Throwback Thursday: An Education

I really shouldn't start a feature, because as seen in the past, I've been terrible at keeping them up, but I've had this one milling over in my head quite a bit over the past few months. Anyway, the simple premise of "Throwback Thursday" is not to share cute photos of myself frolicking in fields with horses when I was five and putting them on Instagram with the dubious #tbt. Instead, it is to kinda...look back on films that aren't all that talked about any more. But mostly, films that I once loved upon release (or if I delve into classic films, probably the films that had a huge influence on me a child) and how I feel about them now that I've had some distance and am re-evaluating them. Or it could just be random movies I just watched that aren't in IMDb's top 250 or every best of list of all time.

Whatever, it's mostly just films that were not made in the past couple of years. Even though half of you are probably saying that now the Oscars are over, films like Philomena are irrelevant. Because that's generally how awards season works. But that's another post.

Anyway, the subject of this week's throwback is Lone Scherfig's An Education, which, after three years (and I used to watch this all the time), I finally gave another watch. Mainly because every time I used to watch this film, I wanted to bury my head in books and study, and last night, I needed some motivation to jam my dome full of knowledge about Indian independence.

Boats Against the Current: Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

I've seen Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby five times now. I'm not even ashamed to admit it. If I were to somehow become Alien out of Spring Breakers, it wouldn't be Scarface I'd have on repeat, it would be The Great Gatsby. Anything remotely Gatsby I snap up - whether it be reblogging my 100th gif of Jordan Baker or changing my cover photo on Facebook or finding something pretty to adorn my bedroom walls with.

Despite all this, I don't actually like The Great Gatsby as a film all that much. Let's put all of this into context: last term I did this huge research project about modern adaptations of classic films. Now, I won't bore you with the gory details since that thing ended up being like, 40 pages long, but The Great Gatsby was my main focus. This was because I had never seen so many people around my age go absolutely nuts for this one movie. Admittedly, this was mainly because of the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio is descended from angels and we're all materialistic magpies that will swoop in on anything that glitters (so you can imagine the field day we had with this). Let's just say, I wasn't the only one reblogging, cover photo-ing or adorning everything Gatsby.

Addiction Eating Away at Normalcy.

Film: Shame
Year: 2011
Director: Steve McQueen
Written by: Abi Morgan and Steve McQueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie, Lucy Walters, Elizabeth Masucci, Amy Hargreaves.
Running time: 102 min. 
WARNING: The film is discussed at length, so there'll probably be spoilers. My suggestion is, if you haven't seen the film, see it, and then come back and gush over it with me.

Ever since October last year, I've been looking forward to seeing Shame. I watched the trailer and I couldn't shake the feeling that it made me want to make a film of my own. For months now, I've been going on about it, talking about what it was rated, how I was pissed that Michael Fassbender didn't get an Oscar nomination even though I hadn't seen it...I've been obsessed with this movie for ages. Because of this obsession, I no longer had expectations. I felt like I had already seen the film. But boy, when I sat down to watch it on Tuesday night, I was taken to places that I hadn't expected to go. I was given this whole new perspective of film that either I'd never bothered to look for, or has been missing from my recent film-watching. It had such an immediate effect on me that I knew would happen, but not as strongly or as powerfully as it did. Shame was responsible for one of those rare occasions where I've been so overpowered by a film that I just sit in my seat, frozen, with my eyes locked on the screen as the credits roll, and then find it necessary to tell everyone in the world that I've just seen a film that changed my life. It may sound hyperbolic - especially coming from a 16 year old girl who is legally deemed two years too young to see this film - but Shame had such an effect on me, which gave me just the wake up call I needed.

Some Heroes Are Real.

Film: Drive
Year: 2011
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Written by: Hossein Amini
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Oscar Isaac, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Kaden Leos, Russ Tamblyn.
Running time: 100 min.


With a title like Drive, you'd instantly expect it to be filled with car chases which coincidentally have guns involved and then the cars explode and this is what we call entertainment. Some lady thought that and went as far as to sue the makers because it wasn't like Fast & Furious. She is silly. Drive is the kind of movie that happens slowly, yet realistically. You don't expect one person to possibly go through lots of car chases and explosions just because they're mildly talented at driving a car, right? No. Drive follows the unnamed Driver (Ryan Gosling), who is a Hollywood stunt driver by day, and moonlighting as a getaway driver for robberies by night. He falls for his neighbour, Irene (Carey Mulligan), who has a son and a husband in jail. Her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac) gets out of jail, and it turns out that trouble has followed him so he asks the Driver to help him out with a routine robbery. As it goes wrong, the Driver discovers that there's a bag of money at stake and there are some gangsters after Irene and her son, who the Driver is keen to protect.

Let's Talk About Film Censorship Ratings...

The big news this week was that Steve McQueen's sophomore effort Shame got given the dreaded NC-17 rating by the MPAA. Now, this isn't something that came as a huge surprise, as most of the people who saw the film at various film festival's said that it's explicit content would get it the NC-17. It's all because this movie deals with sex addiction, which of course leads to a whole lot of sexually explicit material which then results in the NC-17 rating because, you know, kids can't watch that kind of stuff. Unlike many of the films before it, Shame will not be put up for appeal for an R rating. Instead, it's going to wear it's NC-17 rating loud and proud, and hopefully it will change a few people's attitude towards the NC-17 rating. Because, if the critical acclaim, trailer and cast are anything to go by, this film will be amazing.

Why is being an NC-17 such a bad thing?

Okay, so coming from New Zealand, which probably has the most complicated rating system like, ever, I can't help but feel that the MPAA rating system is a pile of crap. Well, to be honest, my life would be a whole lot easier if we had the 'R' rating here, because then I could drag my mother out to see films like Drive which is an R18 here. But this NC-17 business? It is seriously the largest pile of crap I have ever heard in my life. So, what I gather from this whole Shame situation and everyone trying to cut their films down to get an R rating, is that being an NC-17 is totally bad territory.

Here's what I don't understand: why is being an NC-17 such a bad thing? Here in New Zealand, we have R18's. Technically, this is a far worse rating than an NC-17. Yet, we just go about our day. Sure, there are very few R18's that make it to the cinema, but in the past couple of years, there have been some pretty successful ones in cinemas like: Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kick-Ass, Machete, Piranha...the R18 is just a sticker here, to be honest. Also, some of the movies that are widely regarded as classics are R18's, like: Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Reservoir Dogs, American Psycho, Trainspotting, Taxi Driver, Requiem for a Dream and The Usual Suspects.

The R18 effect.

If you took a walk down the average DVD store's new release wall, you'd find that the large majority of the R18's are films that missed the cinema and went straight-to-DVD. Usually that's because they're sucky B-grade horrors that only have their target audience with fourteen year-old girls and boys who think they're as tough as nails and enjoy watching people suffer. But while the R18 doesn't necessarily do that much here outside of the cinemas, it does have this strange power which makes the younger crowd more interested in it.

Psychosis, one of those straight-to-DVD horrors

And here is where we have our problem. I see this happen all of the time. Let's say, a group of fourteen year -olds come into Blockbuster because they are having a movie night, and their mother or father has to stand by the counter awkwardly, where their children hand over a pile of DVDs so they can pay for them. More often than not, the pile is filled up with R18 horrors or action films, because these days teenagers are instantly drawn to incessant gore and violence to fill up their movies. The fact that their choices are R18's only makes them better because a) they feel so high and mighty when they're watching an R18 because it is against the law which of course makes them bad-ass, and b) if it's an R18, that means it probably has a lot more gore and violence in it than an R16 which will obviously make it better. That's just the way things are. It's never going to change. You slap an R18 sticker on a movie at the cinemas and the kids are just going to illegally download it. Just look at Kick-Ass, which was one of the most downloaded movies of 2010.

The Shame in having a whole lot of sex scenes.

Fact of the matter is: teenagers will only watch R18's if they are horrors or actions. Teenagers are all about the violence. And now I'm going to be perfectly blunt: if an R18 had sex scenes in it, there is only about a 10% chance that a teenager would get it out because firstly, they wouldn't want to watch it with a whole group of people and secondly, they'd have to get their parents to get it for them and that could cause a particularly awkward moment. Teenagers only want to watch sex scenes by themselves. And you know where they can do that? On the internet. Where it's free. So to be perfectly honest, what teenager is going to want to watch Shame? Apart from me, of course, the one who has it on her most-anticipated list simply because Michael Fassbender looks amazing in it. To be perfectly honest, no teenager is going to want to watch - or own up to watching - Shame just because it is an R18. No teenager is going to want to see Shame just because it has Magneto from X-Men: First Class in it. I bet you, by the time it comes out, everyone will know it as the 'sex addict' movie, and other teenagers will think you're weird if you have seen it and liked it. The exact same thing happened with Black Swan, which teens were quick to label as the 'weird lesbian movie', and the very few of us who actually liked it were attacked by the Facebook statuses of those who didn't. So yeah, there won't be a big teenage fan base for Shame, so I don't know why the MPAA is getting their knickers in a twist about.

What really gets me, though, is that sex is deemed worse than violence in film. It was the same back in the strict 'Hays Code' days, when the code was more lenient towards violence then it was to sex and offensive language. Nowadays, in your average M-rated film (probably PG-13 in the US), you could see a few people getting killed. On television shows like CSI or Criminal Minds, which are on at times when little kids could still be up, you can see people meeting their grisly demise. Hell, The Dark Knight escaped with an M rating and I know quite a few people around my age who were terrified by the violence in that movie. There are very few M rated films which has sex scenes in them, in fact, the only ones I can remember are Never Let Me Go, The Constant Gardner and Brokeback Mountain. But once we get up into the R/NC-17 territory, sex really is bad. I mean, come on...how can something as sick and vile as The Human Centipede: The First Sequence pass with an R rating (it's obviously an R18 here, and all the teenagers watch it like there's no tomorrow), but Shame gets an NC-17. Let's look at it this way: whether we like it or not, people have sex. That's how you, the person who is reading this, came to be on this Earth. People do not make centipedes out of humans for fun. Yet, there's still heavy censorship on something that humans do actually do but something about stuff that humans shouldn't do escapes with a lighter rating. This is the moment when I yell: "WTF?!"

But if people were inspired by The Human Centipede, then Tom Six thought ahead and incorporated that idea into his sequel. Along with having a guy do a whole lot of obscene sexual things towards his centipede. And that got banned in the UK along with going 'Unrated' in the US. At least there is some justice left in the world.

Is the NC-17 rating going to hurt Shame?

My uneducated answer to this is no. Of course, I have not seen this film, and probably won't get to see it until at least half way through next year when it comes out on DVD. Even without seeing the film, I could tell you that Michael Fassbender's performance is probably one of the best that this year has to offer. If the Academy decide to turn his performance down because of the fact that this film is an NC-17 then a lot of people aren't going to be happy. And really, what's an NC-17 to them? They're all over 17, so they can get the fuck over themselves. The biggest thing that Shame has going for it is the fact that it was so well-received at the various film festivals it played at and it already has a wide enough fan-base, which is no doubt due to the fact that everyone likes Steve McQueen, Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. People are excited by how upfront this movie is. If any of the awards circles reject Shame because of it's rating then that is the biggest douchebaggery that I will ever witness.

In conclusion...

I think that Shame will change the face of the NC-17 forever. If it gets some nominations come awards time, then we'll be able to say that an NC-17 finally got some proper awards attention. There's just something so different about the Shame case which is different to, I don't know, something like Showgirls or what ever other NC-17's you can think of.

There's something that we all really have to face: films are more violent, more sexual, more profane than the censorship system ever wants them to be. Films like The Human Centipede or the entire Saw franchise abuse this fact, but films like Shame use it to actually tell a proper story. That may sound like a sentence straight out of the 'How to be a Pretentious Douchebag who Also Loves Films' manual, but it is true.

So my message to everyone is embrace the NC-17. If cinemas refuse to show the films, then stuff 'em. We in New Zealand will still show R18's and we seem to be getting along fine. An R18 is worse than an NC-17 and yet we don't run around like the world has ended.

And there is my $0.01. Where's yours?

Cinema--Never Let Me Go

or: Living a life set out for you.

One word to sum it up: Depressing.

Last year in social studies we did a debate about the 'ethics of death' and whether it was okay to have children born solely for the purpose of donating organs. This was a topic which completely baffled me. Was it okay to have a life cut short just for the comfort of others? Or did the others who really needed it have to have these kind of people around so they could have a shot at living? This argument was one which I had questioned such a long time ago, but after watching Never Let Me Go, I started to wonder about this again. All I know is, this movie has opened me up to a world which I never want to see happen. What these people go through is simply unfair.

On the surface, Never Let Me Go appears to be a film about a love triangle between friends Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley). The three spend their childhood at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic and very organised boarding school. Kathy has always been interested in Tommy, but Ruth, who is quite manipulative, starts a relationship with Tommy, and Kathy quietly wishes that they would separate. But this love triangle is but a small factor of their lives. They live the life that they have planned out for them, and all the while protect themselves for the well being of others. All they have to do is prepare themselves for the haunting reality that awaits them.

Having not read the source material (I am going to very soon though), I can't make the comparisons and such between the two. The premise is a very intriguing one. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be able to live in a world knowing that someone has been cloned to benefit others, and these people were all locked away from the real world. Forget all the apocalyptic BS going around at the moment, this idea right here scares me. I would never want to live my life having it all planned out for me. And to be honest, I'd hate to live without making choices for myself. This is what makes this movie so sad. The children of Hailsham are treated like they aren't humans and they don't have souls. That just broke my heart.

Alex Garland has had a very interesting career. He started off by writing the novel for the much maligned movie The Beach. Then he wrote the screenplay for another Danny Boyle movie, 28 Days Later... He reteamed with Boyle again for sci-fi thriller Sunshine. These three movies all have something in common with Never Let Me Go. The Beach features another world which is so far away from the real one, much like Hailsham and the normal day-to-day life we would know. 28 Days Later... takes a look at not only science, but sacrifice and again, a different sort of world. Sunshine looks at the decisions people make for the greater good of others, and the choice to make the world exponentially better. Sure, the kids don't save the sun or whatever, but they bump life expectancy up a hell of a lot. Never Let Me Go is by far the most restrained of Garland's work, and while I felt that a great deal was missing from the screenplay, his work in capturing the poor lives of these people was brilliant. Mark Romanek provides a beautiful fluidity to the film, with brilliant cinematography and music to boot. Romanek made the right choice going with this one instead of The Wolfman, that's for sure.

While the screenplay required a bit more work, the actors ensured that things kept chugging along. Firstly, the actors chosen to play the three main characters as children were perfect. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought that their 'originals' were really Mulligan, Garfield and Knightley. Carey Mulligan, coming off the back of her stunning Oscar nominated performance in An Education won my heart over as the understanding Kathy. She was just so innocent and so relaxed. Keira Knightley, an actress who has dropped off the radar a bit of late, makes a good turn in this film. Her character was quite confounded and somewhat annoying, but Knightley pulled off these traits beautifully. But for me, Andrew Garfield stole the show. He was adorable (and I don't mean just looks wise). He was just so confused by it all, and Garfield paid attention to every single detail of this interesting character. After all, this man was the reason I cried so much. Just thinking about Never Let Me Go right now makes me feel so sad. Thought this would be a typical romantic drama for two? Think again. It's not for everyone, but it was definitely right for me.

THE VERDICT: A bleak tale with an interesting premise, the script may not complete the film, but all round, this is as depressing as they come. The performances are well done beyond compare.

What I hoped for:

What I got:

DVD--Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

or: Sequels that come a long time after.

One word to sum it up: Disappointing.

23 years was all it took to bring Gordon Gekko back to our screens and rattling off his philosophy of greed being good to anyone who will listen. How could you go wrong with that? Well, being the modern Oliver Stone, who last directed the sadly failed George Bush biopic W., there has to be some way of not doing it the right way. Those expecting full on Gekko in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps will be sadly disappointed. Instead, he becomes a supporting player to a love triangle between Shia LaBeouf, money and Carey Mulligan.

In 2001, corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) completes a prison sentence for money laundering. No one is there to meet him. Jump seven years: Gekko is promoting his book, his estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan) is a political blogger engaged to Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), a hot-shot Wall Street trader, and an old nemesis of Gekko's, Bretton James (Josh Brolin), devours the firm Jake works for. When Jake's mentor takes his life, Jake wants revenge and Gordon may be the perfect ally. With the fiscal crisis of September 2008 as background, can Jake maintain Winnie's love, broker a rapprochement with her father, get his revenge, and find funds for a green-energy project he champions; or will greed trump all?

The performances in this are all fantastic. Shia LaBeouf takes the lead role in one of his first performances since that movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. He gives it his all, and carries those lulls in the script quite well. Carey Mulligan, who was Oscar nominated for her performance in An Education, puts on a perfect American accent and steals the show...like always. Her and LaBeouf had excellent chemistry, which made their somewhat ordinary story easier to watch. Josh Brolin, the star of Jonah Hex and upcoming True Grit, takes another role of a villain, and, as always, plays it quite well. But we all know that the star of this movie is Michael Douglas. His Golden Globe nomination was well deserved (also was the standing ovation he received for beating cancer). He makes Gordon Gekko as scary as he was in the first film, and even though he is a supporting character, he still makes the film.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a fine sequel which even after 23 years of being off screen, Stone still finds ways to connect with the last one. We see Gekko's rather bulky 'mobile phone' and a cameo from Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox. The one thing Stone didn't carry through was the intense drama. The story is overrun by the soapie story of Winnie forgiving Gekko. Its nice to watch, but sometimes it feels like it belongs to another film, and just ends up making the runtime a little longer. In saying that, the very modern direction from Oliver Stone makes this movie worth its time. It has everything that could make a movie: great performances, great direction, quite a clever and intelligent screenplay. It just should have been better, thats all.


THE VERDICT: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a slightly long performance driven piece all about money. Fans of drama will definitely go for this.

6/10

DVD--Brothers

or: Dear John with some better actors.

One word to some it up: Boring.

Brothers should have boasted about it's cast a bit more. Tobey Macguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman, who in real life are very close friends, turned out in full force with this movie. Shame is, they were barely in the movie enough to even get top billing. I think I was more interested in the kids. What I expected was a steamy romantic drama. What I got was something I could have seen in an episode of Coronation Street.

Sam Cahill (Tobey Macguire) leaves his family once again to go and fight in Afghanistan, and while he is gone he lets his brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) stay at his house after he is released from prison for robbing a bank. Sam's helicopter is shot down and he is presumed dead, leaving his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and two children alone. Tommy steps in to help with the family, but in amazing circumstances Sam is found alive and returns home to find that his family have changed in his absence.

I haven't seen the Danish original, but I could probably guarantee that it's a lot better than this one. There were a few things I was expecting from this film that just never happened. Like I expected the relationship between Tommy and Grace to be a bit more intense. I wanted it to be a fractured portrait of a family, but it just felt pretty much the same as most movie families. And for one thing, I really admired Tobey Macguire's work at the end of the film, as he managed to pull off that giant hissy fit and still be respectable. If only the rest of the film could have been like that.

Macguire, Gyllenhaal and Portman all pull off marvellous performances and carry the movie with their professionalism and ability. However, nothing really happens in Brothers, and it fails to make use of the good story it has. It just feels to melodramatic and lacks the magic to pack a real punch. The acting is probably the only redeeming feature this movie has, even including the short appearance from Carey Mulligan, who I barely recognized with beautiful long blonde locks.

THE VERDICT: Brothers plays out more like an episode of a soap drama than a true drama, and suffers from a high dosage of Hollywood gloss. Macguire, Gyllenhaal and Portman do make this worth the watch, though.

4/10

America: 'Hey Sweden, why don't we just remake your great films?'

Americans need to get their own ideas.
So yeah, remaking The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is understandable, because:
1. It is a critically acclaimed book series, which anyone-whose-anyone has read. So, if these people are a bit tired after reading those massive books, then they probably don't want to read the subtitles to a movie, which probably isn't as good as the book in the first place.
2.David Fincher's directing it. At least he's a director who knows what he is doing, not some guy who last directed a comedy which was 'Rotten'. If David Fincher is directing it, you know you have a winner.

But America has got their paws on Let the Right One In . Which is possibly the greatest vampire movie of all-time. And also one of the creepiest. This movie does not deserve to be given the American treatment. Because the Americans will literally take the idea, dumb it down to the lowest common denominator, and the magic left in it will be ruined by their idea of popular culture. Now, I don't mean to hate on the person that is the director of this- Matt Reeves , director of Cloverfield-because I'm sure he means well. But he just isn't David Fincher.

Let the Right One In has been changed to Let Me In, and the lead characters names have been changed from Oskar and Eli to... Owen and Abby.

Seriously?

Chloe Moretz will be playing Abby, and so far she has been proving to be one of the greatest young smart-ass actresses ever. Not that I hold that against her. She was terrific in (500) Days of Summer and has been getting quite good reviews for Kick-Ass. But can she handle the role of the she-vampire with the right intensity just as Lina Leandersson did? Well, she's been given a hoodie, so I guess that's starting a new punk look for the vampire...or maybe she found it too cold to be parading around the snow in a white blouse.

Chloe Moretz, complete with hoodie, as she-vamp Abby. Not quite the Eli we remember, but you know, I'd imagine that this 400 year old girl is quite down with the yong ones. Which is why she's in the hoodie, and making faces with her breath on the window, you see.

Lina Leandersson, playing the original 400 year old she-vamp Eli. No hoodie, just white blouse with a bit of blood coming out of her. You gotta love her for that.

Kodi Smit-McPhee will be playing Owen, who is a bullied young boy who befriends the she-vamp (haha, I like that way of putting it). Smit-McPhee is a young Australian actor who got his big break opposite Eric Bana in Australian flick Romulus, My Father. But you've probably seen him in the apocalyptic film 2012, just kidding, The Road. Not bad for a little Australian guy, starring in a film like this, which will get all of it's publicity from the controversy surrounding it.

Abby and Owen puzzle over a Rubik's cube-and possibly why they chose to remake this film-out in the cold courtyard. Look like a fine coupling to me. A little like a younger version of Bella and Edward. So if K-Stew and R-Pattz quit Breaking Dawn due to pay disputes, you know where to find Chloe and Kodi!

The director of the original, Tomas Alfredson, is understandbly not to happy with the Americanization of his film. That's because his film is a masterpiece, and he know's it. Everyone knows it. You just can't beat the originals, even if they are made in some funny language and require you to read for one and a half hours of your life.

Will I be going to see Let Me In? Probably not in cinemas. I understand it is going to be given a wide release, which is unfortunate because Let the Right One In was given a really small one. But I will see Let Me In one day. What I imagine it to be is full of gore and blood--just plain sillyness you get from average run-of-the-mill horrors these days. There will be an uber-awesome soundtrack, filled with rap music and possibly Justin Bieber (to, you know, keep up with the cool crowd), instead of the lovely harmonious pieces of music which can make even the hardest heart go soft. And Abby will become the next style icon--she will do for the she-vamp what Carrie Bradshaw did for the maxi-dress. Trust me, after you have seen Let Me In, you'll want to be seen in a hoodie (as pictured to the right, the simple black hoodie can make you look so much cooler).

So anyway, I did mention The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at the beginning of this post. I'd love to see Carey Mulligan playing Lisbeth Salander. Ten dollars says that they will change her name. It'll be interesting to see sweet Jenny playing a pierced computer hacker. And she'll still be going for the older men. Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Johnny Depp are all rumoured to be playing Mikael Blomkvist. This could be alternatively called An Education 2: Jenny Moves On? Because, you know, Americans like changing names of other peoples stuff so it seems like their idea.

Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. There's a really fun-loving, Care Bears watching, pink princess under all of that tough guy act, somewhere.

Ah, there's our Carey Mulligan playing Jenny in An Education. The Americans will water the role of Lisbeth down a little, because we would hate for Jenny's repuatation and look to be diminished! (oh right, she was having an affair with an older man...)

Just in case you were wondering:
Let Me In will be released in America in October 2010.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is slated for release in 2012. But the next two parts in the trilogy (all Swedish) will be coming later this year. However, critically speaking, the sequels haven't been doing well.