THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

“The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas”, how one trailer over the summer described ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, is just that.  For those of you who haven’t read the first entry of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, the story deals with murder, rape, deception, and extreme violence, all the things attached to most international best seller novels.  Wait, what?  Where’s Harry Potter when you need him.

The film (and book as I’ve read it is a fairly faithful adaptation) follows journalist Mikael Blomkvist’s (Daniel Craig, ‘Casino Royale’, ‘Defiance’) efforts to uncover a family murder mystery in northern Sweden after losing a libel case against industrial billionaire Hans-Erik Wennerstrom.  What started out as an investigation to take Mikael’s mind off his legal woes quickly turns into a race to unravel the Vanger family’s web of lies.  With the help of a brilliant yet emotionally disturbed research assistant, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara ‘The Social Network’), Mikael closes in on the truth of what happened on the Vanger family island 40 years ago, but will it be too late?

Unfortunately for ‘Dragon Tattoo’ it’s Oscar buzz is at a slow simmer right now.  Whereas Fincher’s 2010 effort, ‘The Social Network’, received universal acclaim and was a major player in a number of races.  ‘Dragon Tattoo’ was a glaring omission from many of the Golden Globes’ major categories (only receiving two noms, Best Actress Drama Rooney Mara and Best Score Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), George Clooney Best Director for ‘Ides of March’, seriously?  Luckily this is not always an indicator of things to come.  The Globe nominations come out before the last two weeks of each year and often times films that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (governing body of the Globes) hasn’t seen can be overlooked.  The other distinct difference between the HFPA and The Academy is the number of members, 90 vs. 6,000 respectively.  The HFPA has members from 55 different countries (less than half then are American) an The Academy has a much larger sample size and is made up primarily of industry-related Americans.  The conclusion being although usually the frontrunners, top 3 or 4 nominees in a specific category, stay the same from the Globes to the Oscars, there is usually at least one nomination change in almost every major category, hopefully a good sign for ‘Dragon Tattoo’.

I don’t put either as locks but I do believe the nominations for Mara and Reznor carry over to the Oscars.  For the remained of major categories I have ‘Dragon Tattoo’ with a possibility of sneaking into a few of them, with the technical categories (Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography) having the best chance.  Again with the aforementioned differences between the HFPA and The Academy anything is possible but I am still hearing a lack of support among Oscar blogs and from the industry folks.  I believe this is mostly due to two things, subject matter which is a shame because I believe Fincher might have one upped himself from last year’s ‘Social Network’, and a much cluttered field of good but not great films this year.  Regardless, go see it if you haven’t yet.

Oscar Chances:

Best Picture: Possible

Best Director (Fincher): Possible

Best Adapted Screenplay: Possible

Best Actress (Mara): Highly Likely

Best Supporting Actor (Skarsgard): Long Shot

Best Score: Highly Likely

Best Cinematography: Lock

Best Editing: Possible

Best Make Up: Possible