The Girl Who Played with Fire

It seems like ages since I late wrote, but it's been a rather quite/empty/boring week. Thankfully that's now changed and I have something exciting to talk about, namely that Carrie and myself watched "The Girl Who Played with Fire" last night... or rather this morning as I'd booked us tickets for the midnight showing. This wasn't the advance preview or anything though as the film came out Friday and thus the preview would have midnight the previous day! We'd both watched the first film/book "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in March and although Carrie hasn't (yet?) read the books she was more than happy to see the second one which was fine by me!

I didn't expect it to be that busy, but as usual I got us VIP seats. I prefer having booked seats simply because I know I'll be guaranteed a seat and there's no hurry to sit down, but also I've become a bit of a cinema snob and I like the fact they're extra comfy and they're in the best viewing positions! However, I really didn't need to have bothered:

I have both halves as there was no one to check them!

When we went into the cinema entrance it was already pretty deserted with very few staff and only a few patrons playing on the arcades. We picked up our tickets and I was enjoying the lovely voice of this Scottish girl until it suddenly increased in volume and changed to some English guy and to Carrie's amusement I was literally saying "hey bring back the Scottish girl!" Oh if you hadn't realised, I'm talking about an automated machine here lol.

Bought some drinks (Fanta Frozen woo!) and popcorn and headed to our screen and we were started to think we were the only people until we walked into the cinema and (to my disappointment) there were actually a couple already sat down. Boo! Don't worry, we made them leave though! :P The girl got up and walked out/return not once, but twice and then 30 minutes into the film they BOTH left! Fair enough... I think they didn't realise it was in Swedish! They never say these things in the trailers because it'd probably reduce ticket sales, but the clue is that if you don't hear any of the actors speaking then you know it's a foreign language film. Not that this bothers me (and we already knew it was Swedish), but just wanted to mention in case it helps anyone out in future!

No one else is here!

After that it was just Carrie and myself (sat in the expensive VIP seats that I really didn't need to have paid extra for!) and of course we could just chat normally and discuss the film as it happened without annoying anyone else! Having read (and very much enjoyed) the trilogy of books I was excited to be seeing the films and I wasn't disappointed. As is normal with book to film conversions a lot of stuff is left out and what was in there felt at times rather rushed (not as rushed as Dragon Tattoo felt though!), but I was happy with the story and thought that everything that *needed* to be in it was, even if I wish some parts of it had been expanded.

The only thing I was a bit disappointed with the character of Niedermann (the blonde giant) because he seemed more grey than blonde and he looked older than I expected. Although he didn't say much, he didn't have the high pitched voice either that he has in the books, but the biggest thing was his build. Although he certainly had the height (he looks about 7 foot tall) I was also expecting him to look something like Dolph Lundgren in "Masters of the Universe" (i.e. muscles everywhere), but this actor just looked like a very tall guy. Although I suppose this was because it was my interpretation, I don't think at any time during the books it says he'd be anything like this and only describes him as "the blonde giant".

Fanta Frozen and salted popcorn that I consumed during the film!

So I thought a rather enjoyable evening, even if I didn't get home until 4am... at which point I had sugar cane to harvest on FarmVille and then spent ~4 hours playing Bejeweled Blitz... Silly addictive game! :)