Lost in the Movies: The Social Network

The Social Network





To see the original comments in context, and to read Ed's and Hokahey's excellent (and much less baroque) reviews of the movie, please visit "The Social Network" at Only the Cinema and "ADD AS FRIEND/IGNORE: The Social Network" at Little Worlds.


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7 comments:

Tony Dayoub said...

This is a great analysis, and ingeniously formatted to tap into what TSN is all about. Kudos!

Troy Olson said...

I was hoping someone would take this concept and run with it. Should have known it'd be you Joel! Great and clever format here.

Someday I'll watch the movie and actually have a comment on the content itself...

Richard Bellamy said...

Thanks very much for the appreciation and the link. What a great idea! I love the friend requests.

Will you friend Let Me In? I did.

Sam Juliano said...

I like my "baroque" thank you very much Joel! What a refreshing way to go about this with all the appropriate entries on, what's that called? Oh yeah, "Facebook." I had the opportunity to review this film last week for WitD, but I passed because I wasn't sufficiently inspired. I must really summon up passion these days to spend time with a contemporary film, but there's no dearth of stupendous work on this film out there. I'm pretty much on the same page with you--Eisenberg is stupendous in the post-Cera days as the billionaire narcissist, and the writing is among the best we've had in years. So why then does this very good film fail to inspire, or get the top rating? It's not easy to pinpoint, though it's conventional and predictable, and we watch from a distance without the emotional spark.

You made a number of excellent points here in your back and forth. Loved reading them.

Joel Bocko said...

Well thanks everybody - that's reassuring! I was questioning my execution on this, but I'm glad to see it worked for you guys. I do find it kind of ironic though that after praising Fincher for not getting gimmicky with his movie...I got gimmicky with the post! Oh well, gimmicks are fun from time to time...

Tony, just saw that you reviewed Social Network as part of the NYFF coverage - I will check it out and leave more comments there...

Troy, looking forward to your take.

Hokahey, you're welcome and thanks for the venue to share my thoughts in the first place. Incidentally, I tried to create avatars for you and Ed to take part in the "Wall" conversation but it was too complex (I didn't have enough e-mail accounts to do it) and was taking way too long so I went with the above approach. Still, there's a deactivated Hokahey Little Worlds account somewhere out there in cyberspace, with an AOL account I hadn't used in about 5 years haha...

Sam, as I said with Hokahey it is in part a generational thing I think; it's still surreal for me to see what I think of as "current events" mythologized on the big screen. (By the same token, a Millennial might be more inclined to loathe the whole phenomenon whereas a disenchanted boomer is more likely to wave it off if they're not interested.) And remembering when Facebook was an college inside joke part of me's still amazed it spread to high school and then the general populace (when my parents got on it, that was the double take moment) let alone that it warranted a big-budget movie.

Joel Bocko said...

Just read Tony Dayoub's excellent analysis (DI readers should definitely check it out: http://www.cinemaviewfinder.com/2010/09/nyff10-opening-night-movie-review.html). He talks about how Fincher uses barriers to separate Zuckerberg from other people in the movie, and a thought occured to me.

Facebook, which is in a sense the big name/star of the picture, remains mostly offscreen throughout the film. Think about it: how many times do we actually see a computer screen with the site on it? We certainly dont' get a montage of frenzied activity as the site kicks off. It remains abstract, an idea, an offscreen presence the whole time (or at least that's how I remember it). I can remember it being activated by Zuckerberg, arriving in a girl's e-mail inbox, and being checked out by Parker on his one-night stand's laptop. I don't think we get a sustained look at it until the end, when Zuckerberg is friending his ex, and waiting for her response. So in a sense, he (and by extension we) are outside the very subject of the movie. This makes me like it all the more - and reminds me of a) Pauline Kael's comment about Brando's presence haunting Godfather II even though he wasn't in it and b) Orson Welles' famous anecdote about Mr. Woo (http://blogs.bu.edu/lightandshadow/2010/03/20/great-scene-the-third-man/).

Just Another Film Buff said...

What an innovative idea. Super stuff, MM.

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