ruminations on andrew garfield's face
Aaron Sorkin is a fucking genius and I will be forever jealous and pressed that I will never write with that level of assurance about the things that I know best. Jesse and Andrew are two attractive young men with a droll sense of humor who can't keep their hands off each other, it's like they were designed for fandom. In fact from what I've seen there seems to be a lot of cross-pollination between straight-up fic and RPS, and how not, with the way they behave during interviews. Justin Timberlake was annoying, which I gather was the point. The Winklevosses and their token Indian friend were the highlight of the film for me tbh. (1) Because they got the best lines. (2) Because Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole, and it is a basic human reaction to sympathize with the guy who got screwed over by the asshole. (3) Because neither Tyler, Cameron nor Divya are themselves assholes - they're friends, even if by the nature of the arrangement Divya is the auxiliary to the twins' motor. They are suffering the rude awakening that all insular elites through the ages have suffered, when they're rendered obsolete as the aristocratic hierarchy is replaced by a new social order.
So as we limousine liberals all know The Social Network is a deeply, deeply problematic movie. There's not much to add, except I really hope that whoever wrote this article was trolling: "Does The Social Network have a problem with women? I wouldn't say so, but its characters sure do. Are women underrepresented in the film? Sure. It's a story about guys! Desperate, socially inept guys." Read on for a flawless textbook misinterpretation of the purpose of the Bechdel Test. I mean, this movie left me desirous of two things: Another century of Mark/Eduardo scenes, and a dash of Winklevoss triumvirate for comic relief. Every time a girl showed up onscreen my immediate reaction was gtfo & leave my boys alone. And any movie that has that kind of effect on its viewers? I am going to be sideying it harder than a beauty pageant queen at a hacker convention.
I remember three years ago when I first saw Atonement I was. Well I was impressed because it was such obviously superior filmmaking, and the casting was spot-on, and how many Booker-prize winning authors are going to have their books turned into blockbusters now is this becoming a trend? Even though Ian McEwan revels in the tactile and the macabre whereas the cornerstone of Kazuo Ishiguro's prose is his minimalism, his restraint, they are both so gooddamn Britis sometimes that it's painful. Not in a bad way, necessarily. Andrew Garfield is perfection here, just like he was sublime in The Social Network. You have never in your life met a soul as open, as trusting, as willing to make himself emotionally vulnerable, as the characters Andrew plays.
So, Atonement takes place on a country manor. Well, in northern France and Blitz-Era London too. But mostly on a country manor. Never Let Me Go takes place in various locales in rural England. It's not like I've made a serious study of this and I hate to generalize from an inadequate sample size but w/e hahaha I'm going to anyway. There is a deliberate effort, by the authors and the filmmakers in both cases, not to engage with modern technology. So you set your story in the past, or in a suitably remote locale, and it's lovely and profound and the score is magnificent. But especially after seeing The Social Network, you do develop a hankering for serious media that engages with the historic moment that we are in. Ummm negl I stole all the ideas in this paragraph from this article in the Guardian.
The Social Networ moves at a blistering pace and I skipped dinner to finish it. Never Let Me Go moves at a sedate pace and I paused it multiple times to check on my match downloads. I still cried at the end, just as I did with the novel. I certainly liked the movie versions of Kathy and Tommy better, but I feel like many of Ruth's nuances were lost in the transition to the screen, in the attempt to shoehorn the main characters' relationships into a traditional love triangle. I wonder, does the fact that this reductionist interpretation did not satisfy me, imply that the book is not in fact about (romantic) love? That it's about Ideas like bioethics and the cost of remorse, for instance? Or is this Ishiguro's ultimate design, to show how bioethics is not an Issue to be dispassionately debated by experts in immaculate white rooms, but an ailment that afflicts flesh and blood and bone and marrow. That it is in the realm of human emotion that we ought to look for the answers. Ok that sounds like a plausibly opaque reading of the text I'm going to go with that then.
So as we limousine liberals all know The Social Network is a deeply, deeply problematic movie. There's not much to add, except I really hope that whoever wrote this article was trolling: "Does The Social Network have a problem with women? I wouldn't say so, but its characters sure do. Are women underrepresented in the film? Sure. It's a story about guys! Desperate, socially inept guys." Read on for a flawless textbook misinterpretation of the purpose of the Bechdel Test. I mean, this movie left me desirous of two things: Another century of Mark/Eduardo scenes, and a dash of Winklevoss triumvirate for comic relief. Every time a girl showed up onscreen my immediate reaction was gtfo & leave my boys alone. And any movie that has that kind of effect on its viewers? I am going to be sideying it harder than a beauty pageant queen at a hacker convention.
I remember three years ago when I first saw Atonement I was. Well I was impressed because it was such obviously superior filmmaking, and the casting was spot-on, and how many Booker-prize winning authors are going to have their books turned into blockbusters now is this becoming a trend? Even though Ian McEwan revels in the tactile and the macabre whereas the cornerstone of Kazuo Ishiguro's prose is his minimalism, his restraint, they are both so gooddamn Britis sometimes that it's painful. Not in a bad way, necessarily. Andrew Garfield is perfection here, just like he was sublime in The Social Network. You have never in your life met a soul as open, as trusting, as willing to make himself emotionally vulnerable, as the characters Andrew plays.
So, Atonement takes place on a country manor. Well, in northern France and Blitz-Era London too. But mostly on a country manor. Never Let Me Go takes place in various locales in rural England. It's not like I've made a serious study of this and I hate to generalize from an inadequate sample size but w/e hahaha I'm going to anyway. There is a deliberate effort, by the authors and the filmmakers in both cases, not to engage with modern technology. So you set your story in the past, or in a suitably remote locale, and it's lovely and profound and the score is magnificent. But especially after seeing The Social Network, you do develop a hankering for serious media that engages with the historic moment that we are in. Ummm negl I stole all the ideas in this paragraph from this article in the Guardian.
The Social Networ moves at a blistering pace and I skipped dinner to finish it. Never Let Me Go moves at a sedate pace and I paused it multiple times to check on my match downloads. I still cried at the end, just as I did with the novel. I certainly liked the movie versions of Kathy and Tommy better, but I feel like many of Ruth's nuances were lost in the transition to the screen, in the attempt to shoehorn the main characters' relationships into a traditional love triangle. I wonder, does the fact that this reductionist interpretation did not satisfy me, imply that the book is not in fact about (romantic) love? That it's about Ideas like bioethics and the cost of remorse, for instance? Or is this Ishiguro's ultimate design, to show how bioethics is not an Issue to be dispassionately debated by experts in immaculate white rooms, but an ailment that afflicts flesh and blood and bone and marrow. That it is in the realm of human emotion that we ought to look for the answers. Ok that sounds like a plausibly opaque reading of the text I'm going to go with that then.