Paul Doiron

If you're going to be in Portland on August 11, I hope you'll join me for lunch.

So it looks like Daniel Craig is officially onboard to play Kalle Fucking Blomkvist in the English language film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That's good. I like Craig. I also welcome the news that director David Fincher plans on filming in Sweden. Evidently, he's been given the green light to make his movies as dark as Steig Larsson's novels, too.

The first of Fincher's trilogy is scheduled for release in December, 2011. In the meantime I intend to see the Swedish version of The Girl Who Played with Fire when it comes to Rockland, Maine, next week. Based on the early reviews, I expect that I'll emerge from the Strand Theatre still wondering what the point is of remaking these movies in English (except to make loads of money, of course).

Another in my occasional series of Down East colloquialisms:

PRIT'NEAR: Just about, almost. As in, "Melvin prit'near had a heart attack when he saw the bill for that pantsuit I bought over at Reny's."

"Sometimes it seemed as if the summit would be cleared in a few moments, and smile in sunshine: but what was gained on one side was lost on another. It was like sitting in a chimney and waiting for the smoke to blow away. It was, in fact, a cloud-factory, —these were the cloud-works, and the wind turned them off done from the cool, bare rocks."

—Henry David Thoreau

Update on Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 8:43PM by Paul Doiron

I spent three days with my nephews last week in Baxter State Park, and the highlight was climbing Mount Katahdin. It's hard to spend any time in the Maine woods without thinking of Thoreau: the original literary pathfinder. Katahdin is, indeed, a cloud works.