Fincher has trailer, Girl has tattoo, I has blog

This is Rooney Mara. You're about to not recognize her at all. At. All.

PREVIEW REVIEW: Nothing says "Happy holidays!" like a Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (U.S.)

LINKS: Official Dragon Tattoo (U.S.) trailer on iTunes

Who has cheezburger? I apologize for the long winter's nap that the blog has taken this week. Weeks that have a Monday holiday tend to wreak havoc with the ol' work schedule. Speaking of wreaking havoc, how about the positively grimy new teaser for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the U.S. adaptation of Stieg Larsson's best-selling novel? I haven't read the book (which was allegedly intended to be the first of 10, and ended up being the first of three after Larsson suffered an untimely heart attack six years ago), and haven't seen the Swedish film version that raced around the arthouse circuit last year. My interest in this one is mostly in terms of its pedigree. The U.S. Girl is in the hands of director David Fincher, whose last film, The Social Network, was a firing-on-all-cylinders snapshot of generational flux. The leads are Daniel Craig, whose wolfish intensity is always interesting, and Rooney Mara, who hasn't done much, but was excellent in her couple of scenes in The Social Network.

My first instinct was to knock this trailer for how little it reveals about the movie's story, but on second (and third, and fourth) viewing, I started to admire, and then be fascinated by, how much information it's able to get across unaided by dialogue. Even if I knew nothing about the story — and I don't know all that much — and had never seen the actors before, I could pick out Craig as the convention-defying investigative somebody or other with almost no trouble at all. Stellan Skarsgaard has one beat near the start where the camera holds on his face as he's coming through a door and you just know he's up to something creepy. They're definitely playing up Craig at the expense of Mara's Lisbeth Salander — my understanding is that they're essentially co-protagonists — but she does have the title of the movie going for her, after all. And Craig is the only guy in the cast who's likely to register in the short-term memory that people who aren't me (or aren't like me) typically devote to movies. Maybe Christopher Plummer for some. I feel pretty confident that his character is at least sinister, if not purely evil, incidentally.

The music, a driving arrangement of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by Trent Reznor (with vocals by indie rocker Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) is brilliant. (The bit at the end with the heavy beat behind each title is a particularly clever blend of sound and typeface.) I often wonder why so many filmmakers sign off on trailers that thunder at us with the billionth rousing arrangement of the this-or-that chorale belting out something by Beethoven or Handel, or use generically iconic film scores that distract you into thinking, "Where is that from?" when you should be watching the images. Trust me, trailer dudes, having a unique aural signature is priceless. Reznor and Atticus Ross, who did an amazing score for Fincher with The Social Network, are filling the same role on Girl and this is a clear signal that they've got another winner on their hands.

See? See? What did I tell you?

And, oh yeah, the poster art. This is the poster art, or at least some of it. Lisbeth Salander and Craig's Mikael Blomkvist are actually partners in crime solving in the film, but this pose makes it seem like he's a crazed punk-grrrl stalker on the edge of a rooftop and a police negotiator is 30 feet away saying soothing things through a bullhorn while the sarge furiously motions to the SWAT guys trying to get a clean shot from the bank tower across the street. Take it down a notch, D.C.; if you make that face too many times it's going to freeze like that. (Whoops, too late.) Oh, and this is only the "safe for iTunes" version of the poster art, bee-tee-double-you. Mara is topless and wearing exceedingly low-slung leather pants in the poster that is probably already grimacing at you from the lobby of the neighborhood multiplex. Craig's arm and the typeface that gives the film's release date are protecting Mara's modesty, much as Custer protected the U.S. position at Little Bighorn. Should you chance to meet Mikael and Lisbeth by the snack counter, avert your eyes.