Film: American remakes of foreign films rarely improve on the original version, but that is exactly the feat that director David Fincher has pulled off with his take on Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. There were reasons to worry about what the maker of Fight Club and Se7en would do to this dark, dense cold case mystery, but he has been extremely faithful to the source material, while upping the violence and sex quotients. Daniel Craig is aptly brooding at Mikael Blomkvist, the investigative journalist recently convicted of libel, and Rooney Mara should catapult into the upper tier of female performers for her transformative work in the title role. At area theaters now.
Music: While many folks will be listening to a lot of church music over the next couple days, there are other kinds of grooves out there aside from the ones Santa’s sleigh leaves in your roof (hope you’ve got jolly-old-elf visitation insurance). Tonight at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach, the area’s hottest new jazz spot welcomes multi-reed man Eric Allison to First Street for a gig with his quartet. Allison, who grew up in Sarasota and holds degrees from Northwestern and the University of Miami, has been one of the most respected area jazzmen for 30 years, not just for his way with a tenor saxophone but also his compositional skill. The concert starts at 8 p.m. at the Arts Garage; tickets are $25 and up. Call 450-6357 or visit www.jazzproject.eventbrite.com.
Dance: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was given to wide mood swings and deep pessimism about his work. He was very unhappy with the ballet score he wrote in 1891-92 for a the second half of a double bill that featured Iolanta, a new one-act opera of his. The Nutracker, he wrote, “is infinitely worse than ‘Sleeping Beauty,’” and not even Tsar Alexander III’s thumbs-up review quelled his doubts. But today, it remains without doubt the most popular ballet ever written, and for millions of people around the world the word “ballet” means this one work, and this one alone. It’s a Christmas story, which helped it, but the chief reason for its success on and offstage is its extraordinary abundance of unforgettable melody. Along with Charles Dickens, Pyotr Tchaikovsky is one of the fathers of our modern Christmas. You can still catch the show at the Kravis Center this afternoon if you hurry, mounted by the Moscow Classical Ballet. Call 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.