she said, he said; adellelijah
I don't know about you, but I watching this trailer had me laughing out-loud in the middle of Starbucks! I just watched "The Other Guys" for the umpteenth time last night and it looks like Mark Wahlberg brings a similar character in Ted. Family Guy genius, Seth MacFarlane, who wrote and directs this film also stars playing an adorable teddy bear. Watch and laugh!
Matthew Broderick and "Oh Yeah" by Yello.
It'll definitely be a just a tad disappointing if what is revealed is Ferris Buller drinking Pepsi all day long or him finding the next big bargin on Expedia or Travelocity or maybe he's the new spokesperson for Hipmunk? The way that comments are going on YouTube, it seems as if it's a Honda commercial. Maybe for their new jet?
Adelle and I, including many of our friends, have just recently completed reading Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy. Starting with "The Hunger Games
Trailers are always fun though not too many make it here on adellelijah. Maybe we could make this could be a recurring theme?! Tuesday Trailer(movie) day!? This new film, 50/50, attempts to make the best of a dire situation. Mixing comedy with a hint of seriousness, Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, tell a story of friends helping each other out. Through good times and bad, Levitt's character learns how to deal with the ensuing flood of emotion that comes with beating cancer. We're definitely going to catch this flick.
Off topic, this does bring up a question: why can't Apple just allow people to embed directly from their website?! I know that they are the "exclusive" site to watch every trailer imaginable and spend countless hours doing so but it'd save some good cloud space right?
Here's your chance to support an amazing film by Gary Hustwit as he completes his Design Trilogy with the making of "Urbanized." Currently at 85% of his goal, on Kickstarter, Mr. Hustwit offers a whole array of types of deals ranging from $10 to $5000 for a private screening. Just for a mere $400, you and your company can be listed in Mr. Hustwit's credits under the "Special Thanks" segment which I think is a steal! Check out the video below and support his Kickstarter!
Gary's two other amazing films, Helvetica and Objectified, have received amazing reviews and you too should check them out now. Heck, I'd go for the Blu-ray Design Trilogy which includes the hardcover book and other contents sign by the man himself for a Kickstarter pledge of $125! We have just under 13 days to help the guy out! What's not to love?
If you haven't heard about this film yet, you should dive right in and watch the next two clips. The first is the new trailer for the film starring James Franco as the hero and the other is a documentary w/ the real life Aron Ralston. Amazing how much courage and bravery a human can posses.
I was fortunate enough to be invited out to see an early screening of The Social Network. I have to thank Loli for taking me, it was her advanced screening invite. I'm just going to make it a rule that anything that she invites me out to will be cool and awesome from this point forward. I have to say this is the first advanced screening that I've been do in my adult life, I saw Top Gun on NCAS Mirarmar, but that was a long time ago. We both got there a little later than we planned. I blame traffic, that shouldn't of been there in the first place. Boo traffic. When we finally did get into the lobby of the theater, we got stuck in the 2nd line. Yes, 2nd line. I wish we had known about the Yelp registration so we could of been seated with all of the other 1st liners. I would of blogged about this earlier, but they took our phones at the door and I came home to a kitchen full of ants and had to clean up, but here we go.
I'm not going to be giving away too much of the movie by giving a synopsis. The Social Network is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires. This is the story of how Facebook came to be. Basically, Mark Zuckerberg creates Face Smash, a site that allows user to compare female students based on pictures from their school's online Face Books, which will become the keystone to creating Facebook. Face Smash brings a lot of negative attention to Mark from the female student body and the Harvard administration. This notoriety is noticed by Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss and Divya Narendra who want to use Mark's talent to help create a dating website which caters to women who are interested in Harvard men. Mark uses the basis of this idea to begin work on creating Facebook with the financial backing of his friend Edwardo Saverin. As Facebook becomes more popular there are complications between Mark and Ed that leads to a lawsuit by Ed for control of the company as well and intellectual properties lawsuit by Tyler, Cameron, and Divya.
The format of this movie is from the prospective of Mark Zukerberg as he recalls the events he's being questioned about in 2 separate lawsuits. I find this to be an effective tool to justify the chopped up timeline. There were only a couple times when the quick cuts between lawsuits caused me to forget which group of lawyers he was talking to. The pace of this movie was very good. It moved very fast and did not leave you too much time to wonder what the score was for the Padre game. The writers did a good job of putting a great set of 1-liners in for all of the cast. This helped with the movie because, as the movie starts to become too serious, you get a great 1-liner to break it up. This made it more believable.
The Social Network portrays Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg') as a very intelligent man that lacks some of the social graces everyone wants him to have. Jesse Eisenberg does an excellent job or portraying Mark as and ADHD genius and an outright dick. You're going to hate Mark a little as you watch the movie, which is good acting. I have to say, I did feel some empathy toward the characterization because he is so intelligent but he doesn't have the patience to wait for people who are steps behind him. I think this is true with a lot of people with vision, they are challenged with the suffering of fools. I still think that Mark's Machiavellian tactics were borderline unethical, but you don't become a Billionaire CEO without making enemies along the way.
I was impressed by Andrew Garfield's Edwardo Saverin. You could see the progression from college dorm friend who has the startup money and business knowledge to help Mark with his idea to disgruntled friend as he's slowly pushed out from his seat as co-creator. Edwardo's story did not share the same screen time as Mark, but his was the true focus of the story. His character showed the most emotional content out of all of the characters. Brenda Song played Edwardo's girlfriend, Christy Lee. I was taken aback a little because I know her from the Disney Channel shows. I guess she has to make the change from Mickey Mouse Club to adult actor, and she picked a character that helped her get there.
Justin Timberlake plays the co-creator of Napster, Plaxo and Facebook, Sean Parker. Justin Timberlake's portrayal was good, but not excellent. I think I was influenced by the subject mater. Justin Timberlake does a fine job of being the flashy guy who, talks a lot of talk, is manipulative, and paranoid. There are times where I though his acting was forced, but how much more acting can you put behind, "...he's in the zone, that's what I'm talking about!", "...Take another bong hit.", and "...you need to come out to California. That's where it is." I was actually more irritated by Sean Parker's characterization that anyone else's in this film because he's just like Iago, from Othello, who's jealousy and manipulation does enough to latch onto Mark Zuckerberg and secure him part ownership of Facebook.
Armie Hammer's Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss was impressive. I honestly did not know it was the same actor. They did a great job on wardrobe and editing. The Winkelvoss's portrayal seemed like the classic "Jock" that had to be written in to intimidate the "Nerd". I wonder how much of this characterization is true to their real life personalities? Even though I realized this was going the way of the Revenge of the Nerds format, I wasn't swayed by the movie.
Overall, I recommend that you see this movie in the theaters. I think everyone should take the time to get a little history lesson on how Facebook came to be. I walked away with a better understanding of how Facebook came to be. I think I might even go out and get the book. I also wanted to delete my profile, but then, who does a better job at social networking as Facebook. I realized that this is what the movie was about, how Mark Zuckerberg took something that was good at what it does and is cool and turn a profit out of it. He even has business cards that say, "I'm the CEO, bitch."
This movie won't disappoint, go see it. I actually want to see it again. I'll give it a 4 out of 5 (still haven't come up with a rating system...).
Additional Links:
The Social Network Official site - http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com/
Wikipedia: The Social Network - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network
The Accidental Billionaires - http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780385529372.html
Wikipedia: Othello - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othello
I was invited out this morning to watch the documentary Catfish with my friend Loli. I accepted not know a single thing about this film, which was a good thing. I had a totally open and unbiased opinion. She told me some background about the movie the night before on the phone, but being a Man, I totally forgot what she said except, "meet me at the theater around 10:10." I actually forgot the name of the movie when I showed up, but I was early and went to look at golf equipment at the Sport Chalet. This worked out in my favor, because now I could just stand in line with her and learn the name of the movie. I make a few jokes about the movie title, Catfish, because I had no idea what it was about.
"Maybe it's about a giant Catfish that eats people."
"Maybe it's about a guy who's in love with a catfish."
"Maybe it's about a man who falls in love with a woman and she looks like a catfish."
My friend Loli first found about about this film through a combination of Facebook, from a friend, and then on an interview on the Ellen show. After watching the movie, I find the Facebook connection rather appropriate.
Catfish is a documentary about the personal relationship Nev Schulman, a New York Photographer, develops with, Abby Peirce, an 8 year-old artist from Michigan, who paints one of his photos printed in a newspaper. Abby sends Nev the painting and their friendship began. What follows is Nev taking several other photos which are re-painted by Abby. Nev soon develops a friendly relationship with Abby's Mother, Angela, Abby's Father, and Abby's older Half-Sister, Meg. Once Meg is introduced, the real plot of the documentary begins with Meg and Nev developing a long distance relationship via email, text and Facebook. During a work trip by Nev, his brother, and their friend to film a dance festival in Colorado, the 3 discover clues that begin to shake Nev's resolve in his online relationship with Meg and her family. Nev takes the opportunity to head to Michigan and uncover the real story Meg and Abby.
I don't want to get too in depth with this synopsis because this is a documentary that everyone should watch. The basic premise of the movie is something that has been a concern of mine for a while. How do you trust the friends you make online though social networks, emails,and instant messages? Personally, I don't usually correspond to people I don't know in real life. I've made a few friends with people I met on online games, but our friendship is solely based on that game and does not extend beyond that world. Also, my job requires me to manage project and people that are not physically located near me, but again those relationships usually don't extend beyond the confines of work. I have concerns with people who readily make friends with people they met online and easily develop true feelings for that person based on their online persona. We've all read and heard several stories of people whom break out of the confines of medium that attempt a real life relationship. But then again, I've done online dating so I guess that makes me something of a hypocrite...
Overall this film was very enjoyable as a documentary. It does a good job of capturing the budding relationship that Nev has with Abby's family via emails, Facebook, and phone calls. The production of the movie is very on the go, with some of the film taken with professional grade cameras and a point and shoot cameras using the video capture feature. This actually sold me into the movie more, because it made it more relatable because it felt like something I would do if I was a young 20-something. When they use Google Earth to show the transition from city to city, I was sitting too close to the screen to appreciate this low budget trick. At my distance, it was nauseating. The film did a great job of showing the range of emotions that Nev went through as you went through all of the plot twists throughout the film. I have to give credit to Nev's friend who helped Nev and his Brother realize the sensitivity they had to bring to this unique situation. I actually found myself becoming emotionally attached to people in this film; indifference, joy, and anger .
I recommend this film to anyone who has a Facebook page. I think I'll be talking about this movie for years to come. I don't want to ruin the plot line to the film, but even if you have basic understanding of the whole story, how it's told will bring you to the theater. If I had a rating system, I would give it 4 out of 5 (that's something I'll have to work on before the next film review.)
Additional Link:
IMDB Catfish - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1584016/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)
Official Website: http://www.iamrogue.com/catfish