Movie Review: "The Social Network"

Really? A movie about Facebook? Sounds kind of lame, no?

NO!

This movie is excellent from top to bottom. The writing, the acting, the music, the direction... It's all so, so good.

Jessie Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Normally Jesse plays loveable geeks. Mark is a hateable geek. There is quite a difference.

The story, in one graph:

Zuckerberg gets dumped because he's an asshole and he takes to the Internet to exact revenge. He ends up crashing Harvard's server thanks to his "Facemash.com," where people can compare the hotness of the women on campus. This catches the attention of the Winklevoss twins and their business partner, who want to create a legit site that has full profiles of the Harvard student body. "How is this different from MySpace?" Zuckerberg asks. "Exclusivity" is the answer. He's in... sort of. Instead of working on the project for the twins, he does his own thing (with the help of best friend Eduardo Saverin, who provides funding) and ends up with what is now Facebook. It takes off. Napster founder Sean Parker gets involved. It goes worldwide. Eduardo gets cut out of the company. Mark is the youngest billionaire there ever was. He gets sued by the twins, who we find out received $35 million, and by Eduardo, who received an undisclosed settlement.

Aaron Sorkin wrote this movie, and did a damn good job of it, too. In an interview I read in Entertainment Weekly, he was asked about the validity of the movie (Zuckerberg and the folks at Facebook were not involved). His reply: "People tend to get sued if they lie about other people. You'll see we haven't been sued."

So it's accurate. Zuckerberg, the man who made "friend" a verb, dicked over the only friend he ever had and stole some intellectual property to get where he is today. He paid for it, sure, but he never cared about the money (and probably doesn't care that there's a movie painting him in unfavorable light). It's all about Facebook.

Andrew Garfield plays Eduardo. Justin Timberlake plays Sean Parker. The twins are played by two guys made to look like only one of them, Armie Hammer. (That is confusing, but true. Two different guys played the twins and the filmmakers digitally changed the one who is not Armie Hammer to look and sound like Armie Hammer.) Everyone is fantastic.

Another interesting tidbit: Natalie Portman provided Sorkin with inside information about Harvard's elite final clubs. She went to Harvard when all this was going down and dated one of the clubs members (apparently they're a super huge deal) and gladly gave Sorkin the scoop. I didn't check to see if she was given special thanks in the credits.

A Facebook origin story doesn't seem like it would be that exciting. A bunch of super smart computer geeks playing with lines of code? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But it isn't about that. It's about a guy who stopped at nothing to get what he wanted. Normally we encourage that kind of spirit, but this time we're torn: Is Mark Zuckerberg an asshole for saying what he means, doing what he wants and not caring what people think of him? Or is Mark Zuckerberg to be pitied because he got what he wanted, and yet really only has that one thing?

$7 billion can get you pretty much anything... except friends.

Quotes

I decided that this week needs to start on a good note with some good quotes.

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." ~Lewis Carroll

“Well-behaved women seldom make history” ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

"I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." ~ Thomas Edison

"Live the life you've imagined." ~Thoreau

"You are unrepeatable. There is a magic about you that is all your own..." ~D.M. Dellinger

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." ~Jane Austen

“If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it's pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting.” ~Laura Ingalls Wilder

There! One for every day of the coming week. :)

It gets better!

The big thing on the Internet right now is the It Gets Better campaign, aimed at gay youth who are the subjects of bullying and harassment. There is an alarming increase in the number of these kids who are taking their own lives, and celebrities and average citizens alike are taking to the web to post videos of support.

I am not web-savvy enough to post a video, but if I was, this is what I would say:

Hi. I'm Stefanie. I was never really bullied in school. I've never been made to feel like something was wrong with me on a regular basis. But, at the same time, I never really felt like I fit in. I think that's something that all teenagers go through, because all teenagers are in the beginning stages of learning who they are. That's not something that can be accomplished before you're 18, or 22 or hell, even 29. That's a lifelong journey of discovery, and it's one that we all deserve the chance to take.

Right now your world is small and the things that happen in it seem big. As you get older and gain knowledge and experience, you'll find that that shifts -- your world becomes much larger and the things that happen are not so consuming. You'll graduate high school and go on to college or the military or enter the workforce or travel or become famous for something. No matter which path you take, amazing things will happen to you: You'll read books that change your life, see art that inspires you to create your own, visit places you've only ever heard of before... and your world will grow.

In that world, you'll find that there are many different types of people. Not all of them will be kind, and not all of them will agree with your lifestyle; however, you'll also find that many of them are kind, many of them do agree and, most importantly of all, the majority will see you and respect you as a human being above anything else. But the best part of all? The best part is you will find yourself changed. You will become stronger, more confident, more powerful. You may not be able to change the world, but you can change your place in it and surround yourself with the environment that will nurture you to continue to find your way.

Taking your own life is not the only option. Hang in there. Keep your head up and your eyes focused on the future you want to have, because if you can envision it, you can make it a reality. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, and patience, and strength, but IT IS POSSIBLE. Life has wonderful things in store for you, but you've got to give them the opportunity to happen. Be strong. Survive now so that you may live later. I promise you, it will be worth it. It gets better.

The paper anniversary

Here's something that's hard to believe: Today is the one year anniversary of this blog.

I maintained a blog for a whole year. And it was a lot of fun. Yay for me, for this and for you for reading. Thanks a bunch.

Here's to another year, and getting to a second anniversary (which, I just Googled, is the cotton anniversary. Whoever thinks up this stuff is weird.)

(Paper. Papel picado, actually.)

Movie Review: "The Town"

Is it weird for me to say that I'm proud of Ben Affleck these days? I mean, I know he co-wrote "Good Will Hunting," and he did a great job in "Hollywoodland" and with "Gone Baby Gone," but for the gap between those sets of projects, he was mostly involved in crap. Poor guy.

"The Town" is based on a book called "Prince of Thieves" and was adapted by Affleck into a screenplay, which became the movie he starred in/directed.

He plays Doug, a bank robber, which is a common profession in the area of Charlestown, Mass. He's sick of it, though, and ready to get out. In one of his last jobs, his hot-tempered partner Jem takes a hostage, who they free without harming, but they discover that she lives in their neighborhood and has a good chance of figuring out who they really are. Doug doesn't want Jem to hurt her, so he takes it upon himself to "check it out" and make sure nothing is going to happen.

Guess what happens?

That's right, Doug falls for the hostage (Claire) and is further motivated to change his life. She's ready to pick up and go with him wherever he wants, but then Jem comes around and realizes that Doug is involved with the one person who can ruin everything for them.

Oh, and there's also Jon Hamm as an FBI agent who is breathing down their necks. (Side note: Every woman I know lusts for Jon Hamm. I don't get it.)

This is one of those stories where you root for the criminal to get away. People in the crowd literally cheered when Doug left a note on Jon Hamm's car: "Go fuck yourself."

Things don't go so well for the crew in the end. They are blackmailed into doing a super dangerous job. The jealous ex-girlfriend narks. Some people die (but not all. I'm not giving EVERYTHING away!) It's a bummer of an ending, but it's to be expected. I mean, they are federal criminals!

I really enjoyed it, and you will, too. Go watch it.

P.S. -- An exercise in the screenplay book is to pay attention to movies and see if you can spot the plot points at the end of the first and second acts. I totally saw them, right where they were supposed to be and at the time they were supposed to happen. I'm learning! :)

What happens when you turn off the TV

I've implemented a new rule for myself: No TV during the week except for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Hey, I have to watch "Glee" and "The Vampire Diaries." This is only Week 1, but it's been going well so far. I didn't turn on the TV at all on Monday or Wednesday. (Potential amendments to the rule: A good Monday Night Football game, an awards show or some other special broadcast I want to see.)

Did you know you get a lot of things done when you're not distracted by TV? Take Wednesday, for example...

List of things I did on Wednesday:

1. All my laundry.

2. Cleaned out/reorganized my dresser and closet.

3. Put away all my laundry (including the stuff that had been piling up on the floor for the past month.)

4. A blog entry.

5. Two exercises from "The Artist's Way," a creativity course I'm embarking on with my BFF Dianna (who follows this blog. She's up there in the corner. Everyone wave... Hi, Dianna!) :)

6. Studied a couple of chapters in the screenplay book I'm using to teach myself how to write screenplays.

7. The dishes.

8. Started gathering things together for a garage sale that's coming up.

9. Packed my lunch for today.

10. Cleaned out/organized the linen closet and drawers in my bathroom.

HELLO! That's a damn lot of stuff! And all because I didn't sit on the couch and channel surf until ultimately deciding on Nick at Nite or reruns of "The Office." I'm inspired by my own productivity. I plan to keep it up!

Book Review: "One Day"

"One Day," by David Nicholls, tells the story of Emma Moray and Dexter Mayhew's friendship over the span of 20 years. The clever little catch? We only see this progression on July 15 of each year, starting in 1989 when they've just graduated from university.

I saw a lot of myself in Emma. She has the most promising future out of the two, but struggles for a long time before finding her way. In contrast, Dexter's success comes fast and easy, but he struggles later on.

There are years when they are super close and years where they've lost touch completely. But even when they aren't speaking to each other, they are constantly thinking of each other. They've known each other too long and have been through too much together to fully dismiss one another.

Obviously there are only two ways this can end: 1) They end up together, or 2) They remain just friends. Trust me, at different points throughout the book, you're going to hope for each outcome.

Nicholls could have ended it either way and I would have been satisfied, to tell you the truth. They truly love each other, so ending up together would be one of those "it's about time" things. They truly love each other, so not ending up together would be one of those "love you like family for the rest of my life" things. Either is lovely. (The late-teens, early-20s Stefanie would have been devastated if they did not end up together. The current Stefanie finds the second option equally wonderful.)

Instead, Nicholls delivers the most unsatisfying ending ever. It's written cleverly, but what happens comes very close to ruining the whole rest of the book for me. I understand it (as best I can, anyway), but I don't like it at all.

They're filming the movie adaptation as we speak. They're either going to have to change the ending or stop touting it as a romantic comedy, or else the audience is going to be severely disappointed. But Nicholls is adapting the screenplay himself, so who knows?