latest movies articles 2011

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, a user known as dobvlvstiuwir added a video (his or her first) to their YouTube page.  It was what looked like a shaky, illegally recorded copy of the trailer for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  The film is David Fincher’s hotly anticipated follow up to his Oscar winning The Social Network.  Starring Daniel Craig, Robin Wright, Stellan Skarsgard and Rooney Mara as hacker Lisbeth Salander, Dragon Tattoo is the American adaptation of both Stieg Larsson’s novel and the Swedish film of the same name.  The trailer includes moody shots from the film, cut together with Fincher’s signature style, under a remake of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song by Trent Reznor (who won the Best Original Score Oscar this year) and Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

While the video of the trailer certainly has the look of a something that was recorded on a cell phone camera, several clues hint that this wasn’t really illegally taped at all, but was released by the film’s production company, Sony.  First, this is a David Fincher film, and he is known for his unusual ad campaigns (remember Fight Club?).  Second, the storyline of the film, with its focus on a super intelligent computer hacker, lends itself well to this kind of viral marketing.  Third, it sounds great, and the quality is much better than most cell phone or camcorder mics.  Lastly, and most tellingly, the trailer was put up 4 days ago, and it’s still there.  If it had really been illegally put up, don’t you think Sony would have gotten their squadron of lawyers over to YouTube’s offices immediately?  (Sony denies that they leaked the video, and say that it was probably taped at a showing of The Hangover Part 2; however, you’ll notice that there is no audience noise on the video, so that seems highly unlikely.)