Monday, July 26, 2010

Larsson loses.

The (British) CWA International Dagger for best crime fiction translated into English -- created as the result of the CWA's decision to stop awarding their best novel award to foreigners (It was getting embarrassing... ) -- was just awarded to Johan Theorin's Darkest Room, not to the increasing ubiquitous Hornet's Nest.

The translator gets an award, too, which is cool.

Theorin's been on the radar for a while, ever since Camilla Lackberg included one of his books (Echoes from the Dead) on her list of the top 10 Swedish crime novels.

Larsson wins in the film adaptation of the first book in the Trilogy. Noomi Rapice is riveting. And all casting queens should note that, as evidenced by the interview with her that is one of the extras on the DVD, she resembles Salander about as much as I do. She actually looks rather like Catherine Deneuve....

7 comments:

David Chute said...

"Casting queens"?

Tulkinghorn said...

People who get all worked up about casting choices....

Casting nerds, obsessives, otaku, name your noun.

David Chute said...

Otaku is OK. Suggests the harmless fun of an activity that you are wasting more energy on than I am.

Tulkinghorn said...

A friend sends a link to the following explication of the use of the word "otaku" to refer to obsessive fans:

http://www.cjas.org/~leng/otaku-origin.htm.

Appears to be the formal second person form of address (like 'vous' in French) used by obsessive fans of one medium in conversations with obsessive fans of other media to denote respect...

"Queens" was, I realized, at least partially intended as a critical comment on the way that casting discussions can turn camp -- in the insistence on applying broad understandings of actors' personae to broad understandings of characters from other media.

"Otaku" works well, however, if you apply it to the nerd-boy obsession with, for example, who is going to play Professor X in the relaunch of the X_Men franchise.....

At any rate, not me.

David Chute said...

God forbid.

Tulkinghorn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tulkinghorn said...

The best part of the article about the award is that it's illustrated by a picture of Steig Larsson, not the actual, you know, winner.....

(You can amuse your friends by following the Swedish pronunciation of "Larsson", which I learned from the DVD: Larsh.on, accent on the first syllable. Go on, try it.)