How long has it been? Months and months and months I know, I am awful. Then again I am sure you all lived and moved on just fine without my shoddy blog flooding your newsfeed every other second, forcing you to click and read with the ever present threat that if you don't you would be spammed forever by my incessant bullshit reviews. To make up for my long absence I have half heartedly changed the look of the blog, to make it seem like a comeback or something....I don't know. Anyway, lots can happen in such a short amount of time, such as you ask......me getting engaged for one. I know, who would want me? Thats what I thought, but I promise you, being exceedingly happy in general does not prevent One from being a good film blogger, I don't think so anyway; I mean look how depressed I was when I wrote the last two and how bad they were, surely this should be the opposite.
I imagine anybody who got here did so through Facebook, I sure as hell didn't email this shit to you and I doubt you check in on my blogs barren progress to pass the time, but thats good, because if you have Facebook you have probably heard of The Social Network, the film of Facebook if you will. I loved this idea when I first heard it was in production, as it could either be a total steaming pile of dwarf vomit, or be groundbreaking. When you consider that it was to be directed by David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Alien 3) and the writing and screenplay was composed by the amazing Aaron Sorkin (created the amazing West Wing, the underrated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and the not so funny but still ok-ish Sports Night series) the latter was the more probable outcome, despite Fincher also directed the fucking atrocity that was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we are willing to forgive him this once.
But know David, better men have died for less
The Social Network shows us how a young nerd in a Harvard dorm room became the worlds youngest billionaire, through an almost flashback account during the numerous lawsuits filed against him after he straight up boned many of his peers and laughed all the way to the bank with his newly created papers (papers meaning money of course). And it is a lot of papers, the money in such a social network is huuuuuge, I mean, we all have a Facebook account, its just what you do when you go to university or when you are a pedophile, how else is such a busy man meant to keep in touch with his many many friends all across the country and world, and also stalk people he has met and people he works with, even family members for embarrassing photos and super secret banter ammo.
"Um.......Dad?.......Wha?!....."
The story goes that Mark Zukerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) was a quiet but very bright student at prestigious Harvard University, recently dumped and a little intoxicated, he creates a website where people from his uni can rate the pictures of two girls to decide who is hotter, all these pictures being hacked from the universities database face book. He creates this website, whilst simultaneously blogging, and being drunk, in one night and it gets 22,000 hits in 2 hours........at 4am in the morning. Now I am no computer nerd, but even I know thats pretty fucking impressive; in real manly man terms I would say that is on par with nailing 10 slamming hotties in one night, whilst simultaneously downing a bottle of absinthe, smashing a PERFECT score out to Through the Fire and Flames on Guitar Hero and kicking a cat in the head with your precision kung fu ninja feet whilst it zips by on the home-made car battery powered merry-go-round you created with your BARE FUCKING HANDS! Then making sure 22,000 people knew about it in a two hour window afterwards. So yeah, the kid had talent. This leads to Zukerberg being unceremoniously sentenced to 6 months academic probation and his reputation on campus being left in tatters.
All the drama begins when two big jock guys, from an exclusive 'Final Club', called the Winklevoss twins offer him a chance to get some pride and image back, whilst also offering the chance to help in a business project called 'The Harvard Connection" which was planned to be some douchey website based on the assumption that all girls want to nail a nerd who studies at Harvard.
Unfortunately nobody told them that you can only have sex with a personality for so long
Essentially Zukerberg steals a part of this idea and creates The Facebook, behind their back and whilst stringing them along, naturally. This leads to one of the lawsuits, the other stemming from Zukerberg's best friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) but I wont ruin how that one comes about as it is kind of the driving point in the movie. Needless to say, we are treated to the ride as Zukerberg goes from lonely loser to internet .com heroface.
Mark Zukerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who I always thought of as the rich mans Michael Cera, always playing nervous, uncomfortable geeks with zero game but much lust for the ladies. Here he is still a nervous, uncomfortable geek with zero game, but he has an edge. Eisenberg is brillopads as the quietly conspiring Zukerberg, especially in the scenes where he is a defendant in the numerous lawsuits, despite being the accused he holds an air of authority over the room and his former peers who he used to want to be, but now the tables have turned. I think he channeled some kind of personal issues from when he quite obviously got picked on in high school, and threw that inspiration into the faces of the actors around him (I have no proof of this, but I am going to go right out and say that he ran home to his mum after every scene, his hands tightly clasped over his ass to prevent atomic wedgies). Lets just say that the Eisenberg rose in my estimations after I saw this film.
Garfield is impressive as the young, driven and slowly betrayed Eduardo, and I see big things in the future for him. Also there are some nice smaller roles from Rashida Jones and Armie Hammer (playing both Winklevoss twins), but for the acting accolade, I have to, reluctantly give it to......Justin fucking Timberlake *holds head in hands and sobs uncontrollably*
Justin seen here, looking so dickbaggish that 1 in 7 wombs implodes out of instinctive fear when in this pictures presence.
JT plays Sean Parker, the creator of Napstar and a bit of a rock star on the silicon valley circuit, a poster boy for young .com entrepreneurs everywhere. He is also massively delusional, paranoid, vengeful and scheming; he grooms Zukerberg into his own play thing to get back at the corporate industries who have wronged him in the past, but also to make himself a lot of money, if a few of Zukerberg's friends had to be the collateral for that then so be it. JT is astounding as the energetic, confident, almost mentor-like God that is Parker, flying around and popping up to join the Facebook team and try and guide them in his shadow, whilst also subtly showing this to be a thin veneer for the damaged and scared young man underneath, who is so clearly affected by his explosive past and scathing by the music industry that he cant help but take this chance to prove he still has it in the big competitive world of internet business.
All of this is made better by the script that Sorkin masterminded, it is funny and chilling in parts, yet powerful when it needs to be, which is perfectly matched to Fincher's directorial style, which is exhaustive in the search of perfection. Fincher has a great way of showing us glimpses of vulnerable characters are, which is perfectly noticeable in the final scene, after all the hard talk and harsh words that Zukerberg has thrown around to the lawyers grilling him throughout the film, he sits down after proceedings and tries to add his ex girlfriend, who he gets dumped by at the start of the film, on Facebook, his own creation. Then he just sits there refreshing the page, waiting for her to respond. He is the king of everything online, yet he is still just an average 20 something with average thoughts and feelings. Awwww look at me getting all deep and shit.
Sooooo, I mark my triumphant return with a call for you all to go and buy this wonderful, compelling masterpiece and absorb every last lovely second, you wont regret it, and it will get your fat ass of of your Facebook for an hour or two.
Till next time
Peace
