Half in the Bag Episode 22: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and 2011 Re-Cap

half in the bag why the [ __ ] are you watching this we're back oh um you know you don't have to say that every time we walk into plank it's house but I like to what's going on over here oh gosh it looks like he's dead holy [ __ ] there's only one way to know for sure do it yeah he's definitely dead [ __ ] this guy was our meal ticket what we're gonna do there still may be a chance to save him one of us has to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation hey did you ever give him mouth-to-mouth mm-hmm apparently it didn't work though hmm hey maybe what we need to do is give him ass to mouth resuscitation Oh Oh God don't you dare do that I had to come back to life just just so you couldn't violate me you're horrible people well that worked hey maybe we should inform the medical community about this new breakthrough this is Harriet someone ends a family murdered Harriet for the past 40 years has been trying to drive me insane hi welcome to half in the bag I'm Mike and I'm Jane and we just saw the girl with the dragon tattoo that's right Jay the girl with the dragon tattoo is the new film from David Fincher it stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara and it's based on a series of books by Swedish author Stieg Larsson the books have already been made into three films but yeah the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the Swedish film that was made in 2009 so it's about time for a remake yeah it's it's bent over it's overdue actually I would say this is less of a remake and more of just a a stealing someone's idea kind of thing to make a film out of this sound bring it to a larger audience and make lots of money it saves all that time of trying to come up with a new idea or so is that it but I guess these books are very popular they are yeah they're they're international bestsellers as they say I have not read them I haven't read a book in 22 years really yeah the last book I read was oh the places you'll go by dr. Seuss dr. Seuss is overrated all's I know is that the places I'll go don't include libraries yeah fair enough you will be investigating thieves misers bullies at the most the book collection of people that you will ever meet my family so J what did you think of the girl without a Dragon Tattoo very good very good movie I think I was more invested in the technical aspects of it and the performances than I was the actual story being told yeah yeah um like you I am a fan of David Fincher he's a top-notch director he's a he's a very smart filmmaker yes yes and it's it's wonderful to watch his films because they're very very detailed very methodical very well-made no it's not just like crank out this crap and get it going it seems to actually care yeah but all of his films I don't think I've seen one I haven't seen the Benjamin Button movie that's the only film of his that I don't care much for and even that it's a really well-made movie it's just a really stupid script okay but this movie kind of falls in line with some other movies he's done where he sort of takes kind of middle the road material and elevates it to something that is a lot more interesting it's it's something about the way that he directs the actors in the way that the films are constructed and paced out and everything it's like I really like that social network movie and the social networks great I'm assuming that's overrated too and everyone hates that because it's about Facebook and and normies are on Facebook but the movie in itself very little to do with Facebook it's more about you know people backstabbing each other and complicated relationships and problems that come with Fame and success and all that and you know that and same with the Dragon Tattoo the movies are about less about the plot per se and more about like how the characters deal with situations yeah and that's why I really like that Facebook movie cuz I'm I watched it and I'm just like those movies are sort of hypnotic and it's the way that that the actors perform in this in the movie and the way that there's always sort of like this like tension or this build-up in all the scenes like you're always just kind of like waiting to see what happens next and there's nothing that's ever predictable or cliched or stupid it's just sort of like hypnotic almost yeah yeah well it's yeah it's it this movie similar in that word the actual plot is sort of like standard-issue kind of whodunit story but but it's more about the characters and then the movie continues after that plot is resolved there's another like 20 25 minutes movie that's just resolution to the characters and that was far more engaging than the actual main plot of the movie I need a research assistant I know an excellent one she did the background check on you so what you don't think we could hire just anyone with something like this you always hear about the de Lisboa wander character and she's sort of this you know goth like bisexual kick-ass chick so I kind of had this idea that the movie would be more sort of like glorifying that or making it seem like hip and cool and it really doesn't like her introductory scene she just comes and sits down in this boring office yeah all I knew was that it was called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and that there was supposed to be some girl in there that was was awesome so I expected something like um like salt the angelina jolie film where she kicks everyone's ass like and then that to me is like so played out like it's just like here's this character you know they were trained by every agency on the planet they were ex-kgb CIA hacker satellite operator so maybe there were really crazy action sequences in the book she jumps on the roof of a train and then flips off the side kicks through the window and then fights 15 guys and then flies into the control booth of the Train and derails it and while it's de railing she jumps out the window and then the train cars start flipping and they form like like a loop and then she slides in between the two train cars as they crash and makes it through and then she lands on a bridge as a tanker truck jackknifed sin front of her and then she slides under the tanker truck as the whole tanker truck back-end comes up and hits the bridge and explodes and then while she's flying she puts on her fire suit hmm in in midair yeah and then goes through the fire all in kind of sped up slow motion that's the strong female character and this character is like a complete twist on that it still has those same elements but she's she's like she's like like a wounded animal she's sort of sort of pathetic run down that she still remains all those or retains all those traits yeah well and that's a David Fincher thing is sort of grounding everything in a in a reality I think it kind of played with the idea of who was the main character a little too oh yeah you you relate to Daniel Craig um a lot because he's more normal you know the Lisbeth Salander is they keep showing her how she's a weirdo I mean she does horrible things in the first part of that movie she's kind of pathetic she sheets junky food she's she's doing illegal things hacking into people's computers and so you're like and then there's they sort of have a once they meets halfway through the film and start working together there's sort of like a like a polar shift and then and that's what I liked about the characters in that movie is that they weren't like clean-cut and you know black and white yeah the cinematography to the look of the movie it's very drab very bleak and then you have Sweden in the dead of winter like it looks great and it's yeah completely sets the mood yeah it almost feels like the failable light most of the time but yes I really like as opposed to like I don't know Spielberg's DP everything's bright and glowy everyone glows yeah there's eight coming look at me I'm the DP um there's there's look at me I'm the DP or look at me I'm the director kind of shots yeah you'd never see those rarely in the David Fincher movies some of it's certainly your stuff like a Fight Club but that's sort of a movie that's intentionally stylized but this didn't need anything like no David Fincher knows what he's doing yeah they throw all these film directors together and say who's that who's the top of their profession you know you got top doctors you got top where is it yeah say top filmmakers he's on the top you know he knows exactly where he's putting the camera he knows exactly how long these scenes need to be transitions between scenes how to how to build all the tension up how to keep your interest yeah all those things that go into making a movie and the use of sound to which is very very important there's the scene that I really liked in the movie was the the first time that Elizabeth case worker social worker guy sort of offers her money for giving him a [ __ ] and takes place in his office the doors closed it's late at night and the entire time there's a guy just outside the office it's like waxing the floor and that entire scene in the office you can hear the guy just outside waxing the floor and as the scene progresses and it gets sort of creepier and more intense that sound starts to get worked into the score and I thought that was really well like the way it sort of builds um yeah there's all that there's all that it's like the the most effective perfect way to make films so Jay would you recommend this movie I would absolutely if you're a fan of film and filmmaking and and can watch a movie with an attention span and appreciates all the elements of filmmaking coming together into a perfect balanced perfect harmony cinematography performances music sound design very well executed well said I will I will agree with all those sentiments and also if you like kind of a well-done like erotic rape scene kind of like straw dogs you know it has it has that you know I don't I don't think that was supposed to be erotic the rape scene that was supposed to be horrible and disgusting and violent what so it was nice that at the end of 2011 there was actually a really quality movie being released that being The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo it makes up for a lot of the crap we saw in 2011 so a lot of bad movies but there's a lot of things we saw that we didn't do on the show yeah so we're gonna do a little recap of 2011 movies yeah we did not discuss okay a brief little best and worst of 2011 but uh since we are a simple lowly VCR repair man we are not film critics we typically don't see every film that comes out like a professional film critic site it's the best of what we've seen live or let's say it should be more of eight what we saw list yes not even a best / worst oh sure okay so a recommendation series because we can say we like certain things didn't but we're going to quickly recap the other things we saw this year anything to report uh well I think my favorite movie of the year what I would consider the best that I saw would be drive as I mean I was was excellent drive and super or sort of the at the top of my list but as far as just sort of favorite theater-going experience most fun I had watching a movie I would have to say the Muppets I [ __ ] loved the Muppets I thought it was excellent hmm III am in the same category with drive and super they were the most kind of crushing entertaining films that I saw this year which I guess says a lot about the both of us because they're both films about a withdrawn deranged psychopath that's sick violence so it's tend to be the movies I gravitate towards for whatever reasons yeah but I did not see the Muppets I realize I am no longer a child you don't have to be a child to enjoy the Muppets you just have to have a soul what else did you see this year um I recently saw a film called The Descendants I have not seen this yet I want to I like Alexander Payne a lot The Descendants was what I call a mom movie hmm because it's a movie that mom likes or grandma it's from a book you know one of the books that Oprah will say you should read and then mom will read it and mom will tell other moms about it and they'll go see it Nell said that was great saying the grandma will go and grandpa will go and it'll smell like Church in the theater you know the the director is fairly straightforward I'll say in his in his approach yeah well when I think of Alexander Payne there's always sort of like a cynical edge to his movies there's that sort of dark edge to it so well I wouldn't say dark um certainly cynical though I mean the movies about it's about him and his kids but it's also about their descendants of like sort of the heirs to property you know dating all the way back to when we acquired Hawaii as a state so that's about them selling off this property and making a whole bunch of money but his wife is also in a coma and going to die oh crap so it's about him dealing with that and he's a very practical character um he's not very like you know prone to like hysterics or anything like that he's just very like this is how I deal with this and he kind of reminded me of me you know okay and that and that's why I found it interesting but he's dealing with all these really heavy issue his wife was cheating on him his daughters how to raise them and so there's there's some pointed emotional moments but then there's some parts where you think it's supposed to be really emotional and then it kind of turns into sarcasm or comedy and you're like oh yeah that sounds like Alexander how life kind of really works yeah you know how some things are just like okay it was it was very very entertaining you know so a movie about emotions and feelings but not schmaltzy yeah it didn't it didn't get too melodramatic and and corny sepra don't ever do that to meet you well speaking of melodramatic and corny we both saw super 8 and we did not discuss that movie on the show oh yeah polar opposites that's that's that's uh well what's your stance on JJ Abrams as far as the way he he manipulates an audio yeah JJ Abrams is is very it's very effective at heart string tugging and motional manipulation and all that he's the new Steven Spielberg yes yes um I remember you saying you really liked it when it was done and I I did to a certain degree I enjoyed the movie the the biggest problem with the movie is that it kind of it for the majority of the running time it wants to be got like a Godzilla type movie and then at the end it decides it wants to be et and it's like you can't really have it both ways you know yeah at least not the way the movie is executed huh well it had the the front of trying to be a movie about something smaller sort of like et you know you're coming of age story with the boy yet and this was the boy falling in love you know and then so the monster isn't super important but uh yeah it's a movie that's dragging you where it wants you to go emotionally yes I generally prefer move dragging you wanna on a on a slip'n slide filled with schmaltzy gooey material yeah you know it's not dragging you through a broken glass like some movies it's dragging along a slip and slide and you're just like okay I'll go down the slip and so I just pull me along and that's how I felt and and that the Ender was like oh okay that was kind of fun it was pleasant enough all the kids are really good in it they're really natural yes and of course it's about little kids making a movie which you know I think both of us can relate to so yes it's cute for the most part but yeah those elements I liked and I liked the fact that it did that was a point it did it kind of pull you back to your childhood you know when when there's that girl that you like yeah you know fall in love with her and and have sexual intercourse with her in a bathroom stall in your grade school those those little magical moments that you fantasize about as a little kid and so he he was like oh you know and she was a cute girl whoever that was wasn't it uh Dakota Fanning's Alyssa she's actually really good at faking fanning girl yeah yeah she's a good actress and the kid was good and then they have the fat kid and the other kid and yeah there was something about it that felt a little forced now I'm where certain movies from the 80s kind of come natural this was obviously a retro homage type thing and maybe that's what made it felt forced them yeah um it's it's very hard to crack the stone-cold heart of Sinica um especially when it doesn't feel like when it feels like someone's saying let's do this plug in these things as opposed to someone like making the descendents the descendents you get choked up in the end it's a little sad and it feels normal feels natural natural it feels like someone kind of wanted to tell the story and it feels like more honest yeah as far as the film goes like um it doesn't feel like well let's do this let's have this and we're gonna make it like et mixed with Goonies mixed with this and then we're gonna have the light glowing and we're going to all these beautiful close-ups of kids with eyes of wonderment and then the music swells by the way can we copyright wonderment a trademark of it and and then there's that whole like that marketing thing with the it's what is super 8 damn well yeah I was the same thing with Cloverfield or took what is the mystery and then you see them the movies almost like an afterthought where it's more about the marketing and the build-up and then you see the movie you're like oh it was a monster yeah and then that said no one believes me what the hell so speaking of uplifting schmaltzy movies that tug at your heartstrings we also both saw melancholia which is the feel-good movie of the year yeah lars von trier knows how to make an audience feel great and battle I was I was actually mildly disappointed in melancholia okay I liked lars von trier I really loved Antichrist sand I don't know it it's stuck with me melancholia like I'm still thinking about it weeks after which is a good sign it's actually grown on me a bit but when I first saw it I was a little disappointed sort of broken up into two halves and I liked the second half a lot yeah where where things are sort of more engaging and something's happening other than Kirsten Dunst is is sad I mean I know the movies about depression and the first half is sort of building that up but I don't know I didn't care much about her in the movie she's your performance is good but well I was excited to see the film because I'm a fan of Kirsten Dunst I liked Kirsten Dunst I'm oddly attracted to her some people think she's she's strange-looking or regualr snaggle tickler snaggletooth um III liked her she was her favorite film that she was in is called Dunston checks in it's a porno oh it takes place in a hotel and she locks a monkey back to melancholy melancholia there are certain images in it and things that happen that really stick with you so at the end yeah um and some of the imagery in the opening but yeah first half felt a little completely different than the second half but it's sort of like I don't know there's a lot going on in that movie too or it's like first half Kirsten Dunst is getting married and it doesn't feel like anything has it that has anything to do with the second half but the first half is her story the second half is the sisters story and so there's sort of like two different things so then you have like if that and this this ominous planet that's always like coming towards Earth and lots of depression issues the first half she sort of like the outcast the black sheep the crazy person everyone hates her there's I guess the the wedding sort of symbolized like normalcy you know what I mean like that's like a normal event and everyone has their way of acting appropriately during that event and she's just like just sticks out like a sore thumb even though she's the bride because she's so weird and [ __ ] up and then the second half it's very like blue and sad and she's sort of the normal one in that situation and everyone else is like you know trying to deal with this ominous threat of the destruction of the earth and she's the one that you gravitate toward as being like relatable yes second half so there's all that stuff going on but weird dialogue weird the way people act is weird you know I like I like to talk here in the first half of the movie where he's so disgusted by Kirsten Dunst he says I'm not gonna look at her all night so he's doing this yeah stuff it works it has sort of an otherworldly feel to it yeah the stellan skarsgård 'he's in there and he fires her she tells him to go [ __ ] himself throws a plate it doesn't break the first time so he goes back and throws it yeah weird things that happened and and and again we've discussed this concept before when we talked about drive but a movie that uhm where the script and the story were handled by a different director and different actors you know where it would be completely terrible like like this movie kind of sticks out as one of those guys there's scenes where you're like what are they saying like like Kiefer Sutherland is like looking into a telescope is like the planet is approaching will it hit us father maybe hard to say and I just picture it like in just like this flat angle like be actors and you're like wow that's terrible but because of the way it's shot and directed before the way the actors are directed I mean it's most of its filmed and like extreme close-ups yeah the whole time and you're like ah you know like it takes a while to get adjusted to it in the movie yes I now know every square micrometer of Kirsten Dunst's face oh um it's not for everyone that's it's barely for anyone um that's the beauty of lars von trier yeah yeah that in the fact that he's a Nazi and so another surprisingly good film I saw this year was something called Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol that like a little independent movie or there was a smaller budgeted film it starred guy named Tom Cruise knows it was a it's a good film III was curious to see it because Brad Bird directed yes that they believe this is his first live-action movie uh we we saw it because we missed the original time we went to see The Descendants mmm missed the screening so I said let's go see Mission Impossible whatever whatever I wanted to see it because it had the the world's tallest building in it um which is that building in Dubai um I was like that's a neat location I haven't seen that in a movie before yeah um and then we ended up seeing on the ultra screen and I was like okay I'll watch a big dumb action movie and it turned out that it wasn't a big dumb action movie I mean it was what it was yeah it was exactly what you expect of an impossible movie um but I read later that it said there was only 700 visual effect shots in the movie which I took as an attribute it's funny that you think about that now like only 700 effects shots do you think back to the movies is like the 80s where they're like we have 32 composite shots in this film but now it's like yeah the 65,000 effect shots and you know Transformers movies are what right and and it was like I thought that was a good thing I was like wow less special effects but it wasn't just that it was um sort of that um didn't have all that crazy unbelievable nonsense stuff in it where people can do anything everybody do anything yeah and there was a couple of moments but but there was lots of practical stuff too I mean there's a kind of a simple sequence where he's hanging outside that building he's got to use these suction things to crawl on it and swing around and fun stuff like that and there's there's a particularly good sequence in a like a car parking garage structure that's automated where these like lifts go up and get the cars and bring them down for the people and sort of a reminded me of like Indiana Jones a type situation yeah they're trying to get this bag and he's fighting the sky and the bag falls he falls two levels down but the bags on another car and it's going up I got to get back up so it was it was fun and but it was it looked looked all like realistic you know it didn't look goofy yeah overly computer graphics didn't all that stuff so and an interesting little spy plot yeah fine Simon Pegg was in it and and he had lots of laugh-out-loud moments very very funny he was sort of the comic relief character um the computer whiz guy yeah and you know I was surprised by it and like he said Brad Bird I saw him I was like oh yeah he directed this I forgot about that and for those of you who don't know Brad Bird is he did The Incredibles that's our movie yeah he worked on The Simpsons a lot writer and producer type thing so mostly known for animation which is what is almost a reason to be concerned that it would be over reliant on sort of CG effects or animated animated stuff yeah well the The Incredibles is like one of the best action movies I think that's entirely atidim and that's great so um yeah surprised by that one I enjoyed it so what would you say is the worst movie you saw this year not counting a movie starring Adam Sandler well not counting Jack and Jill the friends-with-benefits movie that was the [ __ ] most offensively stupid movie I've ever seen I didn't stay to see the whole thing mmm literally walked out on it um I just couldn't take it anymore it was like nails on a chalkboard like like a nightmare it's like a living nightmare it was so so stupid but it falls in line with a similar review we did which was uh what's your number what's your number which I would say is probably the worst movie I saw this year not including Jack and Jill yeah but that's also not a movie I would ordinarily go and see yeah so I I don't think I've rarely walked out of movies yeah um and that was one where I had to it was just I was done with it well then on the far other end of the spectrum from a movie like what's your number or that is bridesmaids which was a big big comedy this year probably the most successful comedy of the year yeah um I liked bridesmaids I what I said right after I saw it I said wow there's a really good 90-minute comedy buried in there somewhere yeah I thought it was way too self-indulgence and went on way too long bridesmaids yeah okay a lot of the scenes felt like they were went on twice as long as they should tell you about the pacing yes the movies like two hours bridesmaids was was actually um I didn't find it like a comedy it was like depressing yeah it was like a black comedy almost because I felt so bad for Kristen Wiig scary her character's horribly pathetic yeah and it's so many like they really dumped on her as the protagonist character like everything yeah her roommates a creepy British roommates and just her life is so miserable yeah and you know but there was some moments in there that were funny and and some of the stuff that dragged on real long I liked but some of the stuff I didn't yeah um but overall yeah it was it was a very different kind of take on those wedding movies yeah cynical and darker yeah than normal we should also mention that it's one of the only films ever to take place in Milwaukee okay yeah um and and some of the locations were filmed very near our studio hmm I mean this house that were happened to be in oh it was it was nice to see that they portrayed the people in Chicago as being more culturally refined and rich and that people in Milwaukee are Kristen Wiig who are retards that little dumpy apartment oh and get fired from their job in a jewelry store so here's the great thing there's these two cities they're really close one is sophisticated an upscale and smart and intelligent and Vance one is filled with bumpkins and idiots ah that's okay I'll take that but whatever she's naked I'm sorry I want to apologize I'm not even confident on which in that came out of so yeah 2011 not a great year for movies there's a couple of movies that sort of stood out but 2012 is looking up lots of big geek movies coming out in 2012 there's Prometheus the Ridley Scott movies coming out and really looking forward to that um The Avengers is finally coming out after years and years of buildup The Dark Knight Rises Christopher Nolan that's going out The Hobbit I'm really looking forward to I loved the Lord of the Rings movies so that looks like it'll be great um so yeah lots of big geek movies coming out to look forward to that everyone on the internet will say are overrated no matter how good film is it will always be bad yes yes it will always be hated because it didn't live up to incredibly high expectations expectations that aren't grounded in any sort of reality it's a shame it's a shame I feel bad for movies these days mm-hmm well it's time to start writing my memoirs you know I've been thinking I'm good not in yours and this there's really quite a few things I want to say you know before oh my god I'm having a [ __ ] heart attack oh I guess he's dead again

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 465,622

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, half in the bag, plinkett, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans, girl with the dragon tattoo, david fincher

Id: 87HKe0ggt34

Length: 32min 54sec (1974 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2015