The Social Network DVD review

This time of year is really exciting for all movie fans.  The big question is, who will be nominated for the various categories at the Oscars?  To me, the Golden Globes are... meh.  Who cares?  Oscar is the real prize, and we're really close.  And one movie that has been a lock for nominations since the first trailer is, The Social Network.

The movie is written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher.  If you don't know, it's about Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of the phenomena, Facebook.com.  Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg, the Harvard dropout that was just voted Time Magazine's "Person of the Year".  Pretty incredible considering the unbelievable growth of Facebook.  The film also stars Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, who play the real life people who helped get the site off the ground.  The film also stars Armie Hammer, who plays the Winklevoss twins.  He plays dual roles; Cameron and Tyler, who sue Zuckerberg, accusing him of stealing their idea for Facebook.


What I liked about the film:
Generational

Mark Zuckerberg

I am obviously a huge movie fan; hence this blog.  But the movies with the most notoriety are often period pieces from a time long ago.  World War II is among the Academy's favorite time.  Along with British period pieces like this years The King's Speech.  So to see a movie based on events that took place during my lifetime is a real treat.  The subject matter is fresh and relative; and a treat for the techies that understand a lot of the dialogue being spouted off by the amazing cast.

The Writing

The writing is quick, witty, smart, relative, unconventional, conventional, fragmented, organized, business oriented, abbreviated, elongated, etc.  Sorkin is a freakin' genius, period.  The man will go down as the best writer of my generation and on.  He is not only great at setting up characters and scenes, etc.; he's amazing with the dialogue in the film.  The writing is so smart, yet simple enough for anyone in the audience to understand.  The story is told in a nonlinear fashion.  It jumps from a chronological telling of the development of Facebook, and bounces back and forth to the depositions in the lawsuits brought against Zuckerberg.  Brilliant. 

The Acting

Jesse Eisenberg

Eisenberg surely be nominated for Academy Award for the film.  He delivers every line so effortlessly.  His eyes tell stories all their own, and his face expresses such a wide array of emotion, he was the perfect actor for the part.  Garfield delivers an amazing performance as Zuckerberg's best friend and co-founder of Facebook.  His character has perhaps the widest array of emotion in the film.  Happy, excited, sad, devastated, betrayed, etc.  The Winklevoss' are played by the same actor, Armie Hammer.  And boy did they do a great job of making the audience hate them.  Stuck up, entitled, arrogant, privileged jerks.  Hammer nails it!

The Director

I'm a huge fan of Fincher's work, I'll be the first to tell you that.  Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the future Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and of course The Social Network.  Wow, that is an amazing, and very underrated, resume!  He does a lot of things perfectly in this film.  The casting, the wardrobe of its time, the locations, and the score are all wonderful. 

What I didn't liked about the film:
The Length/Redundancy
It's exactly as the heading says.  The film is about 20-25 minutes too long.  90% of the film is fast paced and keeps the audience interested.  But there is a stretch in the middle act that just would NOT end.  Also, there are several scenes that didn't need to be there.  They added nothing to the story, and were pretty much covered earlier in the film.

Justin Timberlake
The last time I listed an actor as a "dislike" was my review for The Karate Kid.  In that case Taraji P. Henson almost ruined the film for me.  In this film, Justin Timberlake is the culprit.  I hated every SINGLE thing about his performance.  He plays Sean Parker, the founder of the song stealing site, Napster.com.  Supposedly he "earned" the part.  B-S, he got the part because the producers hoped to add a "big name" to the mostly unknown cast.  He's terrible and I hate his acting, period.


The (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) Blu-Ray of the film has a bunch of goodies.  Two audio commentaries; one with writer Sorkin, the other features director Fincher and the rest of the cast.  Also included is "How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?", a feature length documentary about the development of Facebook.  Also included are features with Trent Reznor who scored the film, and a few scene by scene breakdowns from the film.


The verdict:

Great, but not the best
The film is among the best I've seen in a long long time.  But strictly speaking in terms of my vote for Oscars, it wasn't as good as The Fighter.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say Inception & Toy Story 3 were better as well.  Not to fear, all four will be nominated and I'm sure one of them will win Best Picture.


Facebook has so quickly become embedded in our culture and our daily lives.  The fact that the events portrayed in the film occurred only 7 short years ago is pretty amazing in and of itself.  I hope this sparks a new line of films that happened in my lifetime.  War movies will always work, but these work just as well.  We'll see if I'm still blogging in 10 years, I'll have to look back at this post and see what the next Facebook will be.... as if anything could ever replace Facebook!

Buried DVD review

Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds, was one of those movies that everyone was buzzing about.... but nobody saw.  It's not that no body saw it because it was a bad movie, it was mostly because it was in such limited release!  It debuted at Sundance to amazing reviews.  Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés creates an unbelievable masterpiece of creativity.  Let me begin.

What I liked about the film:
Originality
So your telling me the entire movie takes place in a coffin?  They will never cut away from the coffin?  Like, never?  Ok, SOLD!  The entire film (95 minutes), takes place inside a coffin buried several feet beneath the earth.  Ryan Reynolds plays an American truck driver in Iraq, who's fleet was ambushed by insurgents.  He's put in the coffin with nothing but a cell phone, a new glow sticks, a flask and a knife.

We've seen movies before that take place in one, maybe two settings, i.e. Phone Booth.  But they're nothing like Buried.  Cortés does an amazing job of keeping the crowd interested.  There's never a dull moment during this film.


Subject Matter
This is an Iraqi war movie without being an Iraqi war movie.  If you've seen the trailers, you know that most of the story is told through phone calls from Ryan Reynolds to the U.S.  The film covers a wide array of topics that are both current, and significant.  It tackles the war in Iraq.  It covers corporate greed in the United States.  It covers the topic of insurance companies and the scam that they are.  Family issues and pressures to succeed.  All of this in 95 minutes within the confines of a coffin.  Amazing work by writer Chris Sparling. 

Ryan Reynolds

I am bias as a mo-fo when it comes to Reynolds.  I am a huge fan of his work.  I have followed his career since he was on TV's 'Two Guys and A Girl'.  But what he does in this film is his best work yet.  He must truly carry the picture, by the absolute definition of the word!  There are cases when actors are in every single scene of a movie, BUT they have help.  And when hearing actors talk about their roles in a film, they always talk about having other actors to bounce off of.  Reynolds didn't have that luxury in this movie.  His face, his voice, his limited movement had to do so much to keep the crowd interested, and man he nails it!

Rodrigo Cortés

Cortés had 17 days to shoot this film!  Ryan Reynolds follow-up to Buried, The Green Lantern, took 10 times that long!  The Spaniard says the film is a homage to Alfred Hitchcock films of the past.  Cortés' use of camera angles and lighting make us feel like we're caught in the coffin with Reynolds.  The shots reflect the emotion of the character in such a way, you forget the setting and just focus on Reynolds.

What I didn't liked about the film:
The Ending
Maybe it's a brilliant ending, but I disagree.  We have invested in this character for the entire movie; we've heard him get blown off by one person after another in the United States; we've seen him deal with the terrorists that captured him; we've seen him get accused of things he's never done; the ending should be just as fitting.  I'm not going to spoil anything.  But the ending is way too convenient for the complexity of the first 94 minutes in the film.  That's all I will say, let me know if you agree.


The Blu-Ray of the movie is pretty bare bones in the Special Features department.  A simple "making of" feature is all you get, along with a trailer of the film.  We have to be understanding though, it WAS an independent film with a tiny budget.

What excites me the most about this movie is... inspiration.  YES, inspiration to both up and coming directors, as well as the major studios.  Takes risks!  Give new directors the encouragement to create something new and original like Buried.  And as for the directors themselves, don't fall into the pattern of directors like Brett Ratner; an idiot who couldn't make an original film if his life depended on it!

Wow, Anne Hathaway will play Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises; Tom Hardy will play Bane

A fan made mock-up

Remember the rumor about Megan Fox playing Catwoman?  Remember the Angelina Jolie rumor?  Yeah, I do.  Well, all the rumors can be laid to rest, Anne Hathaway has been cast as Selina Kyle aka Catwoman... and I hate it.  If you've ever, EVER read this blog, and see Anne Hathaway's name, it's usually in a negative light.  She is the undisputed, most overrated actress in Hollywood.  I just keep saying to myself... 'Director, Christopher Nolan has never let you down'.  I have to believe he made the right choice for the film.

Last week I posted about the 6 women vying for 2 major roles.  We knew Hathaway was in the running, but all along we thought the roles were that of Talia al Ghul and reporter Vicki Vale.  Not so.  It's official, the first of two lead female roles is Selina Kyle. 

Along with the casting of Hathaway, we now know who Tom Hardy will play in The Dark Knight Rises.  Hardy will play the second villain, Bane.  Hardy was cast back in October; but no one knew who he was going to play in the film.  Most people guessed Dr. Hugo Strange or Black Mask.  Both characters seemed to fit in Nolan's "real world". 

The internet/Twitter/blogs all went nuts at the announcement.  Nolan was bound to choose a lesser known villain that the Batman films in the past.  But Bane was already portrayed (horribly) in Batman & Robin.

Bane was created in 1993.  He's both brilliant and has superior strength to Batman.  He was a prisoner at one point; and the aforementioned Dr. Strange tested a new drug called "venom" on him, which acted as a steroid.  So maybe Dr. Strange will still be a player in the film, maybe even a cameo.

Like I said about Nolan before, I trust him, unquestionably.  So I know he'll find a way to make this work! 

Want to see some Irony at it's best?  Check out the picture to the right.  It's a fan made poster of Bat Girl, featuring none other than Anne Hathaway.  Considering it was on the internet soon after The Dark Knight was released in theaters, that's some irony!  Hate it or love it, Hathaway is in the film.

Photo of "Dredd" motorcycle

This little treat is from slashfilm.  It's a photo from the set of the new comic adaptation, Dredd.  We’ve covered it for a while here on AtD.  Karl Urban will fill the shoes of the lead character in hopes of erasing the memories of the Sylvester Stallone version.  Enjoy folks!

Another Captain America photo

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The LA Times gets all the good stuff!  Here's another pic of Chris Evans in full uniform in Captain America: The First Avenger.  The movie is set to be released in the Summer, but the pictures keep on a-comin'.  I'm sure we'll see a trailer within the next few weeks, most likely during the February 6th Superbowl.  But we'll have to wait and see.  Enjoy.

New "Sherlock Holmes 2" Picture

This is the second picture to be released and it comes from an article in the LA Times. The article talks about the plot for the sequel to the 2009 smash hit. I loved the first film and so did Matt. Both films are directed by Guy Ritchie. We're both looking forward to this Christmas weekend when the sequel will be released. That is all for now kids!

6 Women, 2 Roles, 1 Huge Movie... "The Dark Knight Rises" Leading Women Casting

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The title summarizes the situation, I'll go into more detail. The Dark Knight Rises is the third Batman film in Christopher Nolan's trilogy. The first was Batman Begins and it introduced us to a great villain that could live in Nolan's "real world". The villain was Ras al Ghul, played by the great Liam Neeson. Click the jump to hear about the rumored female characters, as well as what I think of each actress up for the roles.

Well, it's been rumored that Talia al Ghul will be the main villain in the TDKR, set to avenge her father's death. The rumor works on many levels. First of all, it fits within the world that Nolan has created. It COULD happen. Second, and I think more importantly is, it brings the trilogy full circle, and supplies a fitting end to an amazing run for Nolan. When I go through all the actresses that are up for the part, you can begin to see the physical similarities for this character.

The second female character to be rumored for the film is Vicki Vale. Remember when Kim Basinger played the character in 1989 for Tim Burton's Batman? She's the investigative reporter for Gotham. I can only assume her character will be investigating the whereabouts of Batman, as he was cast out at the end of The Dark Knight. You will also notice physical similarities to this character from a few of the actresses.

First, Keira Knightley. I love this pick. She would make an amazing Talia al Ghul! She looks the part, as in, she could be Liam Neeson's daughter. She has the physique, she's been in plenty of action movies. Plus, she has an accent which could play well into the story if she was raised chasing her father around the world. And last but not least, she's a good actress! Yeah, that IS still important to Mr. Nolan.

Next up is an actress I do not like, nor do I want in this film! Jessica Biel would definitely look the part of Vicki Vale, but I don't like her, so we're going to move on.

Another actress I don't like! Anne Hathaway is, I've said it before, and I'll say it again... the most overrated actress in Hollywood. I just don't understand it to be honest with you. She could NEVER pull off Talia, but possibly Vicki. She reminds me too much of Katie Holmes though and I hope that works against her.

Then there is lesser known Kate Mara. I liked her in The Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg, albeit a very small role. She physically looks the part of Talia, but I don't know. She is smart and sexy and could probably play Vicki as well. I like the dice Mr. Nolan is rolling.

Next up is a definite unknown to American fans... Charlotte Riley, who just so happens to be engaged to Tom Hardy; who has already been cast in TDKR after his amazing role in Inception. She must be up for the role of Talia. She looks the part, has an accent and could do well. I've never seen her work, but read a few bios, and it looks good.

Last but not least is Gemma Arterton. I loved her in Prince of Persia, and thought she did what she could with 007: Quantum of Solace. I think she would be up for Talia as well. I liked her in the past, but hope Nolan passes on her for this one, she just wouldn't fit in, I think.

I have to tell you who the dream casting would be... Keira Knightley for Talia al Ghul and Kate Mara for Vicki Vale. I think they're both classy, sexy and all around good actresses. Whoever it is, they're going to have to prove themselves to Christopher Nolan. That makes me feel better no matter who gets picked. We'll keep you up to date as I'm sure a decision will be made in a week or two. The movie starts shooting in May so there's no time to waste!