Anyone seen a good movie lately?

[ice grillin you]

1. 'The Social Network' - A
2. 'True Grit' - A
3.  'Blue Valentine' - A - absolutely brilliant - 8.5
4. 'Winter's Bone' - B+
5. 'Black Swan' - B
6. 'The Fighter' - C+
7. 'Inception' - C
8. 'The Kids Are All Right' - C

havent seen - 'The King's Speech'
havent seen - '127 Hours'
havent seen - 'Toy Story 3'

[rjs246]

I watched the first half of The Social Network last night. It was well directed and well acted but I don't see what all of the hoopla is about. It seems to just be a character study of a collection of brilliant people and their difficulties in interacting with each other/the world. That simplistic description could be applied to the lives of the majority of my closest friends.

I went to a high school full of geniuses. Not like, "Oh I get As and Bs on my report card" people (although that was the category I fell in to). I'm talking about kids who took quantum physics as 14 year old freshman and had to to take their math classes on local college campuses because the school, which was designed to accommodate for geniuses, couldn't accommodate for their level of genius. My company writes incredibly complex investment software and has a development army of several dozen people. Two of my closest friends write software by themselves identical to my company's software for hedge funds on proprietary platforms. Another worked for Microsoft and Google and recently started his own company because he wasn't being challenged. Another was named top student at Brandeis Business school and now works for MIT modling complex systems to predict and prepare for future social-political and socio-economic events. And these are just my close friends that I'm rattling off. There were six kids in my class alone who scored a 1600 on their SAT.

The point to all of this is that I think people love The Social Network because Mark Zuckerberg is so fascinating to them. But he isn't that fascinating to me. He reminds me of the kinds I went to high school with. I was surrounded by Mark Zuckerbergs. The difference is that he got lucky enough to parlay his brilliance into a social phenomenon that made him disgustingly wealthy. I guess there's something interesting about that, and I guess that this might be premature and that the second half of the movie may peak my interest a little more, but so far it just isn't anything all that amazing to me. Good movie, but I'm not in the oh-my-god-The-Social-Network crowd so far.

[charlie]

rjs knows smart people

[rjs246]

Yes I do. So psuedo-documentary type films that seem to be made purely to illustrate that a collection of smart people have trouble functioning in society isn't entertainment. It's just reality.

(Actually, it's pretty awesome knowing such smart people and drinking with them kicks ass for a variety of reasons, but that's a conversation for a different thread.)

[General_Failure]

Obviously you need to stick to watching action movies, although I suppose that's good advice for anyone other than IGY.

[smeags]

i for one would love to hear tall tales of a bunch of super nerds doing keg stands and playing beer pong.

[General_Failure]

If only someone had created that movie instead. I suppose people would find that a little boring, though. They might have to add some conflict, like the nerds getting revenge on some jocks that picked on them.

[smeags]

true just as long as they stopped with one movie and didnt attempt a sequeal or two that would suck something terrible.

[ice grillin you]

social network is not at all about smart people

[rjs246]

Like I said I'm only halfway in, but it totally is about smart people. Smart people functioning poorly, making strange decisions, interacting in awful and awkward ways, craving social acceptance but having no idea how to go about getting it, trying to get over on one another and one-upping each other, being paranoied that the world hates them, friendships and petty squabbles with other geniuses. That's the existence of smart kids who have lived as social outsiders their whole lives. That's what I see being highlighted.

[ice grillin you]

its the story of facebook and its creator...who happens to be a smart guy...but i hardly think that makes it a movie about smart people

if someone on the street asked me what the movie was about id say its the story of facebook or its about intellectual property rights maybe...i dont find it to be about anything really...its there to tell a story

even not liking what it was about you dont find the dialogue incredible?...and eisenberg is great

[Zanshin]

If IGY was one of your smart friends, he'd understand that.

[rjs246]

The dialog is good. It's on par with some of the best I've seen (Charlie Wilson's War, Rushmore, etc). Like I said, it is well done. But I don't see it as the story of Facebook. Jesus, what a boring farging idea for a movie. Facebook is incidental, at least it is to me. Who the farg cares about how Facebook was created? To me, the whole movie is character driven and Zuckerberg isn't a unique or fascinating enough character for me to call this a great film-making achievement.

If you're saying that the movie is driven by the story of the creation of a web site and you still think it was great then I have no idea what to say to you. Christ, if the movie were just about Facebook I would have turned it off after 15 minutes.

[charlie]

I often enjoy reading comments about a movie when the commenter has only seen half the movie.

[rjs246]

I often enjoy reading comments about a movie when the commenter has only seen half the movie.

Ha. This is the most intelligent thing anyone has said to me yet on the subject.