Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are scoring the remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The last time these two collaborated with director David Fincher they won an Oscar for The Social Network. The film also stars Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgard. A long story short, it’s shaping up to be a slick film. Nevertheless, if you look on the filmoblogosphere you see everyone asking the same question, why is this film being remade – the Swedish version was released in 2009 and is of the highest quality. I can understand English-speaking audiences aren’t used to dubbed films, but regardless, it seems like a waste for all these actors to redo this film. I still can’t believe it’s being done in Sweden! I was expecting the story to be transposed on the backdrop of Los Angeles, or New York. Nevertheless, with smart casting and scoring decisions they seem to be making the attempt to improve upon perfection. Rooney Mara, the actress chosen to play the title role, will have her work cut out for her. Noomi Rapace has gained a following for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander – she has however moved on to bigger things, and plays a role in the new Sherlock Holmes film. Here is the trailer for the new film, it’s terrible – it’s like a strobelight, but if you can finish watching it without convulsing and can remember and rearrange the scenes in your mind you get the impression that film might be good, you might also be able to guess at the plot, if you’re not familiar with the books yet.

Often the most frustrating things about previews is the fact that often, the releases being promoted aren’t exactly around the corner. Take the Dark Knight Rises teaser trailer, from the last post – that movie isn’t coming out for another year, assuming everything goes to plan. In December of last year, after watching a documentary about Antartica by Werner Herzog, I mentioned that there was a prequel to 1982′s The Thing by John Carpenter coming out, eventually. There was no teaser, but now there’s a trailer, and the opening date is within a reasonable distance – October 14, 2011. Only three months away! Or thereabouts. In any case, it’s not a remake, but a prequel tied tightly to the events of the initial film. Some people group prequels, remakes, reboots, spin-offs and the like into the same category – and this is the year of the sequel – but in this case it makes sense. From the looks of it the storyline is similar, the crew gets attacked and goes through the discovery, mutual distrust and hunting phases, but at the same time, which means the audience unfamiliar with the 1982 film will get the same wintry desolate goodness and the existing fans get the gory details as to what happened to the first crew. Check out the trailer.