The Social Network
J got us into a sneak screening of The Social Network, the movie about Facebook that's coming out this Friday. It's being heralded on the movie posters as the film of a generation, the Citizen Kane of the 21st century, one of the most stimulating films of the year. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I more or less agree, actually.
Maybe not 100% on the Citizen Kane thing, but mainly because Citizen Kane had an ending, and since Facebook is still humming along with a $25 billion valuation and all the principals are still alive, there's no real way to wrap up the story.
While telling the story of Facebook, it also tells the story of the second .com wave. After the boom, after the bust, post Napster and P2P, when Wired (already tired) was crowing about Web 2.0, Google was on the cusp of its IPO, Livejournal was a couple of years old already and the languages of computing were just shifting towards Python, Php and the like. When there was enough computing infrastructure available to enough people that you could make a fortune from your dorm room between classes. I may be particularly fond of this movie's description of this era, because I was in Boston in the years it depicts at the beginning of the film, and in Silicon Valley in the years it depicts at the end; but that aside, it's a well done picture.
It was written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote "The West Wing" and "Sports Night", and the dialog is as punchy and engaging as West Wing (apparently the actors would do 30, 40 takes until they could deliver their lines as fast as Sorkin thought they should). Jesse Eisenberg plays the high-functioning-aspergers-geek really, really well, and the supporting cast, including Justin Timberlake as one of the co-founders of Napster, do really well. The movie opens with a spot-on 'date' between two principal characters in the Thirsty Scholar in Cambridge, and drops you right into the flaws of the main character. I cringed, because i -know- these people, or at least I've known people a hell of a lot like them. High functioning, high ambition, high potential, not terribly good at, you know, -people-.
It describes in pleasing detail how a 19 year old could become a billionaire in a small window of time in the late 90s/early 2000s on top of less than 2 months of coding. It shows and discusses the plusses and pitfalls of entrepreneurial ventures, and the consequences of the sorts of decisions people make when presented with startup ideas. Do I stay in school? Do I drop everything to see if this works? What happens if it doesn't? Who else am I competing against?
Also, the coding scenes are not unrealistic. I remember being able to do the things Zuckerberg does to "hack" Harvard back in those days, and although I think the traffic numbers are a little light (23,000 hits to bring down a major university server in 2003?) if it was a toy server in the dorm basement instead (J's theory), then sure. If any web coding folks see the movie and completely disagree, tell me, OK?
One criticism- they didn't talk about any of Zuckerberg's past, ever. Where did he come from? What is his family like? Where did he go to high school? How and why did he get to Harvard? These sorts of things might have added something to the character- I was left with a clear picture of the character, but without any origins, like a superhero comic before they do the backstory.
A couple of fun nits- When zuckerberg is walking across Harvard campus in the first couple of scenes, you will see a cameo by the Johns Hopkins campus suddenly in the middle of Harvard Yard. (specifically, this spot. That made me laugh.
Also, there is a scene between the two main characters behind a jewish fraternity's party that I think was actually the stairwell behind Josh's dorm at MIT. Hopefully he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
I really enjoyed it- you might too! If you go see it this weekend, come back and tell me about it.
I more or less agree, actually.
Maybe not 100% on the Citizen Kane thing, but mainly because Citizen Kane had an ending, and since Facebook is still humming along with a $25 billion valuation and all the principals are still alive, there's no real way to wrap up the story.
While telling the story of Facebook, it also tells the story of the second .com wave. After the boom, after the bust, post Napster and P2P, when Wired (already tired) was crowing about Web 2.0, Google was on the cusp of its IPO, Livejournal was a couple of years old already and the languages of computing were just shifting towards Python, Php and the like. When there was enough computing infrastructure available to enough people that you could make a fortune from your dorm room between classes. I may be particularly fond of this movie's description of this era, because I was in Boston in the years it depicts at the beginning of the film, and in Silicon Valley in the years it depicts at the end; but that aside, it's a well done picture.
It was written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote "The West Wing" and "Sports Night", and the dialog is as punchy and engaging as West Wing (apparently the actors would do 30, 40 takes until they could deliver their lines as fast as Sorkin thought they should). Jesse Eisenberg plays the high-functioning-aspergers-geek really, really well, and the supporting cast, including Justin Timberlake as one of the co-founders of Napster, do really well. The movie opens with a spot-on 'date' between two principal characters in the Thirsty Scholar in Cambridge, and drops you right into the flaws of the main character. I cringed, because i -know- these people, or at least I've known people a hell of a lot like them. High functioning, high ambition, high potential, not terribly good at, you know, -people-.
It describes in pleasing detail how a 19 year old could become a billionaire in a small window of time in the late 90s/early 2000s on top of less than 2 months of coding. It shows and discusses the plusses and pitfalls of entrepreneurial ventures, and the consequences of the sorts of decisions people make when presented with startup ideas. Do I stay in school? Do I drop everything to see if this works? What happens if it doesn't? Who else am I competing against?
Also, the coding scenes are not unrealistic. I remember being able to do the things Zuckerberg does to "hack" Harvard back in those days, and although I think the traffic numbers are a little light (23,000 hits to bring down a major university server in 2003?) if it was a toy server in the dorm basement instead (J's theory), then sure. If any web coding folks see the movie and completely disagree, tell me, OK?
One criticism- they didn't talk about any of Zuckerberg's past, ever. Where did he come from? What is his family like? Where did he go to high school? How and why did he get to Harvard? These sorts of things might have added something to the character- I was left with a clear picture of the character, but without any origins, like a superhero comic before they do the backstory.
A couple of fun nits- When zuckerberg is walking across Harvard campus in the first couple of scenes, you will see a cameo by the Johns Hopkins campus suddenly in the middle of Harvard Yard. (specifically, this spot. That made me laugh.
Also, there is a scene between the two main characters behind a jewish fraternity's party that I think was actually the stairwell behind Josh's dorm at MIT. Hopefully he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
I really enjoyed it- you might too! If you go see it this weekend, come back and tell me about it.