To hear the latest No Country For Young Men radio show, from Wednesday Nov. 24th, CLICK HERE. As The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest continues at The Varsity Theatre in Davis, what are women film critics saying about the dramatic conclusion to the Millenium trilogy? Despite being squeamish, I love the key elements of the series: busting up corruption, fighting abuse of women
and the vital importance of protecting press freedom. Big thanks to my live phone guest on today's show, Lynne Hasz, who talked with me about the life cycle of oak trees. This Saturday Nov. 27th at 11 AM, she will be leading a guided tour at the UC Davis Arboretum. The oaks end their cycle in the Fall, preparing to drop their seeds and hunker down for winter. The first of my Under-Covered News stories during Thanksgiving week was about the lack of sufficient community radio licenses in Native America. "Even though more than a million Native Americans and Alaska Natives live on over 55 million acres of Tribal lands across the U.S., there are only some 41 radio stations licensed to Native Entities," according to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. But, he has a plan. Also, Raw Story covered this week a coalition of 45 human rights, peace and environmental groups who want a new Church Committee-style investigation into FBI raids on peace groups. After raiding 14 peace activists in Minneapolis and Chicago in September, the FBI said there was no "imminent danger" to the public. (I mean, they are peace activists. The only dangerous thing about them is their ideas!)
To see the playlist for today's show, CLICK HERE. So... What did female critics from some of America's top sources for movie reviews think of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest? Village Voice's Melissa Anderson writes: This final installment feels thoughtlessly put together, its script unpruned and rushed through, all to capitalize on the staggering worldwide popularity of its dead author. Tasha Robinson of The Onion's AV Club reminds us: There was no chance that the film adaptation of the third book in Stieg Larsson’s internationally bestselling Millennium trilogy would be as strong as the first. The Swedish series frontloads the significant action into its dense first installment, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, then explores the past in the follow-up, The Girl Who Played With Fire. The third book largely exists to wrap up loose ends; the film adaptation is essentially two and a half hours of denouement. New York Times critic Manohla Dargis has an interesting take: As in certain slasher films from the 1970s and high-end thrillers that borrow from a similar horror playbook, the violence against women in the Millennium movies is answered by a young woman, the one whose bad attitude is as unapologetic as that of any male avenger. Salander hits (and sometimes shoots) back and never says sorry. Every so often, she responds to some violence with a small, mean smile that the camera makes sure to capture. There’s satisfaction in that smile, maybe cynicism, but no evident moral complexity. Connie Oogle of Miami Herald was thrilled by the series, adding: The nature of Hornet's Nest requires a certain amount of talkiness, but new characters - particularly Annika Hallin as Blomkvist's sister, whom he enlists as an attorney for Salander - develop and register quickly, and the straightforward script keeps the convoluted plot easy to follow. The final courtroom scene is immensely satisfying... Her reunion with Blomkvist may be somewhat less than satisfying, but one can only blame fate. Larsson planned a 10-book series but died after writing only three novels about this fascinating, prickly but devoted friendship. We're left to imagine what might have been.
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