By Jason Apuzzo. • Reviews are starting to come out for The Social Network (see The New York Times, Variety, Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter). I’m actually trying to avoid them, because I feel I already know a bit too much about this project.
Suffice it to say that the film is getting a very favorable response thus far. Aside from Fincher’s skill as a director, I think that what intrigues people here the most is not so much Mark Zuckerberg himself, as much as the phenomenon which he’s assumed to represent – i.e., a socially alienated America, and the new, anonymous social networking technologies that give people a simulacrum of community/intimacy in their lives. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never felt especially alienated, nor lacking in intimacy, that these technologies have meant very little to me over the years. Nonetheless, I think people do find uses for the internet that are valid and legitimate in terms of creating communities based on shared interest – Libertas is obviously one example among many of that – and also in terms of sharing aspects of their lives with others.
A friend of mine here in LA recently sent me a link to an interesting blog called the Talk to Strangers Blog. The basic purpose of the blog is spelled out in this post; essentially, it’s written by an amusing, ironic guy here in LA in his late 20s who decided at some point to stop feeling alienated and angry all the time and start interacting with strangers – to actually get to know people, start placing names with faces, learn about people’s lives around him in a programmatic way. The idea driving the blog appears to be social networking based on actual social contact, rather than the ersatz form of the internet – and the guy doing it takes his whole enterprise as an experiment, one that does not yet have any clear outcome. I only mention this site because I think that the impulse behind it is more or less similar to what drives millions of people to Facebook and Twitter each day – a desire, in effect, to connect … when our lives might not otherwise feel very ‘connected.’ I’ll have more to say about all this down the line. Right now I have to get back to my usual subjects of alien invaders and supermodels.
• Wall Street 2 just had its big, swanky premiere party in New York. You can see pictures of this event here and here, and I wonder if it occurred to anyone present that the party looks just like the sort of ritzy gala thrown by filthy capitalist pigs. Ironies abound.
• Hawaii Five-O beat out The Event in the ratings, albeit only by a nose. Hooray hot Hawaiian chicks fighting terrorists on The Big Island! Boo pro-Obama/anti-CIA propaganda! I was too busy to watch either show in progress, actually, because I was trying to find out what happened to Reggie Bush’s leg.
• Inception has crossed the $750 million mark worldwide, and Christopher Nolan apparently has plans underway for an Inception video game spinoff. I thought such vulgarities were beneath a tony director like Nolan; apparently not.
• I’ve been thinking of doing totally separate ‘alien invasion’ updates. I never quite pull the trigger, though, because each day I keep thinking that surely this trend must end, right? Wrong. Today we learn that Orson Scott Card’s pseudo-alien invasion novel Ender’s Game (a somewhat liberal take on Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers) may finally be getting a big-screen adaptation. Also: Steven Spielberg has always been serious about alien invasion, but now he’s apparently getting serious about a robot invasion; we learn today that rumors of Spielberg’s interest in bringing Daniel H. Wilson’s forthcoming Robopocalypse novel to the big screen are true. And finally, the people responsible for the forthcoming Godzilla reboot talk today about the project and its current status at Legendary Pictures.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … in the spirit of Godzilla, alien invaders and the like, we thought we’d take a look today at actress Odette Yustman, who starred in Cloverfield and will be appearing this Friday in the comedy-drama You Again.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on September 21st, 2010 at 6:48pm.
I loved the Hawaii Five-O episode. There were actual real-world villains in it — not some banker, or a rogue CIA agent. It was great to see two Battlestar Galactica alums, Grace Park and Jean Smart, in it. The chemistry between the leads worked, and the action snapped. Cameos by Norman Reedus and William Sadler didn’t hurt either.
An Ender’s Game film could be incredible. I think Orson Scott Card is a decent writer — his prose is utilitarian, and his pacing lumbers a bit, but the man can spin a tale. He’s a pretty active social conservative, and that gets him a lot of heat with the hipsters, but the man is intellectually honest.
And sorry about Reggie Bush … even though I’m a Niners fan, and been in a pretty testy mood all day.
Yes, I’m looking forward to seeing the H-50 episode … as for Orson Scott Card, certainly the concept of putting that novel on screen makes sense, although there will probably be difficulties involved. I don’t think it was written with the cinema in mind.
I like the Niners by the way, but I’m an SC person and Reggie’s had a tough week.
While I don’t care for his movies and doubt the video game will be given the proper care, the post seems to imply that 1. video game tie-ins are bound to dirty the original work, which runs counter to the bounty of quality ones available and 2. that associating with video games is inherently gauche, which is peculiar. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, among others, is far more highbrow than the blockbusters Libertas tends to cover. You’re better than such generalizations suggest!
Ghaleon, I think we’re talking about 2 different things here. The Robocalypse novel is not the same as the video game, so far as I’m aware. Totally different storylines. Also: I was implying neither of the two things you suggest, nor would I.
I’m a bit puzzed by the “more highbrow than the blockbusters Libertas tends to cover” comment, though. Do you read this site regularly? What we mostly cover actually is indie/art house fare – and, incidentally, you can’t get much more highbrow than this recent post:
https://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/my-film-course/
If we cover blockbusters, it’s simply because they’re in the news.
I’m really looking forward to Social Network!