Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead

This was my first experience with the series, and I must say that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a very good movie complete with interesting characters, suspense and believable action.

Looking back, it’s hard to say exactly who the protagonist is. The impetus in the story lies within Mikael Blomkvist’s (Daniel Craig) journalistic troubles but when all is said and done, at least to the extent that this story tells, I found myself much more curious about the past and future of Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) who bears the dragon tattoo.

Now, it would be easy to say Salander is the protagonist but it is through Mikael that she is able to shine. He is no James Bond and finds himself in situations and interactions that many other people might experience – he sleeps with his boss, doesn’t quite understand his daughter and trips over his own feet.

And through this potential normalcy are the effects of Salander’s character, her immense social awkwardness, allowed to affect the audience. This combined with her technical intellect and the movie’s opening sequences are ways in which the movie seemingly tricks the audience into thinking it’s experiencing a story about the girl with the dragon tattoo when it is in fact experiencing an episode from the life of Lisbeth Salander, private investigator.

Well played.

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While “The Walking Dead” may rule basic cable, “Dexter” singlehandedly made Showtime a contender in the world of premium packages (and with good reason). The show’s first season was fresh, exciting and, quite often, darkly funny.  The premise of a serial killer who only murders killers wasn’t exactly new (the completely atrocious “Suspect Zero” did it in the worst way possible), however “Dexter” was unique in that the audience sympathized with and frankly, flat-out liked this violent psychopath.  Add in a talented supporting cast and some genuinely effective plot twists and you are left with the best new show of 2006.

“The Walking Dead” premiered in October of last year with one of the best pilot episodes ever filmed for basic cable.  It then proceeded to get absolutely, off-the-rails stupid with subplots involving gangsters protecting the elderly, a handless Michael Rooker and a psychic hillbilly.  The season finale was the pinnacle of dumb; beginning with a hilariously half-assed statement against using fossil fuels, it concluded with the main character’s escape of the self-destructing Center for Disease Control with a grenade stashed in some chick’s purse for the previous three episodes.

Needless to say, I didn’t have high hopes for the second season, but after I saw that the semi-lucid schizophrenics who wrote season one had been fired and that 7.4 million people had watched the premier, I decided to give “The Walking Dead” another go.

For all of you horror film junkies out there, here are two films you may not have seen that are perfect for getting you in the mood for the holiday season: 

Dog Soldiers

Low budget werewolf movies are almost unanimously awful (one need look no further than the “The Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch” for proof).  “Dog Soldiers” is perhaps the only exception to this rule, utilizing suspense and awesome, practical special effects to overcome its financial limitations.  What really makes the film stand out is the soldiers actually behave like trained professionals.  It seems like in every other horror movie, the military is comprised entirely of violent General Ripper-wannabes (“Day of the Dead”), rape-crazed sociopaths (“28 Days Later”) and grunts with IQs less than their shoe size (“Aliens”). 

Facebook has been making a lot of changes recently. That’s an understatement, right? Well prepare for an even bigger one; one that overhauls the current user experience. The new Facebook design blows all previous tweaks away. After reading tweets and articles about the upgrade, (It’s still unavailable to the public, but you can get it if you go here and follow the steps). I took the plunge… and wound up in the depths of my entire Facebook history.

Most notable is the transformation of the Wall to the Timeline, which, all changes in the site aside, has me imagining my friends’ texts to me to check my “timeline” for some Imgfave link they posted. I don’t know how I feel about the new term yet, but I’m sure it’ll catch on.