Tag Archives: Social Network

Et Tu, Zuckerberg?

I’m in the movie business and I don’t go to the movies much anymore.  It’s only partially because I live 70 frickin’ miles from a multiplex, but more because the movies have been really sucky of late.  Sometimes a “Michael Clayton” studio movie comes along.  You know, a movie with dialogue and some sort of social conscience like “Network”.  Yes, we fortunately have the Cohen brothers for creepy yet thrilling character portrayals and Pixar for joy.  But mostly we get a lot of hurling; large pieces of car flying at us or guys throwing up a lot.

So I’m happy to report that even though this is a movie about a bunch of narcissistic guys who invent a way to avoid social contact, “Social Network” about the origins of Facebook  had me laughing one minute and on the edge of my seat in another.  Yes, it was worth the 2 hours of driving, (although driving on Interstate 90 in Montana is sheer bliss with little traffic and kick ass scenery.  You know the whole eagles soaring deal above the Yellowstone River and against the backdrop of the buttes.) I could kick myself for not asking the young Montanans there what they thought of the excess of Harvard life.  I mean those Harvard dorms rooms are mighty swanky.  Their refrigerators are filled with Heineken.  Loads of it.   And the women’s underwear in the first party scene?   Oh boy, did I feel like I needed to go shopping.

The movie was a kind of me generation “Othello”  with the Othello character (nice Brazilian roommate Eduardo Severin played by Andrew Garfield)  becoming the supporting player and Iago (Mark Zuckerberg) becoming the dark maladjusted leading man.  The movie starts out with the Desdemona character Erica (played by Rooney Mara) being condescended to in a Boston bar by  Zuckerberg (played to dark perfection by Jesse Eisenberg) and finally dumping his sorry ass, thus ending that Othello comparison.  (The movie theater I was in had a sound problem and the first couple minutes we couldn’t hear the dialogue which made us a bit rebellious. So they started the whole movie over and I’m glad they did because the movie starts off with such a bang that to have missed it would have been a sin.)

Every performance is dead on.  Eisenberg provides the strange hypnotic but sad center.  While Garfield provides its only beating heart.  The Winklevoss twins played by Armie Hammer with body double Josh Pence are the epitome of privilege who are impossibly handsome, smart and , oh yes, are on the Olympic crew team.  You start off hating them, but end up loving every minute they are on the screen. And just when you thought you were having all the fun you could stand, in walks Lucifer minion Sean Parker, played with astonishing dash and complexity by Justin Timberlake.  A seducer of the first order, he lures Zuckerberg away from this best friend Eduardo into the Silicon Valley version of decadent paradise.

The direction of David Fincher couldn’t be better making even the scenes in the law office fraught with danger.  The Aaron Sorkin script is fast, almost dizzying, but still luscious and spare at the same time.  The first scenes are actually flashbacks.  We then are shown the present which is a law office where the depositions are being taken of the people suing Zuckerberg over whose idea Facebook was.  Who would have thought you could get that much drama in deposing people?  And who is telling the truth? I’m probably not the first person to remark that Sorkin used the “Rashomon” structure to brilliant effect.  Who is telling the whole truth?

The women’s roles are not so much.  This is a movie about young masters of the universe in the making and their whirling neon drug and alcohol filled world of whoopee. If we let them, they will continue to infect our innate sense of community with a crapolistic sociopathy that will be the end of us.    But somehow, thank goodness I saw another possibility.   I ended up hoping that  Erica was happily talking philosophy with her good friends at a Boston University hangout. She was not  sitting with a bunch of assholes basking in their perceived glory or alone collecting friends on her Facebook page. Who will be the winners in this battle for a real social network?  Tune in.

Smoke and Mirrors

Hot Potatoes

Our little town’s potato factory burned down, so I went to see “Social Network”.  I didn’t even know our town of 1500 people had a potato factory.  And don’t potatoes grow in the ground?

Our electricity went out around 9am, so my husband figured it must be because there was smoke billowing up over the hill.  He wished me luck as he threw his saddle into our neighbor RM’s truck as he had to go up country to Musselshell to help RM move his cows.  I wouldn’t be able to talk to him until he got back as the reception up there is nil.

Well, it’s the day that our recycling area is open at the dump, I mean transfer station, so I decided to bring in my bottles, papers, and plastic and see where the fire was.

As I approached the dump/recycling place, the fire was across a large field from it. This fire was huge and the smoke was an ugly black and gray; a  bulbous mass of something I didn’t want to know about.

“If the wind shifts and comes this way, I’m closing down,” said the dump guy.

My Towns Recycling Place and the Mountains

I decided to high tail out of there and go home.  I stopped in at the vet clinic which borders our ranch to see if they had any news of how long the electricity would be out.  I pulled in and they had their door open and I surmised it was for light.  Yes, indeedy, their power was out too.  The electric company said that “it would be awhile” because of the fire.

“What’s a while, do you think?” I queried.

“Oh, I bet it’s a while,” the vet said, drawing out the word “while”.

So the idea of sitting in a 60 degree house with no power was stupid.  And it was going to rain.  So I checked Fandango and found out that I could make a 1:40pm showing of “Social Network” in Bozeman.

Off I went on a drizzly (strange for Montana this time ,of year by the way) and drove to the nearest multiplex an hour away.  The place was packed and worried I wouldn’t get a seat.  Turned out that the Jackass movie had the long lines and although fairly full, I got a good seat for “Social Network”.

But there was no sound coming out of the previews up on the screen… Uh oh.

To Be Continued…