The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – stylistic, disturbing, still a typical thriller [At the Lyric]

The Good: Many stylistic choices in music, cinematography and direction that set the movie apart from a run-of-the-mill thriller. Solid performances by the two lead actors, especially Noomi Rapace as the title character. Some visible themes on violence and misogyny that get a viewer thinking.

The Bad: The score, while initially interesting, is repetitive and oppressive. The actual mystery at the core of the movie is unoriginal and never fully engaging in its investigation or execution. A 152-minute running time bloated with an early side-plot and clunky resolution. Heavily graphic and disturbing scenes of sexual abuse and rape that, while contributing to the film’s higher message of human nature, never quite accomplish a sense of justification for their inclusion in an already dark and depressing film.

I think critics like it because: It’s in Swedish and it’s based off of an international bestselling novel with global appeal, so you’re culturally and intellectually inferior if you don’t appreciate it.

The Bottom Line: If you actually enjoy the thriller genre and can accept some cliches dressed up in the stylistic fabric of European filmmaking, complete with its unabashed depiction of violence and sexual depravity, you will enjoy this movie much more than I did. If you are looking for a film that truly makes a lasting statement on violence, victimhood, and redemption through a solid story and great characterization, you will be disappointed.

[Guestblog] Anti-Theists and the Religion Scapegoat

Heathcliff knocks one out of the park with this guest post, which I agree with in writing style and message.

Images stolen, altered, and captioned by Phil the Pill.

As economist Robert Solow once said about the famously single-minded Milton Friedman “everything reminds [him] about the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers.” Bill Maher will not like being compared to his economic antithesis, but Maher is also quite good at finding a single cause for many of today’s major issues, from the ineptitude of the United States government to the violent political climate of the Middle East: religion.

I shouldn’t be picking on Maher, though: he’s only one in a large group of anti-religion polemicists including Christopher Hitchens and the all-powerful Richard Dawkins who know that religion is truly the root of all evil. I know I should respect these luminaries, especially because these days it takes real guts to blame religion for the world’s major problems considering how much power and esteem religious institutions such as the Catholic Church wield. Seriously though, before these brave men arrived, we were simply too afraid to blame religion for the violence of undereducated, underfed, oppressed, and cripplingly poor people worldwide. Now that they are here, solving our major global issues will only be a matter of time.

The tradition of blaming a nation’s culture for the violence of its citizens or some other undesirable trait is nothing new. U.S. settlers used it to soothe their worries over decimating Native American populations, slave traders employed it to feel alright for selling humans as property, and Rudyard Kipling popularized it in his poetry. The White Man’s Burden lives on today, from conservative attitudes toward fatherless black families (It’s the rap music!) to Maher’s denunciation of Islamic states (It’s the Koran!). All irony of Hitchens’ calls for violence against violent Islamic states aside, what we have here is a group of men who can’t really be serious, right?

Prayer stance. Homicidal glare. Coincidence?

Does religion really cause violence? There are plenty of religious people who are not violent. So, that claim is out. We can refine it a bit, maybe claim that Islam causes violence. Again, plenty of nonviolent Muslims. We can keep going like this until we get to a tautology–only true Islam causes violence—or some other, equally useless claim. This process can be repeated for any variant on the theme “religion causes ______” that Maher and crew throw out there. Why is this so? Because religion alone is not causing the problems. It is the poverty, the inequality, the injustice, the broken political and economic systems of these nations making their citizens violent. This should be obvious, but to Maher and his crew, it isn’t. In fact, some may go as far as to say that religion causes the poverty, the inequality, the injustice, and so on, but by that point we have removed ourselves from reasonable discourse.

Nearly all people yearn for some deeper purpose and for many, religion provides that purpose. In the very prosperous United States, basic survival is pretty much ensured. This means that Americans do not need some deeper purpose to get them through the day. Hence, we do not value religion as highly as poorer countries. In most of the world, however, life is extremely difficult, and religion gives people a reason to make it through every painfully difficult day. Religion is very important to a poor person. Naturally, we should get rid of it.

But if religion is not there to fill the void of meaning in a poor person’s life, then something else will. That could be nationalism – as in Palestine – greed – as in Sierra Leone – or some other belief system that gives purpose to a person’s life. Trying to eliminate religion in poor countries is a lot like using Band-Aids to cure haemophilia. Treating the symptoms is not the same as treating the cause. The real problem is that the majority of the world lives in terrible conditions. We can tell the savages that their beliefs are stupid, think that injecting western intelligence into their lives will help them see the light, or we can actually help them. Give money, support organizations like Oxfam or Kiva, but for the love of God, quit listening to Bill Maher.

Heathcliff is a math and economics student who has known some Mormons in his day.

Best Buy and the End of the World

Happy 21st birthday to me…yesterday.

And just in time to contemplate our remaining years in a bar, because it seems our world is coming to an end.

Yeesh.

Seriously, you take your eye off the world for one second and it all starts to go to pot.

Keep an eye out for religious folk claiming that we’re heading right into the end of the world. I’m sure it’s happened before, but this seems to be a low point in world history, which is a popular time for hellfire and brimstone.

I’m not going to deny that we live in violent times of suffering and global danger. But I hate any sort of mentality that excuses the state of affairs by claiming that things are meant to be this way. People around the world are suffering. And I hate anyone who gets a sick satisfaction out of seeing the world go to pieces because it confirms their beliefs in prophecy.

I do believe we’re at a pivotal point. We are every so often. And I believe we could make short work of things and wipe out civilization as we know it…and pretty damn soon. December 2012 for me will be a very interesting time. I do believe the world could end.

But I believe if it does, it will be our doing. A self-fulfilling prophecy. An Armageddon triggered by fear and hopelessness. On the other hand…if we don’t give up, we could last another year or two. I’d rather we keep fighting.

And let’s say we are destined to witness the end of the world. To those with spiritual beliefs about judgment…who do you think will be judged more harshly? The person who was actively trying to save lives…or the person who stood by and waited for their reward while others suffered?

“It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us.”

—-

In lighter news:

I spent the first half of my birthday looking for a computer for my mom. My brother’s is a P.O.S. Compaq Presario that he’ll probably get replaced soon with something that could hopefully last him into college. My dad mans the desktop, a Hewlett Packard which has been able to get on the internet for almost 9 years. And my mom had an iPod touch, but got disgruntled with it, so we went out to find her her own computer.

As a Macbook Pro user, I acknowledged that I would have to tone down my Apple fanboyishness, particularly since I was thinking a price range of $450 to $800. At first, I was thinking something cheaper, maybe a netbook, but my mom needed an optical drive, plus tiny computers annoy her. Since my mom refuses to buy anything online, we took a trip out to Best Buy.

Models we looked at:

– a Toshiba satellite for $440…I was very impressed by the price for 2GB of RAM and 160 GB hard drive…until I was told that the memory could never be upgraded…and so she’d be running Windows Vista on that amount of RAM forever. Bad deal.
– Then, this associate named Cole convinces us that the best deal is a Hewlett Packard pavilion with 4GB RAM and 320GB for $640. He owned one himself and he used it for school at ITT Tech and he loved it, yadah, yadah yadah, lots of battery life, blah blah blah. So we wanted it. But they didn’t have it in stock. So we drive to Manassass. They don’t seem to have it in stock either and this new associate, some teenage Asian-American kid, isn’t as enthusiastic about it, so that takes the wind out of our sails.
– Instead, he directs us to the Dell studio for $699 with similar specs and my mom is eyeing that one…well, I go online and find out that the damn thing had crashing issues for some people and then the Best Buy kid tells us about the optimization fee for $150 that will install the antivirus and “optimize” it so that it runs at 100%.

Hey, man, would you like some functionality with that computer? Only $149.99!

At this point, I’m getting fed up.

Excuse me, Best Buy and computer developers…Don’t you think it’s kind of silly to offer something for sale that isn’t at 100% capacity because it’s not properly optimized and has a ton of trial software on it? That’s like me buying a new car with sand in its gears and worn tires. So you have the gall to charge me to make the damn product work properly?

No, you know what, fuck you, PC industry. I tried to give you a fair shake. I heard the Best Buy guys out about how much RAM was optimal for Vista and which was the best combination of processing power, etc. etc. etc. and it finally clicked when I saw that Dell review.

Macs don’t have this many problems.

Are they pricey? Yeah. Sometimes undeservedly so. But, in the long run, if I get my mom a PC laptop that chokes on the conflcit between its operating system and its components in 3 years, it’s going to be more expensive to buy her two $600 laptops than to buy one $1000 Macbook (last generation, luckily still sold at Best Buy).

So that’s what we did.

And now there’s two Macs in the family. And my mom couldn’t be happier.

So, my question to computer geeks out there…what computer works for you? And my brother’s in the market for a new computer soon. He wants to go into programming. Tell me, anti-Apple crowd, why shouldn’t he get a Mac?

Edit: Why I may be wrong — customization…crucial? Or overrated? Who’s done it on a Mac?