
Presumably you mean Stieg Larsson and not the other author, Stig Larsson.
I like the Millennium trilogy for the same reason I like Sue Grafton's alphabet series with her detective, Kinsey Milhone. They both go into (what must be for more normal people) excruciating detail about their protagonist's lives. Grafton has Kinsey tracking down suspects and solving murder mysteries but does not neglect to tell us how and when Kinsey does her laundry and housekeeping or what she orders at McDonald's. Similarly, Larsson gives us lots of the minutiae of daily life in Sweden, which apparently consists largely of drinking coffee and having sex.
Even in translation, though, you get the sense that Larsson's books are very badly written. I've read one of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels in translation and the sentence structure is not nearly so horrible.
But Larsson did know how to spin out a convoluted plot and how to create a fun, eccentric character. He's not to be confused with Henry James but who is?
That's a funny meaning you've given to "inconsequential" there.
Bosch is white. In each book Bosch ends up falling for some woman - it's always a white woman. Those two characters are the key ones in every book. Jerry Edgar is an inconsequential character. He is nominally Harry's partner, but spends most of his time working at his real estate gig which allows Bosch to play the lone wolf.
In The Black Ice Bosch kills a Hispanic lead character called Calexico Moore and busts a Mexican drug operation.
"So if the Russkies could not conquer Afghanistan despite sharing a border with it, why were we supposed to believe that they could defeat the US military and occupy large swathes of the continental US? The premise of the movie was dumb, you have to admit."
No, the premise of "Red Dawn" was perfectly within the bounds of acceptable premises (premii?). The real-life Soviets certainly had the materiale to invade the US, vastly outnumbering us in conventional armaments. In the movie their allies include the Warsaw Pact, Cuba, and - key here - a communist-controlled Mexico. So they had materiale and a bordering nation to invade from.
The complaints I've heard over the years from Lefties mostly center on the ridiculousness of a group of American teens and 20-somethings leading a successful insurgency, and against the notion that the Soviets wanted to conquer the US at all.
Chiral
I have read everything Connelly has written but for the most recent Bosch. I tend to agree with Anon, not you. I will grant you that like most all media nowadays, Connelly is careful to be generally politically correct--good to have black or lesbian partners, avoid having the black guy do bad racial things, etc. But the idea that the string of Bosch books is chock full of racial set ups, and are essentially morality tales for the PC crowd as with Larrson does not compute.
Movies are about suspending real life for entertainment.
The beginning of Charlie's Angels sees Drew Barrymore's character pick up and bad guy and carry him out of the plane despite the fact that she would not have been able to open the door and even if she did jump out she would have been unable to avoid being carried into the engine.
Then her colleague is able to hold onto the bad guy despite the sudden slowing down to 18 miles per hour when opening the parachute which would have seen the bad guy weigh four times more due to incurring 4Gs when the chute is opened.
Unless you are a CNN anchor in which case the above is real.
...Drew Barrymore's character...
I started to type up a comment about how I wished the real-life DB would settle down [once and for all] and have some children.
But then I did a little digging, and I came up with these numbers:
CHARLIE'S ANGELS, REMAKE
Drew Barrymore, 36: 0 children
Cameron Diaz, 39: 0 children
Lucy Liu, 43: 0 children
CHARLIE'S ANGELS, THE ORIGINAL
Farrah Fawcett, deceased: 1 child
Jaclyn Smith, 66: 2 children
Kate Jackson, 63: 0 children
Cheryl Ladd, 60: 1 child
Shelley Hack, 64: 1 child
Tanya Roberts, 56: 0 children
So for 9 actresses, across two generations, that gives a Total Fertility Rate of
[0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 0] / 9
= 5 / 9
= 0.555
Heck, even the original series only had a Total Fertility Rate of
[1 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 0] / 6
= 5 / 6
= 0.833
Yikes!
And people wonder why the civilized world is going extinct...
And people wonder why the civilized world is going extinct...
Going? These people here think they're civilized and they think buttrape jokes are the height of hilarity. Civilization is gone.
Well apparently Cameron Diaz is going to PRETEND to be pregnant in her next movie:
The joys of pregnancy! Cameron Diaz flaunts her growing baby bump in cheeky new poster for What To Expect When You're Expecting
By Mike Larkin
Last updated at 11:49 AM on 27th January 2012
dailymail.co.uk
...If I knew I'd have a rack like this, I would've gotten knocked up years ago...
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