Is it wrong to hope that Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart are actually eaten by wolves?

It's something of a normal Santa Barbara visit for us.  Good food, exercise, time to steep ourselves in some pop culture fun.  We threw together a fantastic daytrip to Los Angeles.  I always love dipping at least a toe into that City.  There's just so much cast along at crazy angles in a dizzying array of directions.  Seeing friends is the point.  Everything else is frosting.  Included in that was seeing a matinee of "The Kids Are All Right" at an absurdly over-priced ArcLight multiplex ($13.50 for a regular screen matinee, people).  But the movie was worth it - my rating is a very smart, solid B.  The cast is great across the board, although no one had to stretch themselves out of a comfort zone.  Mark Ruffalo is especially good (another Sconnie product - way to go Kenosha).  The nuances and trainwrecks will have you talking through dinner afterward.  And considering all the dreck that's clogging up the screens this summer, few movies give a better escape hatch.

Speaking of dreck.  Or just plain awfulness.  Or something else entirely that smells like untranslatable garbage.  Is "Eclipse", the new Twilight movie.  Honestly, I don't know how to rate it.  So I have to break my own conventions.  My rating - a Z-plus.  Or maybe a Z-minus.  I have no idea what to say about it.  I'd love to hear from a tween why it is either good or bad.  And I won't get all curmudgeony and claim that those darn kids these days don't make any sense to me.  I'm just saying this movie made no sense.  I get angst.  I don't get this awful movie.  But don't see it.  Leave the mystery untouched and you'll feel better about yourself.

Somewhere else in the middle is the Swedish middle movie based on the Stieg Larsson books - "The Girl Who Played With Fire".  It is such a middle movie, such an unsatisfying arc, and done with the mid-level intensity of a television movie you might see on the BBC.  My rating is an appreciative but underwhelmed C-minus.  Noomi Rapace (love the name) is good as Lisbeth Salander.  The cast of hyphenated Swedes are quirky (Biker-Swedes, an Indian-Swede doctor, a lesbian Asian-Swede love interest, and the list goes on and on).  The quality of the police procedural is very true to the trilogy's intent.  But rent it.

There are a few more flicks on our wish list for the short time we have left.  But it's all a bonus now, given how much we've been able to soak up since last weekend.  Hopefully you're also wriggling your mind's toes in some warm sand today.  Rock on.

Lisbeth Salander and 1950s Russian jazz - two worthy acquired tastes

If you've been in an airport recently, you've seen the overwhelming amount of Stieg Larsson books out there.  His Millennium Trilogy has been a massive hit throughout Europe, and the crossover to the American market is really only beginning (film adaptations of the already produced Swedish films are in the hopper).  But rare indeed are the reviews that really credit without dissecting too much what I think is the inherent genius of the books.  There's just a whole lotta there there.  So without giving anything away, I'll offer up a straight shot, no sugar or milk.

With the publication of "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest" we're looking at the last of Larsson's work.  Don't even get duped by the whispered promise of a half-finished novel on his laptop when he up and died from a heart attack (although some pile of words claiming to be "inspired by Stieg Larsson" will surely be released someday).  Concentrate on this triptych of books, all centered on a vast array of Swedes.  Everyone drinks way too much coffee, sleeps like crap, and shares a reserve of withheld secrets that would drive more extroverted people positively bonkers.  The plot moves vast distances, but the abundance of details and precise dialogue drives many people to distraction.  I don't speak Swedish nor do I have any experience with Swedish literature.  But the little I know and love (fading memories of Ingmar Bergman films, Stellar Skarsgaard in the original "Insomnia") leads me to think that Larsson leans very much true toward the serious, powerful storyteller character of Swedish insight.  My rating of the collected Millenium Trilogy - a hard-earned B.  If you only read "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", do yourself a favor and finish it off the massive bundle.  You'll be much happier that way, I promise.

I'll finish off this year's SIFF reviews with the last and best film I saw.  "Hipsters" is a Russian film, set in 1955 amidst the gray anonymity of Soviet control, using a blinding array of colorful, beautiful characters to spin a story about rebellion.  20 years ago, this movie with this contrarian history of internal rebellion absolutely couldn't have been made.  "Hipsters" swept the Russian homegrown equivalent of last year's Oscars.  The director (Valery Todorovsky) was in Seattle for the screening I saw to answer questions from an audience that was largely Russian, including the grandmotherly woman sitting next to me laughing ahead in time as I tried to catch-up reading the subtitles.  Oh, and it's a musical.  Just plain great, too.  My rating - a solid B-plus, down from a possible A-level because it loses focus often enough to be noticeable.  But find a screening - it will be at the Best of SIFF screenings here in Seattle next weekend.  Otherwise, good luck finding an art house theatre that shows contemporary Russian musicals against a backdrop of Soviet oppression.  Shouldn't be hard.