A Geek’s Perspective on “the social network”
Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network
I went and watched “the social network” last night with my wife after a tasty meal at Copelands. I know there is a lot of hype around the movie simply because of the context of it being a backstabbing turn twister with some big name actors. I’ll tell you what turned me on to see it more than that simply boils down to two names: David Fincher & Aaron Sorkin. I’m a long time fan of The West Wing which for the first 4-5 seasons was written by Aaron Sorkin. There are two main ingredients necessary to deliver any movie or series that is worthy of gaining more than 7 stars. A superb screenwriter, and a magical director. If you have those two main ingredients you are well on your way to creating something that is captivating. Sure, the actors are a large piece of this magic potion, I agree but you can still manage to pull off a decent flick with even B or C list actors if you have the screenplay and director.
Jesse Eisenber & Justin Timberlake in The Social Network
Within the first 5 minutes of this movie, I was sucked in hanging on to every word. Mark Zuckerberg’s character, played by Jesse Eisenberg as he is projecting onto his girlfriend in the opening scene. This was a familiar feeling, like the beginning of any West Wing episode, or Charlie Wilson’s War. One of my other favorite movies is Roger Dodger written and directed by Dylan Kidd which has Scott Campbell and coincidentally Jesse Eisenberg as well. They have this way of starting the movie out in this mental dark place that you feel you want to escape, but are drawn to ride out their twisty journey of scriptural genius. Sean Parker founder of Napster and co Founder of Facebook is played by Justin Timberlake who I think did a first-rate delivery on the undertaking of being the free spirited wild card that was Sean’s character.
Overall I was thoroughly impressed with the movie and on top of it being an interesting topic as I work in the “internet world” it was refreshing to see something so well written and directed.
Another aspect I appreciated was the attention to detail. Being a geek I notice when movies try to reproduce the act of “hacking” and it’s irritating when they have these crazy psychedelic graphics on monitors (reference to the movie: Hackers) or something to project this mystery of hacking online. Most hackers use UNIX or Linux based machines. Being a long time user of Linux on the desktop and server I was impressed with the research done to accurately portray what it takes to pull something like this off. The commands being used on the screen of Mark’s laptop and computer were real. The lingo was accurate and the sexiness in the nerdness delivered. Yes, I said nerdness, I’m getting a red squiggly underline in my editor which means it isn’t a word, but I’m going to leave it.
5 out of 5
Official Movie Site – The Social Network the Movie
Official Movie Trailer
I might quote your “sexiness in the nerdness” line some day.
So we can add this movie to the list of realistic looking hacking movies. I hope the lingo is that one of a true developer, as for outsiders it doesn’t make sense.
BTW; i hate when i see a scene where someone is interacting with a terminal, and data gets read line-by line, and then they press enter, and this whole fancy animation shows a profile, and then they press enter again and zoom in to a single pixel, and hit enter again to sharpen the image to where they can read the date on a newspaper.
Who are they kidding?
They are setting the expectations for our client is all.
I always appreciate the art directors taking the time to not make computers and the hacking world seem like Willy Wonka’s imagination of what computers oughta be. Nothing ruins a movie for me like 2-inch text blinking “PASSWORD REJECTED”.
That being said, I’m excited that Sorkin and Fincher have crafted something awesome. For my money it doesn’t get better than Sorkin’s writing and Fincher is one of my directorial gods.
Will go see this week!