The best thing about studios celebrating their centennial anniversaries is that they tend to dig into their vaults and roll out restored versions of some of their greatest titles, and they don’t get much greater than Paramount’s 1974 neo-noir nugget, “Chinatown,” now on Blu-ray for the first time.

Jack Nicholson was born to play sharp-dressed, wisecracking private investigator Jake Gittes, an ex-cop with some bad memories of his old Chinatown beat in 1937 Los Angeles, who’s doing much better for himself these days tracking down unfaithful wives and husbands — until he uncovers a monumental scam engineered by the corrupt powers that be that will shape the future of L.A.

One could argue that this film was a career best for many of its collaborators, including director Roman Polanski, production designer Richard Sylbert and cinematographer John Alonso, who created a beautiful film noir in color, its atmospherics enhanced by Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting score with its melancholy trumpet solos. Then there was Faye Dunaway, the lovely but flawed woman of mystery and tragedy with whom Jake becomes involved, and director John Houston in full acting mode as the mighty, menacing and unrepentantly sinful Noah Cross, the manipulator of deceitful doings within the Department of Water and Power.

And then there is the taut and complex screenplay that won an Academy Award for Robert Towne, who always intended “Chinatown” to be the first of a trilogy based loosely on the history of the shady dealings that built the City of Angels.

The Blu-ray edition contains a three-part documentary on that history, “Water and Power: The Aqueduct — The Aftermath — The River and Beyond,” plus commentary by Towne and director David Fincher (“Zodiac”). There’s also an appreciation of the film from prominent filmmakers and documentaries on the filming of “Chinatown” and its legacy.

And there’s that dark and jolting ending in a part of the city where things never went well for Jake, when one of his colleagues sadly implores him with that famous last line to “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

Just try to forget it.

— Gene Triplett

BY GENE TRIPLETT

You can dress up a turkey in IMAX, 3-D and ear-shattering Surround Sound and throw it up on the biggest screen in town, but if there’s no great story, direction or acting to go with the visual feast, it’s still just a big fat turkey that gobbles loudly. Here are 10 that weren’t turkeys in 2011.

Ryan Gosling in "Drive."

1. “Drive” — Nicolas Winding Refn’s powerful film about a loner (Ryan Gosling) who works as a mechanic and part-time Hollywood stunt driver and moonlights as a wheelman for small-time heisters quickly reveals itself as a high-octane, 21st-century “Shane” in a souped-up Chevy, with all the action, suspense, heart, soul and heroism of that classic Western, as the driver comes to the aid of a threatened family. There’s a surprisingly tender love story in the midst of this bloody battle between good and evil, and Albert Brooks is unexpectedly chilling as the coldblooded boss of the bad guys. Unfortunately, Oscar will dismiss this one as just another ultraviolent popcorn seller.

2. “The Descendants” — George Clooney has never locked into the humanity of a character with more depth of sensitivity than

George Clooney, Shailene Woodley

 he displays here as a Hawaiian landowner who’s just trying to do the right thing by his money-hungry relatives, two troubled daughters and a wife who’s been cheating on him — a fact he discovers only after an accident has rendered her permanently comatose. Director/co-writer Alexander Payne couldn’t have wished for a better lead in this superb trouble-in-paradise comedy-drama that delivers laughter and pathos in generous equal measures.

Michael Shannon, "Take Shelter"

3. “Take Shelter” — The ever-intense Michael Shannon stirs an emotional tempest as a working-class family man tortured by visions both real and imagined that seem to portend an apocalyptic climatological disaster — or his impending loss of sanity. It’s through Shannon’s tour de force performance that writer-director Jeff Nichols fashions an extraordinarily effective allegory on a more widespread fear gripping the world at large, of nature and economics spinning irreversibly out of control. Shannon is memorably electric and moving as a man unsure of whether the real threat to his family is a brewing storm or his unraveling self.

4. “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” — Director Thomas Alfredson’s riveting screen version of John le Carre’s Cold War cloak-and-dagger classic is a classroom study in slow-burning

Gary Oldman

suspense, and Gary Oldman rewrites the book on perfectly-pitched stillness that speaks volumes as seasoned, bespectacled spymaster George Smiley, who’s pitted against deadly treachery and his own desperate loneliness as he plots to flush out a mole in the top echelon of British intelligence. No tricked-out Aston Martins or rocket packs here. Just gripping, gritty realism and a superb cast that also features John Hurt and Colin Firth in powerful turns.

Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes

5. “Martha Marcy May Marlene” — Elizabeth Olsen steps out of the shadows of her famous twin sisters with a mesmeric big-screen debut performance in the title role of a young woman who steals away from a cult “family” and attempts to re-enter the “normal” world. Writer-director Sean Durkin takes an auspicious first bow as well with this chilling psychological thriller, quietly and cunningly unfolding one disturbing secret after another, but the film’s lasting impression owes no small debt to John Hawkes’ dark presence as the deceptively warm, enormously sinister, predatory communal overlord adept at holding impressionable young people in his thrall.

6. “Another Earth” — The Earth has a newly discovered twin, looming larger than the moon overhead and promising all the mind-blowing

Brit Marling

possibilities of a parallel reality that may exist there. That’s the speculative element of director Mike Cahill’s exceedingly imaginative and moving first feature, which he co-wrote and co-produced with his fledgling star Brit Marling, whose screen presence and physical and emotional beauty are as mesmerizing as the film’s sky-gazing visual effects. Shot on a startlingly low budget, Marling and Cahill’s story of tragedy, self-confrontation, desperately sought-after redemption and forgiveness is a provocative and heartfelt examination of human fragility and healing love effectively designed to be at once haunting and hopeful.

7. “The Help” — Writer-director Tate Taylor’s awards-worthy adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s novel about black housemaids and the white

Viola Davis

women who employed them in the early 1960s South is brought to vivid life by an ensemble cast that could very well clean up during awards season. Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain give uniformly unforgettable performances in a story rife with poignancy, hope and big-hearted humor. Just try to stay dry-eyed. Betcha can’t.

Saoirse Ronan

8. “Hanna” — Once upon a time, a man (Eric Bana) raised a little girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) in the frozen woods of Finland to be a perfect killing machine. Then he turned her loose to fend for herself in an unfamiliar modern-day culture and a treacherous high-tech spy-world in this supercharged fairy tale from screenwriters Seth Lochhead and David Farr and director Joe Wright. Yet another cloak-and-dagger thriller, but the originality of this one is mind-blowing, as is Ronan’s hypnotic turn as a sweet-faced but lethal, unlikely action hero going up against the brilliant Cate Blanchett as the evil witch-agent of the West. Better watch out, my pretty.

Rooney Mara

9. “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” — Another great tough-girl tale, this one is based on the first novel in the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster trilogy about Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), punked-out, street-savvy, street-savage survivor of childhood abuse who teams with blackballed journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to solve the ugly mystery behind decades-old serial killings. Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist have earned raves in these roles in the Swedish film versions of the series, but fierce and brooding Mara and un-Bond-ishly seedy and world-weary Craig acquit themselves handily in a harsh, noire-ishly brooding atmosphere expertly crafted by director David Fincher.

10. “War Horse” — Director Steven Spielberg shamelessly plays audience heartstrings like a Playskool piano, and those of us who are suckers for

Jeremy Irvine, "War Horse."

tear-tugging boy-and-his-horse tales (or boy-and-his-dog, as the case may be) happily dance to his predictable tune based on British author Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book about a British farm boy (Jeremy Irvine) who is separated from his beloved horse, Joey, when the animal is drafted into World War I combat duty and suffers the cruelties and tragedies of war. Add the vivid sweep and color of Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography and a rousing John Williams score, and this one comes in a good old-fashioned winner reminiscent of such family classics as “The Story of Seabiscuit,” “National Velvet” and “Lassie Come Home.”

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Director David Fincher casually admits it was a daunting job – casting his American remake of the internationally popular Stieg Larsson mystery “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

David Fincher

After all, millions of avid readers had consumed Larsson’s gritty, pulpy detective novel – and the two follow-ups, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” And millions of fans had likely formed vivid images in their minds of the books’ scarred and world-weary protagonists – the disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist, a dogged investigator, crusading idealist and unrepentant womanizer; and the anti-social computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, a pierced, punk genius with lots of abusive skeletons rattling around in her psychic closet.

And, to top it off, all three books had already been adapted to the screen in successful Swedish-language versions that featured memorable performances by Scandinavian actors Michael Nyqvist as the handsomely scruffy scribe Blomkvist and the startlingly convincing Noomi Rapace as the dangerously brilliant Salander.

So, during press interviews hosted by Columbia Pictures at Soho’s boutique Crosby Street Hotel, Fincher patiently fielded questions about his method of finding the right actors to inhabit those coveted, high-profile roles and his take on Larsson’s hugely popular novels.

“The mystery of these books wasn’t that interesting to me,” said the notoriously frank director of “Se7en,” “Fight Club” and “Zodiac.” “You know, Nazis and serial killers and the evil that people do in their basements with power tools wasn’t that unique. The thing that was first and foremost to me was this partnership (between Mikael and Lisbeth). I hadn’t seen these two people working together. So I liked the thriller, I liked the vessel of that, but I was more interested in the people front and center.

“Obviously, there are many parallels to ‘Chinatown’ in this story of the Vanger clan and their secrets,” Fincher continued. “But I don’t think Larsson invented anything new except Blomkvist and Salander, this odd pairing, that’s the invention.”

So, much attention and speculation attached itself to the long process of casting Daniel Craig, best known for his two outings at the head of the “James Bond” franchise and last summer’s sci-fi hit “Cowboys & Aliens,” as Blomkvist, and smart actress Rooney Mara, the daughter of pro football royalty (namesake kin to founders of the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants franchises) and standout in a small role in “The Social Network,” as the prickly Salander.

“The casting process began with Daniel,” Fincher said, “and if you build your universe, it’s like a good basketball team, you start with the anchor. And I knew him to be self-effacing and witty, and I knew that I needed that for Mikael. I wanted a very masculine center to the film. The androgynous side of the movie would be carried by Rooney, that was her job. So I knew that I needed a sort of Robert Mitchum center. And so when we had Daniel that was a fait accompli.

“And because there is this sort of magnetic element – (Mikael and Lisbeth) sort of push against each other – I started to look for the things I wanted to see in Lisbeth, and I didn’t see them in anyone we’d been looking at,” Fincher said. “And Rooney was right under our noses, in that I’d already spent four or five days with her on ‘Social Network.’

“But again, when you cast someone you look for an inherent quality that, you know, you’re going to be shooting 14-hour days, you’re going to be tired, you’re not necessarily going to be able to conjure an armor or a façade every single moment,” the director said. “I liken it to a quality that you can’t beat out of them with a tire iron. You’re looking for an innate quality that they have. Rooney was somebody that we brought back time and time again. Not because we didn’t see what we were looking for initially.

“The problems that she was solving for me in the beginning of ‘Social Network’ were that she was intensely feminine, very mature, she was warm, she was verbal, she was trying to build a bridge to Jesse (Eisenberg) desperately in that five and a half minutes she was on screen,” he said. “And none of those qualities applied to Lisbeth. In fact, they were the antithesis.

“So every time she would come in we would work together, and I’d say, ‘OK, here’s a new hurdle and you have to jump this.’ And after two and a half months, the thing that seemed to be most Lisbethian was that she was just not giving up. She was indomitable,” Fincher said. “There were times in auditioning when I was personally embarrassed to say, ‘I need you to come back in one more time,’ and there was never a moment when she balked, although I would have. She always said, ‘OK. What do you need from me this time; what’s the new wrinkle?’ And I would give it to her, and she would come in and do that. And at the end of it, when we put her on a plane to Stockholm by herself to learn how to ride a motorcycle and find an apartment we knew we had the right person.”

In addition to the casting glare, Fincher said the huge popularity of the novels created lots of roiling undercurrents of political speculation about the movie.

“There’s a lot of mythology that comes with Stieg Larsson because of his untimely demise,” Fincher said. “I was certainly aware of his magazine and his political reporting, and I read a lot of stuff in The New York Times and other magazines about the Stieg Larsson story. But I don’t think that the actual political leanings of the material are why the book was optioned or the reason that everybody waiting for a plane at La Guardia is reading this book. That has little to do with everyone’s fear of the ultra-right in Scandinavia.

“My interest was it had a ballistic envelope, it had an aerodynamics to it,” he said. “Obviously 60 million people thought it was a ripping yarn. I thought it was a ripping yarn, but the thing that interested me most was these two people.”

So, Fincher is asked, will he be behind the camera for the sequels?

“Classically, movie studios don’t make deals with directors for sequels, even if there’s a hope that there’s going to be three, because they want to make sure that you behave,” he said.
But if he did agree to do two more films in the series, he speculated that a wise filmmaker would shoot them back-to-back in one big production push.

“The other two books are very much one story,” he said, “and it doesn’t seem prudent to me to go to Sweden for a year, come back for a year, put out the second one, go to Sweden for a year, come back …

“Please, don’t,” Mara piped in from the sidelines.

“I don’t think Rooney wants to be doing this four years from now,” Fincher said with a wry laugh. “So, I think that would be crazy, especially given that it’s a story that’s kind of bifurcated in the middle.”

The stark, chilly 2009 Swedish screen adaptation of the late Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and its two follow-up films utterly belonged to Noomi Rapace, a spiky, darkly seductive actress who seemed to inhabit the role of punk, pieced computer hacker Lisbeth Salander with eerie ferocity.

Rooney Mara

So the questions that persistently hovered over director David Fincher’s American remake of the first in Larsson’s blockbuster Millennium Trilogy of blunt, pulpy crime novels were: who will play Salander and how will anyone ever match up to Rapace’s fearsome intensity?

Well, the answers to those questions are: 1) Rooney Mara, the tart co-ed who practically stole Fincher’s “The Social Network” in a brief, brilliant and pithy opening-scene performance, and 2) Mara more than matches Rapace, piercing for piercing and tat for tat and delivers a bold, brash and brave acting turn that makes this slick new adaptation of “Dragon Tattoo” all her own.

Since Larsson fans (of both the internationally best-selling novels and fine Swedish-language movies) are legion, it hardly merits detailed synopsis to describe Fincher’s movie. The artful, perfectionist director of such stunning police procedurals as “Se7en” and “Zodiac” and his canny scenarist Steven Zaillian (“Moneyball,” “Schindler’s List”) are fully on their game with this interpretation that trims away loads of exposition and ancillary characters yet stays true to the author’s dense plot and his duo of mismatched, world-weary crime solvers.

While they jigger the ending slightly and juice the thing with stylish visuals that make director Niels Arden Oplev’s Swedish version seem staid by comparison, Fincher and company smartly keep the focus on hyper-intelligent Goth Salander and disgraced crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig in a nice, stubble-faced contrast to his suave 007 persona). Indeed, they are the characters that propel Larsson’s three stories so compellingly – his Nordic, anti-Nick and Nora Charles, if you will.

Wisely, Fincher doesn’t try to Americanize the story and setting. It’s still set in the well-scrubbed Stockholm metropolis and the craggy, frigid climes of Hedeby Island, where the wealthy Vanger clan – a creepy nest of drunkards, hermits, greedheads, abusive parents, closet Nazis and anti-Semites – has its ancestral estate.

The plodding, old-school Blomkvist, with jazzy computer aid from Salander, takes on the case proffered by elderly tycoon Henrik Vanger (smooth Christopher Plummer) to look into the disappearance, and presumed murder, of his beloved teenage niece at a family gathering 40 years earlier.

The rest is a complex, perverse tangle of serial murder, S&M depravity, stark nudity, cold-blooded brutality, rape and mutilation, painstakingly unraveled by two unlikely investigators. But it’s their startlingly unconventional relationship (and love affair) that provides the passionate, coursing pulse for Larsson’s coldly complex tales.

As usual, Fincher surrounds his stars with stellar support, from the suavely patriarchal Plummer to the smarmily convivial Stellan Skarsgard as Vanger scion Martin, and from efficient Robin Wright as Blomkvist’s crisp editor-lover Erika to the porcine Yorick van Wageningen as Salander’s slimy, manipulative legal guardian.

Undoubtedly, Fincher’s film will have its detractors and its champions, its debates between purists and partisans. But, whatever the consensus of readers and moviegoers, it’s a measure of Larsson’s storytelling prowess that two such fine films have been rendered from the dire, pulpy doings of his first novel.

Note: Fincher and co-stars Craig and Mara said last week in interviews that they have not been contracted to participate in remakes of the other books in the trilogy – “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” But all three said they would be ready and willing if called.

- Dennis King

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”

R
2:38
3 1/2 stars
Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard, Christopher Plummer
(Brutal violent content including rape and torture, strong sexuality, graphic nudity and language)

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Director David Fincher is notorious among actors as a demanding, hard-driving perfectionist.

Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig

For actors who’ve worked with him on such films as “Fight Club,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Social Network” and the much-anticipated American remake of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” Fincher is known for shooting numerous (some say endless) takes of a single scene in search of just the right nuance of performance and production.

During press interviews for “Dragon Tattoo,” Fincher and cast members joked about his well-deserved reputation as a stylish perfectionist and offered some insights into the director’s demanding methods.

“I like people who like to work the way I like to work,” Fincher said of his casting decisions. “And there are people who share an unspoken understanding and way of communicating that’s easy. Sometimes people freak out when you shoot 40 takes or something, and they are sort of looking at you like, ‘what did I do wrong?’

“No it’s not wrong; we’re going to try something different,” he said he explains. “I like certain people’s energies, and you think this person could work well in this situation. Hopefully, you’re not going to the well for the same thing every time.”

Stellan Skarsgard, who plays the wealthy Vanger family scion in “Dragon Tattoo,” told of his own experience with Fincher’s work ethic.

“For instance, I have a five-minute monologue, which is very hard to get right, and we rehearsed it and we talked it over with (screenwriter) Steve Zaillian and it was a work in progress,” Skarsgard said. “Working with David you get a lot of chances to get it right. You get about 40 takes.

“And he does push you,” Skarsgard continued. “It’s not that he says, ‘I want the scene to be played this way’ and tells you how to do it. But after a couple of takes he pushes you one way, and then he pushes you in another way and then you push yourself in a third way and hopefully you come up with a lot of different colors in the same scene, which gives the director the options to calibrate your performance afterwards. That’s my hope that the director can calibrate my performance.”

“You don’t really think about it after a while,” said Rooney Mara who has the demanding role of Lisbeth Salander. “It’s all very exaggerated and dramatized. I think our average take count was much less than that.”

“Thirty-five,” her co-star Daniel Craig (Mikael Blomkvist) mock whispered. “You don’t count. You really don’t count.”

“Unless it’s an insert shot, you really don’t think about it,” Mara said. “Then that can be quite frustrating.”

But, the actors are asked, does each successive take get better or worse?

“Sometimes you get worse and worse,” Craig said.

“Usually you get worse in the middle and then better,” said Mara.

“When someone throws a lot a money at you to do this, you’re there to get it right,” Craig said. “Things get frustrating in a work day, but there are lots of other things to get frustrated about, and then lots of sort of triumphs at the end of the day.”

The veteran Christopher Plummer, who plays wealthy industrialist Henrik Vanger, said he understands and applauds Fincher’s demanding regimen.

“It’s funny that great directors – there are very few of them – know how to cast right,” Plummer said. “(David) casts right so that half his job is done. He obviously trusts his cast, otherwise why did he hire them? And because the job is half done the atmosphere on the set is so easy and so relaxed and so free that he lets you improvise whatever you want and then he just puts the cream on top. He just says, ‘that’s fine but let’s try it this way.’

“And the takes, the endless takes, are not really endless in the sense that he knows exactly what he wants and changes each take so it’s absolutely different,” Plummer said. “Some directors do take after take because they simply don’t know what they want. In his case his always he has the camera totally ready so you don’t hang about waiting, which is half the misery of doing many takes. He’s also great fun to work with because he has an enormous sense of humor. So he can be teased as well as us.”

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“The Taqwacores”

Muslim ideology and punk rock form an uneasy alliance in “The Taqwacores,” an edgy, stereotype-busting feature film due out on DVD Tuesday.

The 2010 film from writer-director Eyad Zahra has drawn comparisons to Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” and David Fincher’s “Fight Club” for its emotional intimacy, dark world view and mordant humor.

The story, based on a 2004 cult novel by Michael Muhammad Knight (who also co-wrote the screenplay), focuses on Yusef (Bobby Naderi), a first-generation Pakistani-American engineering student who moves off-campus with a group of Muslim punks in Buffalo, N.Y. His new “un-orthodox” roomies share Yusef’s Muslim faith, albeit in radically unconventional ways. Some drink or take drugs. Others argue passionately over the Koran and rip pages from the book when they disagree with doctrine.

And all his roommates are devoted to Taqwacore, a hardcore Muslim punk rock scene whose free-thinking ethos and spirit of communion inform their vision of an Islamic religion that embraces misfits.

As the students’ living room serves as a mosque by day and a punk mosh pit by night, Yusef begins to question his own faith and ideologies and to ponder the troubling complexities of being young and Muslim in modern-day America.

The idea of a Muslim punk scene originated as pure fantasy in Knight’s novel, but since the book’s debut an actual Taqwacore scene has emerged in Muslim communities across the country. In one rowdy, rock-infused sequence of the film, several of those Knight-inspired bands actually make cameo appearances.

“The Taqwacores” is not rated and runs 83 minutes. It is being released by Strand Releasing.

- Dennis King

BY GENE TRIPLETT

Fact is giving fiction a run for its money in this year’s Oscar race, with four of the 10 Best Picture nominees based on true stories and real people.
Biopics of a pair of boxing brothers and a canyoneering survivor were good box office bets on critics’ tip sheets in 2010, but true tales of an Internet innovator and a stammering king are the odds-on favorites in this year’s run for Academy gold.
Here’s how this Oklahoma critic is calling the winners during Sunday night’s moments of truth at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.

Best picture

Gene says: A few weeks ago, one didn’t need a computer to figure the odds favored “The Social Network,” the superbly crafted movie screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher made out of Ben Mezrich’s bestselling book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” about the creation of the most powerful electronic narcotic to sweep the world since the advent of the Internet itself. Just like everyone else, most Academy voters are probably Facebook junkies by now, and the story of the gifted geek who invented it is too timely–and the film too well-acted, well-written and utterly intriguing–to be ignored.
You would think.
But it now looks like voters could be swayed by Tom Hooper‘s “The King’s Speech,” the true story of a monarch who struggled against an impossible obstacle to communicate with his subjects on an inspiring, human level. Historically, heart-rending period pieces with British accents have been Oscar magnets.
Still, I’m going to stick with my sucker’s bet …
Should win: “The King’s Speech”
Will win: “The Social Network”

Best actor

Gene says: Colin Firth will have some more public speaking to do Sunday night when he accepts this award for his keen ability to portray the male versions of vulnerable, frightened and courageous all at once, while affecting a startlingly realistic speech impediment that is heartbreaking to witness in “The King’s Speech.” Few of his contemporaries could handle as dodgy a role as this with such perfection. His deserving “A Single Man” performance lost out to Jeff Bridges’ “Crazy Heart” last year, and while I loved the way Bridges outgunned John Wayne with some real acting in the Coen brothers’ “True Grit” remake, my allegiance this year is to Firth’s stuttering King George VI.

Best actress

Gene says: In “The Kids Are All Right,” Annette Bening effortlessly claimed hearts with her smart, funny and deeply sensitive portrayal of a lesbian mom who fears the alienation of her family’s affections when her children seek out their sperm donor father and attempt to bring him into the fold. Her performance was controlled, convincing and enormously engaging, deftly avoiding the emotional showboating this kind of role can tempt in lesser talents. But “Black Swan” star Natalie Portman has youth and popularity going for her and she never misstepped in the dramatically rich role of a prima ballerina pushed to mental breakdown. Still, Bening’s been nominated three times before, so maybe her times has come.

Should win: Annette Bening
Will win: Natalie Portman

Best supporting actor

Gene says: Geoffrey Rush’s sly, low-key take on the oddball Australian speech therapist who comes to the aid of a stammering monarch in “The King’s Speech” was easily one of the most interesting characterizations of the past year, as was John Hawkes’ unsettlingly dark backwoods criminal in “Winter’s Bone.” But Christian Bale was part of the stunning one-two punch of “The Fighter” as the ex-con, failed-boxer-turned-crackhead who trains his half-brother for the welterweight title. His convincingly wired, wild-eyed performance had an unforgettable clout that will no doubt win him the decision.

Should win: Geoffrey Rush
Will win: Christian Bale

Best supporting actress

Gene says: Former Tulsa resident Melissa Leo was the other half of “The Fighter’s” double whammy as the domineering matriarch of a blue collar Lowell, Mass., family and the abrasive manager of her two boxing sons. She nailed the part perfectly, right down the Massachusetts accent. The only other contender who comes close is 14-year-old newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as the spitfire farm girl out for justice in the Coen brothers’ version of “True Grit,” although she should have been nominated as a leading actress in that role.

Should and will win: Melissa Leo

Best director

Gene says: It stands to reason that the person who helmed the Best Picture should win the Best Director prize, but reason seems to have little to do with the thought processes of the average Academy voter. In a perfect world, David Fincher (“Fight Club,” “Seven,” “Zodiak,” “Benjamin Button”) should take the statuette for the stylish visuals, taut pacing and superlative performances found in “The Social Network.” Hooper (“The Damned United”) could pull an upset, however, for his majestic craftsmanship in “The King’s Speech,” or Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler”) could dance away with the trophy for his adventurous flair in “Black Swan.”

Should and will win: David Fincher

A few extra bets:

Best original screenplay

Christopher Nolan, “Inception”

Best adapted screenplay

Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network”

Best animated feature

“Toy Story 3”

Best documentary feature

“Exit through the Gift Shop”

BY DENNIS KING

Each year, we begin our obligatory pre-Oscar guessing game with the same disclaimer:

In our 20-plus years of babbling about movies in print, we confess to a pretty paltry track record at predicting Oscar winners.

The average popcorn Joe predicting in the average Oscar office pool probably has as much success at picking winners as me. In fact, we have one acquaintance that once won his office pool with 100 percent correct guesses, even though he hadn’t seen a single film that was nominated. The expertise of complete ignorance!

Guessing Oscar winners is not a function of movie knowledge, keen insight, analytical prowess or anything like that. And idiosyncratic tastes in movies often lead to quirky predictions when it comes Oscar time (I’d much rather cast my lot with the low-budget underdog than the fabulous front-runner). That, and the fact that reading the tea leaves on how 5,700 or so official Oscar voters will vote (they are indeed an insular bunch) is sheer folly.

My favorite axiom on Oscar expertise is drawn from that brilliant screenwriter and two-time Oscar-winner William Goldman (“All the President’s Men,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”), who famously wrote, “In Hollywood, nobody knows anything.” And he should know.

So, that said, here’s what I know (guess!) about the 83rd Academy Awards to be presented Sunday evening in an overstuffed ceremony airing on ABC from Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.

Best actress in a supporting role: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter.” The Academy’s actors’ branch is the largest and most politically fragmented voting body, and it’s often in supporting categories that upsets and surprises occur. But Leo wowed everyone with her tough presence as the controlling ring mother in this tough movie. So barring an upset by Helena Bonham Carter due to a “King’s Speech” landslide or a sneak-in by the precocious “True Grit” youngster Hailee Steinfield the statuette should go to the deserving veteran Leo.

Best actor in a supporting role: Christian Bale, “The Fighter.” The usually prickly Bale has been extra polite and cooperative during awards season and this campaign ploy might just work in his favor. Again, if Geoffrey Rush doesn’t sweep in on the inspirational wings of “The King’s Speech,” the lean and mean Bale should ride his boxing brother role to Oscar gold.

Best actress in a leading role: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan.” Ever since she was a child actor, Portman has been a Hollywood prodigy. And this mad, brilliantly brittle and obsessively precise performance felt like her step into grande dame status. Having swept most of the important pre-Oscar awards, she should be well on her way to a pas de duex with Oscar.

Best actor in a leading role: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech.” It seems like another win that’s been preordained by the run-up guild awards and pre-Oscar campaigning. Besides, Firth is one of those actors who could have, should have, won this thing before. So, one hopes, he will have an eloquent winner’s speech ready to deliver on Oscar night.

Best director: David Fincher, “The Social Network.” We’re going out on a limb here, as all indicators – previous guild awards – point to a win for Tom Hooper and his polished, old-fashioned work on “The King’s Speech.” But we’re guessing that voters might be torn between the two front-runners and split the best director and best picture awards (it’s happened several times). Despite Hooper’s win from the Directors Guild, we think the Academy’s entire voting body might opt for Fincher’s more urgent and timely approach and give him the little golden guy.

Best picture: “The King’s Speech” For the second year, after all the hoopla about expanding the best picture category to 10 nominees, in the final run it seems to have narrowed down to a two-picture race between “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network.” Masterpiece Theater decorum versus techno-geek irreverence. Old-world culture versus of-the-moment pop culture. Royals versus nerds. Establishment versus anti-establishment. Anglophilia versus Yankee ingenuity. It makes for an easy-to-sell, yin-yang face-off.

While we personally pull for “The Social Network,” which possesses such a bold and startling sense of currency, we fear that the Weinstein Oscar campaign machinery has done its work and steamrolled its way to win. If so, it’s another victory for safe uplift over the edgy and irreverent. But, then, long live “The King’s Speech.”

Fans of the Swedish art-house pulp that has defined author Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy on screen will have come to identify its ferocious, brainiac heroine Lisbeth Salander as a girl of swift, impetuous and violent action.

But in “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” the final, drawn out but ultimately satisfying film in the trio, the dynamic Salander spends much of her time laid up in a hospital bed, having been shot three times at the conclusion of the last film, and later confined to a jail cell awaiting a court date that will seal her fate.

Noomi Rapace

After undergoing ghastly ordeals (torture, rape, gunshot wounds, a bullet in the brain) and facing off against seemingly endless onslaughts of nefarious villains (Nazis, pedophiles, pimps, conniving psychiatrists, assassins, a Frankenstein half-brother), in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” the surly, tattooed Salander – again portrayed with punk brilliance by Noomi Rapace in fierce mohawk – might seem slightly the worse for wear.

But for the third go-around, she proves to be just as resourceful, determined and anti-social as ever, even though the final film feels short on action and far more talky than the first two.

“Hornet’s Nest” (in Swedish with subtitles) takes up the story just minutes after the conclusion of the second film. Salander has been airlifted to a hospital in critical condition from gunshot wounds in a confrontation with her malevolent father (Georgi Staykov). But even as she’s under tight guard in a hospital ward, the “hornet’s nest” she’s stirred up in very high levels of the Swedish intelligence service is buzzing angrily.

As Salander becomes target for assassination by the Section, a top-secret government cabal, her champion, old-school crusading journalist Mikail Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist, reliably world weary), is on her case. He’s working on an expose that he hopes will clear Salander’s name and reveal a wide-spread conspiracy of rogue spies.

And for his efforts, Blomkvist – along with his editor and lover (Lena Endre) – also becomes potential prey for a swarm of machine-gun-toting assassins.

Director Daniel Alfredson (helmer of the second film) and screenwriter Ulf Rydberg do a sharp job of distilling a clear narrative through-line from the multiple plots of the novel while managing to create a propulsive, complex and satisfying thriller (even with its heroine confined throughout).

Rapace’s prickly Salander is again the film’s alpha character, and watching her slowly, painstakingly rise from the ashes to reclaim her leather-clad, bad-to-the-bone computer hacker persona is one of the movie’s greatest satisfactions. And Nyqvist deftly invests Blomkvist with a dogged determination and earthy wisdom that lends the action an appealingly tattered nobility.

Villains and allies are smartly etched – including German arch-fiend Niederman (Mikael Spreitz), oily hospital shrink Teleborian (Anders Ahlbom Rosendahl), and Blomkvist’s lawyer sister Annika (Annika Hallin).

Readers of the late author Larsson’s Nordic noir will ultimately go away satisfied by the big screen incarnations of the three novels, with “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” ably tying up loose ends, rounding out character arcs and lining up final confrontations and conclusions with fitting intensity and cool skill.

And for those reluctant to say goodbye to Salander and Blomkvist and their chilly world of Swedish paranoia, there’s director David Fincher’s English-language adaptations to look forward to and rumors of a fourth Millennium book left behind by Larsson to inspire hope.

- Dennis King

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”

R
2:28
3 stars
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Annika Hallin, Georgi Staykov
(Strong violence, some sexual material, brief language)

Justin Timberlake, right, and Jesse Eisenberg

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Don’t mention to Justin Timberlake any buzz about him possibly landing an Academy Award nomination for his dynamic performance as Napster founder Sean Parker in “The Social Network.”

It might jinx him.

Clearly, the former boy-band member turned pop-music star turned actor is, if not superstitious, uncomfortable in tweaking the Oscar gods about his odds of being so honored for his first big, serious, studio acting gig.

When the O-word was mentioned during the press conference following “The Social Network” premiere at the New York Film Festival, Timberlake looked visibly taken aback.

“Why did you say that?” he said, shaking his head, “Why did you just say that?”

After an uncomfortable pause, he switched subjects and talked about his casting in the most substantial acting role yet.

“I briefly bumped into the real Sean Parker here in New York, and we spoke for all of two minutes. Ironically, I met him before I was cast in the role,” Timberlake said. “There was about a three week period were I was going through auditions, but it had been announced on the Internet that I was going to play the role. So I went through that period thinking, ‘damnit, I’d better get this role.’ But we met briefly and he seemed like a nice guy, and he mentioned that he had read the script and he thought I was going to do the part before I was actually cast, so that was awkward.”

With his focus set firmly on acting, Timberlake said making the switch from creating stadium concert shows to making movies is not that much of a stretch.

“Obviously, I’ve spent a lot of time on stage, and the rehearsal process for getting ready for a tour, that alone is probably like writing a screenplay and putting together the shot sheets,” he said. “Putting together a stage production probably took, on my last tour, about 10 months from concept to actually doing the first show. So it’s very similar to theater, and you have a very long, drawn-out, methodical rehearsal process. That’s because you only get one take. For instance, you step up on stage and you only get one pass at it.”

So he said in his early conversations with notoriously meticulous David Fincher, he was eager to learn as well as to let the director know he was a team player.

“I’ll give you an example of a conversation I had with David Fincher about making this film and his process,” Timberlake said. “When I first came in he said, ‘look, I know you probably like to get your performance all together because of your instinctive nature coming from the stage, and I’ll try to be cognizant of you growing tired of as many takes as I like to do.’

“And I stopped him right there and said – I used a crappy sports analogy from football – that I wasn’t going to be a whiny wide receiver. That I came into the movie completely knowing my role and excited about it and that I thought of myself more as a linebacker and if he wanted me to make a hit – wow, it’s equally as crappy in front of all of you – that I would do it 98, 99 times.

“I find the whole process (of filmmaking) fulfilling because it’s more collaborative,” he said. “You know, everything I put together on stage I’m sort of the buck and everything stops with me. But to get to toss the ball around – yeah, another sports analogy – with such great actors, it’s a completely different, fulfilling, collaborative experience. And to have the freedom to go in and mess it up for 97 takes and then when you get to the 98th and it’s good you move on. I think we just all wanted to please David. So if we did that we were all satisfied with our performances.”

Timberlake admitted that he’s not a big Facebook fan, but he’s not without his own lengthy theories on why the site is such a worldwide phenomenon.

“There’s a line where Jesse Eisenberg says (Facebook) is like being in a final club (an exclusive Harvard club) and you’re the president. It’s a party and you’re throwing it,” he said. “That’s kind of the truth behind everyone’s Facebook page, creating your own profile and it’s your world. I would assume that’s sort of what it is. I think that what makes the film so intriguing in the bigger picture of things, if you kind of zoom out, is that social networking in general is still a hypothesis.

“I find that people are still asking the question, and they ask it more and more,” he said. “I don’t know why they expect an answer because, like I said, I’m ridiculously stupid when it comes to computers and social networking, but the hypothesis is: is it a good thing or a bad thing? I think there’s a medium that’s always being pushed, to show us how human we are, how kind we are, how cruel we are.

“The immediacy and instant gratification of having all your photos and profile out there for the world, that’s probably what makes something like Facebook so great to a lot of people,” Timberlake concluded. “That’s also the great intrigue – if it’s going to create great things in the world or if we’re just going to waste away with it.”