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Dimitris Psachos
20Oct10
"Honestly, italian and greek cinema in the 80ies and nineties belonged to worst in the world. Polish also, but there are not more dramatic showdowns after a so-called golden age in certain countries. Nowadays italian and greek cinema belongs to the most exciting." please tell me the Greek films you've seen because i can assure you....our 80's and 90's cinema is FAR MORE EXCITING than today....in the past 5 years, Greek cinema is extremely poor in ideas and conceptive devices of filmmaking...we're struggling whereas 15 years ago, we were producing art-house goodies that will never be shown abroad :(
rurban
13Oct10
Fincher's The Social Network (US 2010) Good, but not good enough. Everyone is trying hard, just the book is not good enough. And when I'm remembering the masterpiece in this genre "Startup.com" (US 2001) by Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim, I even think that no book, no fictional film can reach the density and realism of this documentary which followed the two dot.com entrepeneurs during their startup business years. Always the camera following them in their back. They failed. Facebook won big. Facebook got the business idea right, the technical aspects were done right, but there's still a doubt and thrilling aspect in every viewer that the company is still betraying us. The story is everytime the same, a technician needs a business-type friend to deal with the money involved with the startup idea, gets betrayed or betrays him, in varying shades. In the end it always ends bad between those two, and the better the film the more mature are the conflicts handled. That's of course a problem with this kind of business where the main players are usually in their early twenties. The exciting aspect with this kind of business is that the hands-on type of hero, the technician, is always on the stronger end, the business guy always just a means to an end. The exciting aspect with Startup.com, was the main failures were on the technical sides, still the hero/anti-hero was the greedy, slick business hero. The exciting aspect with The Social Network is that our hero is a real super-hero in the business field. He manages all the technical aspects (the mythical "better" programmer in the backroom is just staffage), he manages the business ideas, he makes all the right decisions by himself and he is always right. This is not cynical, I like the idea of a positive hero. Of course this is not true at all. Critical arguments What The Social Network done right is depicting getting the marketing idea right. The pitch. A social netsite cannot make money from the beginning, only if it starts to get really big. This needs years, this needs money upfront. It must work right. It must always work. You cannot loose a single hour downtime, just because there's no money left to pay some rent, or some hacker breaks in, or some other security breach or some press trouble. You cannot disturb your users with advertisements, banners. The poor business type just has to pay and wait if he can trust the feeling and abilities of the makers, the programmers, the designers, the technicians. If not he will loose all his money. Fincher/Sorkin got this important apsect through, besides all the simple social aspects, girlfriend, harvard elitisms, catching users. Fincher/Sorkin also play the right tune on our hero/anti-hero. Zuckerberg is mostly the good guy, all other parties also. No easy fingerpointing. The base of the story, the two famous lawsuits, are explained in detail, intellectual property is important and not easy to depict. Zuckerberg stole the very idea from two rich twins ("Harvard Connect"), but from his point of view we sympathize with him. The other heros are also no stereotypes. I wonder why the Timberland figure is so often critizised as the lone bad guy here. I can sympathize with him. He got the big idea, the big deal with Thiel. Without him it would be still a nice little student website. Now what is important and missing Why did facebook win? The most important aspects were not even mentioned. The idea is not new. Did anyone try out Google's Orkut, Friendster or myspace? This was state of the art then, but facebook was the first big site which came up with: 1. a perfect clear design, 2. incredible lot of functionality not seen elsewhere - fast ajax-based editors and feedback, ... 3. lot of entertainment to keep and attract the newbies, 4. it still scales (this part they learned from google) The film/book comments nothing from those strengths, it rather plays it silly. The typical internet argument is tortured as counter argument. Why does one produce internet content? Emphasizing the first pitch line, when he is dumped first, which leads to the creation of facemesh: "Remember, your girlfriends will not dump you because you are a computer nerd. They will dump you because you are a jerk" is too cheap for me. It's important to deal with the negative character aspects of our hero, esp. when it's not important at all to our story here. But it's cheap because it's most obviously not true anymore. It's normal for a 22 computer nerd to be a "jerk". It would have been important to relax that. Anyway, Eisenberg is a fantastic lead. The outstanding middle scene in the boat race reminds me of the outstanding europe trip 4 minutes in Avary's "The Rules of Attraction". Go watch yourself Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53OUHupfqws
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