STOCKHOLM (AP) — The longtime partner of late Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson says he wouldn’t have approved of merchandise being linked to this week’s release of a Hollywood adaptation of his bestselling novel, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”
Eva Gabrielsson said Monday that Larsson would have instead used the buzz around his work to call attention to violence and discrimination against women.
“We would never have sold any rights for merchandising,” Gabrielsson said. “It has nothing to do with books.”
HM has released a Dragon Tattoo Collection, created by costume designer Trish Summerville, that it says is inspired by Lisbeth Salander — the tattooed anti-heroine of Larsson’s books and the film which opens Wednesday in the United States.
Gabrielsson and Larsson were a couple for more than 30 years, but never married. Larsson didn’t leave a will, so his brother and father inherited the rights to his works when he died of a heart attack at age 50 in 2004.
The two have rejected Gabrielsson’s suggestions that they are using Larsson’s legacy for profit, and say they will donate their earnings to causes he supported, including an anti-racism magazine that he worked for as a journalist.
Still, Gabrielsson expressed concern that the political dimension of Larsson’s books, including the feminist undertones, would be overlooked by the film’s hype. She claims Larsson wanted to show that gender imbalances exist even in Sweden, one of the world’s most egalitarian societies.
“The oppression of women exists everywhere, this incomprehensible discrimination,” she said.
In Larsson’s trilogy, Salander and journalist Mikael Blomqvist team up to solve serial killings and sex trafficking scandals. Rooney Mara plays Salander and Daniel Craig plays Blomqvist in the David Fincher directed film.
Mara suggested at a news conference last month that Salander isn’t a feminist, and doesn’t see herself as part of any group or subculture.
“Does she know what film she has been in?” Gabrielsson said, disbelievingly. “Has she read the books? Has she not had any coaching?”
Salander doesn’t fit neatly into any category, “but she is still part of a movement,” Gabrielsson said. “Her entire being represents a resistance, an active resistance to the mechanisms that mean women don’t advance in this world and in worst case scenarios are abused like she was.”
Gabrielsson said the feminist theme had been partly lost with the creation of the English title, which she thinks sounds like “a children’s book.”
She said the original Swedish title is “Man som hatar kvinnor,” — men who hate women. “In his (Larsson’s) world that was also the basic theme for these books,” she said.
Gabrielsson published her own book last year about her life with Larsson.
The flipside of family friendly entertainment during the holiday season is expertly realized in director David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” a popular Swedish crime novel from the author’s Millennium Trilogy.
Not to be confused with the Swedish film of the same name, Fincher’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” still touches upon the story’s caustic themes of corruption, murder and dark family secrets.
The film’s mood is as gray and gloomy as a Scandinavian winter, which is appropriate enough considering the main action occurs on a remote Swedish island with a bleak landscape.
At the beginning, Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist becomes a disgraced journalist when he is convicted of libel for his reporting on the activities of a Swedish Daddy Warbucks named Wennerstrom.
One has to question Mikael’s ethics or common sense for publishing an expose of a corporate titan based upon a single anonymous source that he can’t even personally identify.
The journalist’s reckless behavior threatens the future of his periodical, as well as the illicit relationship he has carried on with his editor and occasional lover, Erika Berger (Robin Wright).
To seek redemption, Mikael takes on an assignment to chronicle the family history of Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), Sweden’s wealthiest and most prominent industrialist.
But Henrik Vanger also has his own agenda, namely for Mikael to get to the bottom of the long-ago disappearance of his beloved niece, Harriet, who was believed to have been murdered by a member of the large family.
At the same time, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), the film’s titular character, a computer hacker and unorthodox investigator, is hired to do a background check on Mikael. The Vanger patriarch takes plenty of precautions.
Rooney Mara steals the picture. Her Lisbeth is a waifish, goth-punk loner who has been in and out of trouble most of her life. Her multiple body piercings and tattoos, to say nothing of tight leather clothes, convey her intensity and alienation.
A ward of the state, Lisbeth must report to a sadistic appointed guardian who abuses her sexually in return for the welfare money she needs to pay for rent and food.
Lisbeth’s guardian grows increasingly abusive, resulting in a horrifically violent rape scene that makes one wonder how the film skated by on an R rating.
But then, when Lisbeth devises a unique but fierce plan for revenge, the tables are turned so dramatically that she boldly proves to be one not to be trifled with.
Meanwhile, as Mikael plods through old documents and photos inside a cold cabin on the Vanger estate, Lisbeth is hired by Mikael as a researcher.
Her no-nonsense dedication is commendable, but then she inexplicably seduces her employer by stripping naked and practically tearing off his clothes. Lisbeth takes on no task without a sense of urgency.
Their investigative efforts turn up a series of odd coincidences and personal quirks of the Vanger clan. Many of the family members are so reclusive that they no longer talk to each other.
The lack of communication is often for good reason. A few of the older generation were former Nazi sympathizers during the war.
Outside of Henrik, the most accessible member is Henrik’s nephew Martin (Stellan Skarsgard), the missing Harriet’s brother. Given the responsibility of running the Vanger corporate interests, Martin also proves guarded.
Mikael and Lisbeth discover clues in a series of photographs that serve like a frame-by-frame replay of the events on the day Harriet disappeared in 1966. All that is missing from these photos is a grassy knoll.
But there’s more to their sleuthing efforts than just a focus on Harriet. They stumble upon the trail of an apparent serial killer of women, which adds yet another layer of foreboding events to this thriller.
Like the vast majority of the American moviegoers, I have not seen the Swedish film, so I am not compelled to make the inevitable comparisons otherwise required to render a judgment.
Standing on its own merits, David Fincher’s vision in “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is unsettling enough to render a taut, moody thriller made all the more fascinating by Rooney Mara’s superb performance.
DVD RELEASE UPDATE
It may no longer be necessary for you to sign up for premium cable TV service as long as you have the patience to wait for the DVD release of favorite series.
Of course, this assumes that you are only interested in one or two programs, so the wait is worth the presumed savings on the cable bill.
Any series involving sex, power, murder and other intrigues is likely not provocative enough unless it shows up on Showtime or HBO.
“The Borgias,” an unvarnished portrait of one of history’s most captivating families, was the perfect sinful period drama for Showtime.
Now “The Borgias: The First Season” is available on DVD, allowing for complete enjoyment of the reign of power and flamboyant cruelty orchestrated by the Borgia family in the Renaissance-era Rome.
Jeremy Irons proved to be powerfully effective as the cunning, manipulative patriarch of the Borgia family who rose to power and position as Pope Alexander VI.
The DVD features all nine one-hour episodes, along with special features that include full episodes of other Showtime programs, including “Californication” and “Dexter.”
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
Director David Fincher’sThe Girl With The Dragon Tattoo kicks off the screen adaptation of Stieg Larssons blockbuster Millennium Trilogy, the epic series of thrillers that have sold 65,000,000 copies in 46 countries. First published in 2005, shortly after Larssons own death, the first novel in the series, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo introduced readers to financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and avenging hacker Lisbeth Salander (played in the film by Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, respectively).
With Salander, Larsson forged a heroine unlike any who had come before in the wide-ranging world of crime thrillers a punk prodigy whose appearance warns people to stay away, who doesnt interact normally with others, yet whose personal link to those who have been violated lures her into helping Mikael solve the disappearance of young heiress Harriet Vanger. Her pursuit of retribution and her tenuous partnership with Mikael would become the core of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the two books that followed The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest.
Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian aimed at staying true to Larssons unflinching focus on the corporate, societal and personal corrosion Mikael and Lisbeth confront as they descend deeper into the question of Harriet Vangers vanishing. Zaillian took his inspiration directly from Larssons words. The script was cut whole cloth from the novel, says Fincher. Faced with the necessity of compacting the first books intricate plot, they also honed in on what has made the Millennium novels so alluring to people around the world. The thing we were interested in most were these two characters, Blomkvist and Salander, who powered the books to be the cultural phenomenon they are, Fincher says. There was a lot of juice there, a lot of friction and a lot of dramatic possibility.
Adds Zaillian: Lisbeth is a great, unusual character, but I think it if the books were only about her, they wouldnt work as well as they do. Its the way her story and Blomkvists come together, and what they each are going through, that makes the books so resonant.
Fincher and Zaillian had no interest in withholding any grit from the books scenes of brutality and revenge. We were committed to the tack that this is a movie about violence against women, about specific kinds of degradation, and you cant shy away from that, Fincher says. But at the same time you have to walk a razor thin line so that the audience can viscerally feel the need for revenge but also see the power of the ideas being expressed.
This is precisely what Larsson had achieved with the novels, drawing readers into themes of corrupted power, misogyny, intolerance, fanaticism, globalization, social welfare, justice and judgment through the twists and turns of Mikael and Lisbeths renegade investigation. Says Rooney Mara, who won the role of Lisbeth Salander: I think people are more intrigued by the under-workings of society than theyre willing to admit. Theyre interested in the dark secrets people and societies hold. `The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ has that component combined with these two outsider characters people really, really love.
Opening soon across the Philippines, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.
Act in haste, repent at leisure, or so the saying goes, and not just at leisure but in pain and considerable expense when it comes to having a tattoo removed.
As job competition increases, what once seemed a cool fashion accessory – the spider web tattooed on your neck, that python encircling your forearm – can be a blot on your CV when it comes to job interviews.
The Planas clinic in Barcelona has reported an 81% increase over the past few years in the demand for laser treatment to remove tattoos. “Having a tattoo removed takes longer, costs more and is much more painful than having one done,” Rafael Serena, head of the clinic’s laser unit, told La Vanguardia newspaper. “It’s not something people usually think about when they get a tattoo.”
Getting rid of a 4in sq tattoo will cost about €200 (£167); a larger one will set you back €1,500, and the more colours involved, the longer and more costly the treatment.
“It’s not pleasant,” said Gabriel Buendía of the Teknon clinic, which has also experienced a rapid rise in demand. “The sensation produced by the laser is similar to being thwacked with an elastic band.”
Reasons for removal are many. Often it is a case of getting rid of “I love Maria” when it turns out that you do not. In one case, according to Serena, a man needed his devil tattoo deleted because the local priest refused to marry him until he did. Another wanted to get rid of his tattooed Barcelona football club badge, presumably because he was moving to Madrid.
However, most cite work as their motivation. Men who wish to sit the civil service exams to join the police or fire service, for example, neither of which will employ tattooed candidates. Women with jobs where they deal with the public want tattoos removed from visible areas such as their neck or ankle. “We also see young people who are setting out on executive careers and don’t feel comfortable wearing a suit and tie over their tattoos,” said Buendía.
Question ♥ ♥ CHOCOHOLIC : How many years do you think someone should be before getting a tattoo I was just thinking about maybe eventually make a tattoo, but not for a while. I just wanted to see other peuples.Oh I certainly did not get one until I 21Meilleure response : A
Cast Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright
Director David Fincher
Rated R (for brutal violent content including rape and torture, strong sexuality, graphic nudity and language)
Running time 158 minutes
Director David Fincher’s deluxe edition of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is the most coldly compelling version yet of the tale dreamed up by the late Stieg Larsson, whose “Millennium” trilogy of pulp novels remains the time-killer of choice in airports, elevated trains and, when the weather’s right, beaches around the world.
Every composition, musical note, furtive glance and glint of metal (whether a nipple ring or gleaming instrument of torture) serves a story purpose or adds another chilly textural detail. As with Fincher’s “Se7en” and “Zodiac,” we’re in the land of rampant psychopathology in a world nearly beyond saving. This was the atmosphere of “The Social Network,” Fincher’s previous film, as well. Except that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was only making a killing, not actually killing.
Larsson’s novels have already been filmed, in Swedish, in three separate features (shrewdly acted, indifferently directed). Fincher’s English-language production, starring Daniel Craig as investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as ace researcher and heavily pierced bisexual fantasy pin-up Lisbeth Salander, was shot in many of the same forbidding Swedish locales used in the earlier films. With Fincher behind the camera, the imagery is as crisp and fastidious as it gets.
If there’s something missing from this project, scheduled to be the first in a three-film juggernaut, it’s actually a pretty big thing: a reason for being. I confess to having had enough of this story, these characters, this peculiarly popular narrative blend of sexual violence and serial slaughter. Around the time of “Zodiac” (2007) Fincher spoke to various interviewers about that story’s real-life subject and his interest in filming a mystery with no satisfying conclusion, and as few audience-baiting impulses as possible. He said also that after “Zodiac” (a financial disappointment worldwide, as well as Fincher’s most interesting film) no one needed to make another serial killer movie. Ever.
Unless there’s a big pile of money in it, that is. In book and film form, “Dragon Tattoo” speaks a universal language: sick thrills from a moral high-ground position. Craftily condensed into 158 minutes, the adaptation by Steven Zaillian maximizes the relationship, first as wary colleagues, then, briefly, as lovers, between Blomkvist and Salander. They go about nailing a killer of women, and solving the riddle of a teenaged girl’s disappearance decades earlier.
All roads, icy and grim, lead to a rich extended family led by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), whose relatives, living on the same remote island, have a tremendous amount to hide including Nazism, neo-Nazism and hideous personal peccadilloes. By the end, “Silence of the Lambs” style, we’re trapped in the lair of the worst of the worst.
The film is beautifully cast. Supporting ringers such as Plummer, Steven Berkoff (a business associate), Stellan Skarsgard (one of the relations) and Robin Wright (as Blomkvist’s magazine colleague and lover) evoke persuasive shades of righteousness and evil, depending, in a workable melange of Scandinavian and British dialects. Craig’s journalist serves as the humble, purposeful backdrop to Mara’s more outre character.
A true survivor, Salander’s no more dimensionally “human” than was Anton Chigurh in “No Country For Old Men,” but like Chighurh, she’s born for the movies — a story hook unto herself. Whether one just admires the picture or truly digs it will probably be determined within 30 seconds of the opening-credits sequence. I resist its assaultive glamour, as it morphs from black-liquid bodies melding together to fires being ignited. It’s done in a way designed to elicit a Wow. Cool.
“Dragon Tattoo” knows precisely how to achieve its look, rhythm, sound and spirit. It’s extremely well made by a genuine and reliable talent. But I thought he was done with this sort of thing. Oh, well. If you needed another version of Larsson’s proven combination of prurience and payoff, here you go.
A hacker of feral genius, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) carries some of Sweden’s grisliest secrets in her computer, and she’s not the only one who knows the import of her downloads. In a Stockholm subway station, a man grabs her computer bag and dashes up an escalator toward the street. Lisbeth runs after the thief, kicks him where it hurts and retrieves the bag, then eludes the man and his confederates by sliding down the escalator partition to the subway platform and slipping between the closing doors of a departing train. The whole thing takes about a minute.
This scene from David Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, first in the trilogy of Swedish thrillers by Stieg Larsson, displays a masterly construction of lightning suspense and action choreography. Who are the bagnappers? What force of evil has employed them? Those questions can tantalize the viewer, but at this point, they don’t matter. The crucial thing is the daubing of another vivid shade on Lisbeth’s personality. She is a haunted, hunted creature who possesses quick and ruthless means of defending herself — the goth girl as action heroine. On its own, the scene stands as an expert demonstration of the visceral kick that is unique to the best American pop movies.
(MORE: 10 Questions for David Fincher)
The Larsson books were violent thrillers elevated by social messages — the equivalent of pulp fiction printed on fine vellum. That definition could nearly fit Fincher’s first six features. Alien 3, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room and Zodiac all revealed his facility and preoccupation with scenarios of cat-to-mouse sadism. And depending on your opinion of Mark Zuckerberg, you could see Fincher’s The Social Network as a less lurid take on the same story. (I’ll skip The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, another Fincher film I love but which doesn’t fit this thesis.) So it’s easy to see why one of our most accomplished, distinguished directors would be drawn to Dragon Tattoo.
(MORE: The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo)
Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian just had to pretend that the novel hadn’t already been made into a pretty fine Swedish film. Hollywood has often Americanized foreign movies: James Cameron’s True Lies, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, Paul Haggis’ The Next Three Days and the Steve Carell comedy Dinner for Schmucks were all remakes of French films. But the 2009 Dragon Tattoo, directed by Niels Arden Oplev and cut down from a Swedish miniseries, earned more than $100 million at the worldwide box office and was the biggest foreign-language art-house hit in North America since the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie en Rose. The movie and its two sequels also showcased a scary-great performance by Noomi Rapace, who crept inside Lisbeth to impart the girl’s battered, heroic glory.
(MORE: TIME’s Review of the Swedish Dragon Tattoo Film)
For a significant minority of the audience, then, the new film will be stalked by the shadow of Oplev’s original and the indelible memory of Rapace’s Lisbeth. To them, the Fincher version may be as crass as Pat Boone’s covers of Fats Domino and Little Richard songs in the 1950s: the dilution of an authentic piece by a mainstream appropriator. Fincher’s admirers may discount the charge of coopting and yet still wonder what spurred him to spend a year of his life — more, if he directs films of the second and third books — on a fairly faithful adaptation of an international best seller that became an international hit movie. I had that same thought before and after seeing this Dragon Tattoo: Why bother?
(MORE:The Social Network: A Pie in the Face for Zuckerberg)
Before the movie begins, Lisbeth used her hacking skills to ferret into the personal life of Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a left-wing muckraker facing jail time for slandering a powerful industrialist. Now she joins Mikael on a dirtier job of inside investigative reporting. Another Swedish plutocrat, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), has hired Mikael and Lisbeth to solve the mysterious disappearance, and presumed murder, of Henrik’s great-niece Harriet in 1966. Mikael holes up on the Vangers’ frosty private island, thumbing through old photographs, while Lisbeth buries herself in library stacks, researching the family’s odd history. Other than Henrik’s amiable nephew Martin (Stellan Skarsgard), the Vangers seem as cranky and crazy as Leatherface’s clan in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. If you thought the statute of limitations on Nazi torturers might have expired 66 years after the fall of the Third Reich, think again. Some villains have too great a hold on the popular imagination to fade from popular fiction.
Nazis and their spawn aren’t the only sexual sadists in this story. The Swedish title of Larsson’s novel translates as “Men Who Hate Women”; for half her young life, as the daughter of a mobster and a ward of the state, Lisbeth has had intimate knowledge of their priapic predations. One such man is Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen), appointed Lisbeth’s guardian when her previous supervisor suffers a stroke. Bjurman has suave conversational skills, a bureaucratic authoritativeness and the compulsion to manacle and torture the young women in his care. He’s good at all these things, we can infer, because he’s done them so often. When Lisbeth resists, he says, “I like reticence. It’s almost convincing.” As an afterthought before penetrating her, he says, “I forgot to ask: Do you like anal sex?” In van Wageningen’s meaty, almost musical rendition, Bjurman is quite the smooth sickie — just like the killer Mikael and Lisbeth will eventually confront.
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The main bad guy says murder is ”the science of a thousand details.” So is directing a complex movie like this, and Fincher throws his considerable energy and skill into every frame. Start with the opening-credit sequence: a pristine rendering of down-and-dirty impulses, with bats and dragon images flickering through enough oil to pollute the Gulf of Mexico, that is nonetheless silky and sexy. The sequence is a reminder of Fincher’s early work directing music videos for Madonna, Aerosmith and Nine Inch Nails. (Trent Reznor, former front man for Nine Inch Nails, and Atticus Ross composed Dragon Tattoo‘s creepily evocative score.)
As Mikael and Lisbeth sleuth through similarly dank pools of human depravity, Fincher stirs echoes of the detectives’ pursuit of a killer genius in Se7en and the minutely detailed procedural aspects of Zodiac. Tracking down a killer requires sneaking around and snapping furtive photos (which Lisbeth takes with an old-fashioned camera, not an iPhone) but also endless hours of reading and typing. Fincher manages to impart some cinematic verve to the sedentary application of nerd power; the movie raises it to seraphic levels. Or it can be twisted into the satanic — since a man who enjoys torturing and slaughtering women, but wouldn’t care to get caught at it, also needs to be a resourceful researcher. “You and I are quite similar,” the killer tells Mikael. “We both have urges. But mine require more towels.” In a basement-laboratory climax that is close enough to The Human Centipede to make some viewers squirm and others giggle, Dragon Tattoo almost summons awe for the killer’s psycho-majesty.
(MORE:TheGirl Who Played with Fire: Moony over Noomi)
Whatever the magnetism of a thriller plot involving the deranged rich (and in this version, there’s little question about whodunit, since that “who” is the only suspect the film spends much time with), the irresistible lure of Larsson’s book is Lisbeth — for readers and viewers no less than for Fincher. Her black garb, pierced flesh and tattooed back are both an advertisement of otherness and a kind of corporeal performance art. This, her body suggests, is how men who hate women have inscribed their lust. When provoked, she will do the same to them. In executing her own sentences on monsters like Bjurman, Lisbeth passes severe justice on the male impulse that brutalizes women. She is both the avatar of all these victims and their avenger.
For anyone making a film of Dragon Tattoo, the single most important decision is the casting of Lisbeth. The Swedes hit the jackpot with Rapace; her incarnation of a burning intelligence and a wounded psyche sent the movie soaring far above its thriller moorings. Did Fincher consider her for his own Dragon Tattoo? There would have been a precedent. When the 1936 Swedish film Intermezzo, another story about the relationship of a middle-aged man and a beguiling young woman, was remade in Hollywood three years later, producer David O. Selznick decided that the female lead would be played by the same young Swedish actress: Ingrid Bergman. Fincher didn’t go that way; he awarded the Lisbeth part to Mara, who made a strong impression as Zuckerberg’s disastrous date in the first scene of The Social Network. The director has said he warned Mara that this could be a career-defining role — that no matter what else she goes on to do, she may always be associated with it, like Vivien Leigh with Scarlett O’Hara.
(LIST: See Noomi Rapace in TIME’s List of Great Performances)
She is closer to Lisbeth’s age than Rapace, and through training and makeup she looks the part. In one scene, when her pale face peeks through a black cowl, she could be a figure from Ingmar Bergman’s medieval morality play The Seventh Seal: death’s kid sister. She throws herself into the role, her craft chasing her ambition. When Lisbeth tells her guardian, “The reports suggest that I’m insane — I am insane,” you may almost believe her. Almost but not quite. She acquits herself perfectly O.K., but Mara is no O’Hara; Rooney is no Noomi. She doesn’t achieve what Rapace did: a miraculous alchemy of actress into character.
In that sense, Mara is the face and heart of the film: a well-wrought simulacrum of the original. Seeing Fincher’s version is like getting a Christmas gift of a book you already have. This edition has a nicer binding and prettier illustrations than your beloved old paperback, but it’s essentially a reproduction of the same old dragon. Dragon Tat-two.
Tattoos were once the reserve of sailors and bikies but these days they are very common.
From mums and dads with their new bub’s name on their shoulder blades to young women with butterflies on ankles and ribbon bows on calves, tattoos are the accessory of the decade.
However, unlike jewellery and a new pair of shoes, they don’t come off easily and your much loved ink can become an eyesore to you and a hindrance.
Kirsty Ugle, who has two children, has two tattoos she regrets.
“I’ve got one on my back which is an ex-fiance’s name and one on my foot which is something that was sort of stuffed up by another tattoo artist,” she said.
“It was just a spontaneous thing where I thought ‘oh I like that, I’ll get that’ but now I wish I’d thought about it before I actually did it.
“Nothing to do with the kids or anything, just getting older and realising the silly things I’d done in earlier years.”
She’s considered getting them removed but the cost is prohibitive.
Cost obstacle
Dr Mary Dingley, from the Cosmetic Physicians Society of Australia, says there has been a rise in the number of people wanting tattoos to be erased.
Unfortunately, it is more expensive to do that than to get tattoos in the first place.
Dr Dingley says each session of treatment costs about $200 each.
“Generally speaking, it takes a number of treatments to remove the tattoo so it might only take one or two to have the tattoo on but it could take ten or potentially even more to remove a tattoo,” she says.
“Often if you have the multi-coloured tattoos there may not be one single laser that can remove every colour that you have.
“So while it’s relatively easy to remove a straight black tattoo, if you have some of these multi-coloured fluoro designs it can be quite difficult to remove and you may need to go to more than one clinic with different types of lasers to have all the colours removed.”
There is also concern in the medical fraternity about those opting to get tattoos done overseas.
The vice-president of the WA Australian Medical Association, Dr Richard Choong, says he is seeing this happen more and more often.
“People coming back from Asia or Bali; instead of just sporting their latest t-shirt which they got, they’re now showing me their new tattoo which they got while they were there,” he says.
“When we ask them ‘well, is it hygienic?’ there is that blank look across their face because they’re assuming that other countries will have the same standards that we have here in Australia with infection control and sterility.
“A lot of these other countries don’t have those so they’re relying pretty heavily on what the business owner has said they do and that’s a big leap of faith.
“I’ve seen some quite heavy infections that have come back.”
Breaking it down
Whether you sport an overseas tattoo or one that has been done in Australia, the process for removing them is much the same.
Dr Dingley says the lasers break down the ink particles in the skin.
“If we fragment the particles of ink, the body is able to chomp it up so the cells that normally come along and chomp up any bacteria or anything that gets into the surface of the skin will come along and deal with those particles when they become smaller,” she says.
It can be painful and clinics use a topical anaesthetic creme or a cold air blower to help reduce the pain.
She says once the ink particles are removed there can still be permanent signs.
“Sometimes, some of the colours in the removal will tend to conflict with the natural pigments in the skin so when we’re removing say red colours, some of the types of laser will actually remove some of the brown pigment, the melanin, within the skin,” she says.
“You can end up with a paler area where the tattoo used to be and that can be quite long lasting and in some cases permanent.
“Very occasionally, there may be some instances of scar formation and this does tend to be more prevalent in areas where you tend to rub the area or have clothing rub on the area after the treatment.
“So, the more you can do to minimise additional trauma to the area, the less likely you are to have scarring occur.
“It can still occur just from the laser process and indeed it can occur from the tattoo process in the first place so some people actually have scars from the tattoo.”
Think twice
Dr Dingley’s advice is to think long and hard about getting a tattoo in the first place.
She says if you do decide to go ahead, think about where on the body you have it done.
“Think about whether it’s going to mean the same to you in 60 years time, compared to now,” she says.
“And what is your skin going to look like in 60 years time?
“Sometimes when your skin young and plump, something can look quite nice but when it gets a little more wrinkled and shrivelled, it may not look quite so nice.”
MANILA, Philippines — Director David Fincher’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” kicks off the screen adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster “Millennium Trilogy,” the epic series of thrillers that have sold 65,000,000 copies in 46 countries. First published in 2005, shortly after Larsson’s own death, the first novel in the series, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” introduced readers to financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and avenging hacker Lisbeth Salander (played in the film by Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, respectively).
With Salander, Larsson forged a heroine unlike any who had come before in the wide-ranging world of crime thrillers – a punk prodigy whose appearance warns people to stay away, who doesn’t interact “normally” with others, yet whose personal link to those who have been violated lures her into helping Mikael solve the disappearance of young heiress Harriet Vanger. Her pursuit of retribution and her tenuous partnership with Mikael would become the core of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and the two books that followed – “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”
Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian aimed at staying true to Larsson’s unflinching focus on the corporate, societal and personal corrosion Mikael and Lisbeth confront as they descend deeper into the question of Harriet Vanger’s vanishing. Zaillian took his inspiration directly from Larsson’s words. “The script was cut whole cloth from the novel,” says Fincher. Faced with the necessity of compacting the first book’s intricate plot, they also honed in on what has made the Millennium novels so alluring to people around the world. “The thing we were interested in most were these two characters, Blomkvist and Salander, who powered the books to be the cultural phenomenon they are,” Fincher says. “There was a lot of juice there, a lot of friction and a lot of dramatic possibility.”
Adds Zaillian, “Lisbeth is a great, unusual character, but I think if the books were only about her, they wouldn’t work as well as they do. It’s the way her story and Blomkvist’s come together, and what they each are going through, that makes the books so resonant.”
Fincher and Zaillian had no interest in withholding any grit from the book’s scenes of brutality and revenge. “We were committed to the tack that this is a movie about violence against women, about specific kinds of degradation, and you can’t shy away from that,” Fincher says. “But at the same time you have to walk a razor thin line so that the audience can viscerally feel the need for revenge but also see the power of the ideas being expressed.”
This is precisely what Larsson had achieved with the novels, drawing readers into themes of corrupted power, misogyny, intolerance, fanaticism, globalization, social welfare, justice and judgment through the twists and turns of Mikael and Lisbeth’s renegade investigation. Says Rooney Mara, who won the role of Lisbeth Salander: “I think people are more intrigued by the under-workings of society than they’re willing to admit. They’re interested in the dark secrets people and societies hold. `The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ has that component combined with these two outsider characters people really, really love.”
Opening soon across the Philippines, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.
A new version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is released in the UK today and is tipped to be a box office hit despite coming just years after the original Swedish film.
Based on the first in a globally best selling trilogy by Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson , the film - starring Daniel Craig - follows a critically acclaimed film by Swedish film-maker Neils Arden Oplev.
Oplev has questioned whether Hollywood should have remade his movie for a mass audience and critics have also attacked the trend of reproducing foreign language films.
Craig says he did not watch the original film before making The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo because he “didn’t want to be affected by them”.
He said: “I had lined them up to watch but then I got sent the script.”
The Bond star denied that he felt under pressure because the book had been so popular.
“I just wanted to do the best job I could. The book sold so many and the film was critically acclaimed so this is a chance to push it further,” he said.
The director David Fincher - best known for Fight Club and The Social Network - admits that there was some resentment to his interpretation.
“There’s nowhere stronger than in Sweden. This is a city where the book was based, he was writing about where he lived and places that he knew and the Swedish crew were extremely protective, at first,” he said.
“There was a sense of here come the grave robbers.”
The film is the first in what is likely to be a blockbuster trilogy and tells the story of a journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) who is helped by computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) in his search for a missing woman.
It is sexually violent and at times difficult to watch but Craig said it had to be that way.
“I don’t think we could have done the film unless it had been as violent as it is and what David’s done is tricky, to imply as opposed to showing everything, and I think the mind fills in the gaps,” he said.
“The books were about sexual politics and violence towards women and without showing that the movie doesn’t stand up.
“If it had been sanitised and made certificate 13 for a mass audience, it wouldn’t have worked. It’s an adult movie”.
Fincher says that surprisingly fewer women auditioned to play the lead Elsbeth in Girl With The Dragon Tattoo than they did to play Mark Zuckerberg in his previous hit The Social Network.
He decided to cast New York-born actress Rooney Mara , who he had previously worked with on The Social Network.
She took up skate boarding, kick boxing and computer training for the part which will catapult her from relative anonymity into superstardom.
Mara says she loved playing Lisbeth: “She’s a character that a lot of people can relate to because of that feeling of being misunderstood or outcast.
“She has two opposing sides, visibly described as anorexic and childlike, you think she can’t look after herself, but she’s incredibly strong, a genius hacker but quite naive.”
Mara did a Swedish accent for the film but Craig decided against it saying: “How many Swedes do I know who speak English impeccably, better than I do”.
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