The Social Network (Love or hate or a bit of both?)

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I actually like The Social Network. Before I get into the detail, let me first say that it was an incredibly enjoyable movie. Witty, fast paced, rude and completely unapologetic, its characters were completely unlikable in all the right ways and there was hardly a dull moment. It won me over in the first scene, where Mark Zuckerberg the asshole is dumped by his girlfriend with the qualifier 'it's not because you're a nerd, it's because you're just an asshole'. (Nerd boys, there's a lot of truth in this. If you're complaining that you can't get a girlfriend because you're 'nerdy', ask yourself first, are you just a dick?)

But here's the thing: I can't guiltlessly like it, because it was also unapologetically sexist. I don't find that as bothersome as a lot of the blogosphere does and I certainly didn't ruin my movie experience by sitting there analyzing all the ways that it was an inaccurate and offensive portrayal of women, but it was there and it can't be avoided. Aside from the intelligent and fed up girlfriend that appears in the first scene as the catalyst for Mark's creation of facebook (by first inspiring him to create a site where girls at the school can be compared side by side and rated) the only girls to appear in the movie are mindless objects for the enjoyment of the male dominated cast. To the extent that they have any influence over the main characters, it is negative.

It's one thing to say 'the main characters of this movie are male because the creators of this company were male', the main defense I've seen bopping around the few negative reviews of The Social Network, and another thing entirely to say that it's justifiable to have treated every single minor female character as a sex object. Even when the company has expanded to include dozens of workers and interns the only girls who get screen time are having lines of coke snorted off of their stomachs and personally delivering things to the main characters so that they can be ogled and cat called. In the background the male interns are shown writing code and doing meaningful tasks for the company...with no women among them. Aaron Sorkin's defense that it's just a reflection of the reality of the techworld doesn't really hold water. There are women doing meaningful things in that environment, they just didn't fit into his storyline so he didn't mention them, even in passing. Alright, whatever, but at least acknowledge what you're doing.

At the same time, at least the sexism wasn't portrayed as a good thing. It just was what it was. The characters were clearly assholes for a whole slew of other reasons and no one was jumping to the defense of their treatment of the women around them.

So...I still don't know if I like this movie or not. I like asshole characters in general. I appreciate portrayals of the more negative side of human personalities and interactions, without a hero or a villain. Frankly, I like seeing people screw each other over and treat each other like shit and, well, act like real people in real relationships. Because real people are generally kind of assholes. Even the nicest ones fall into that trap from time to time, and most of us aren't the nicest that we could possibly be.

So what I think it comes down to is this: I would recommend this more as a source of great amusement, it's far more well written than most anything else I've seen all year, with great pacing and decent acting. But take it with a grain of salt. Realize it could be better and take it for what it is, not what it could be.

Toy Story Is Proof That I Have A Heart

Toy Story 3 is not a children's movie...it's a movie for all the has-beens, the children that grew up and left childhood behind in the past eleven years. Four out of the five members of my family that saw it today cried--the only one who didn't is eleven years old, with a dollhouse made out of the entertainment unit and a collection of Bratz guaranteed to trip anyone who walks through the living room. This movie wasn't aimed at her, not yet.

It's a movie for tweenagers trying to forget their childhoods, straining to grow up but not quite there yet, and teens desperately scrambling back from the brink of adulthood and wondering where all that time went. Shown in snapshots of yesteryear that probably match the pictures on your mother's wall: Andy constructing fantasy lands out of linkin' logs and imagination, Andy asleep amidst a mountain of well loved toys that are, inevitably, forgotten in a dusty toybox. The toys scramble to hold onto what they've known; Andy grows up, forgets them, prepares to leave them in the attic with only one exception.

My own toys are gone: Barbies beheaded by a ten-year-old tomboy, toy cars crashed, action figures lost and left behind in multiple moves, a toy school bus that got dropped on the cat and was forgotten somewhere down along the line. There's no safe warm attic for them, they died in a dump somewhere. I have a collection of Breyer horses (missing hooves and legs, paint scratched, propped up against each other in the windowsill) and a pile of stuffed animals next to the bed, and nothing else. Somewhere there is a stuffed chihuahua with a pink bow tie named Mr. Snookums (you see, I've always been cruel) who went with me to Florida when I was ten and will no doubt go to college with me when I'm 18. No toddler is getting their grubby hands on these, they're mine, and I cried when Andy passed his off even though they went to a good home.

Andy grew up, went to college, and passed his childhood on to someone else...but it went out with a bang, and in doing so has made me want to cling to mine a little harder.

Today I Nearly Scratched My Eyes Out

(Or Why Seeing Twilight: Eclipse Was a Bad Idea)

To start with, let me justify why I even wasted money on this horrible piece of cinema:

1. I just learned that if you go to the first showing of the day of any movie at a Century theater it's half price. So I didn't waste MUCH money on it. This makes me feel better about myself.

2. I feel the need to mock things from a position of knowledge because knowledge is power and if I know more about something than you do I can probably make you feel stupid even if you aren't (have I mentioned that I'm an elitist bitch? I'm an elitist bitch who likes to feel smart. There, it's been said.)

3. Honestly I just needed a laugh and to be braindead for awhile.

So yes, I saw Eclipse today with a friend. It was truly terrible. The first Twilight movie actually truly impressed me with the incredible amount of work that appeared to have gone into it simply to make it watchable. Sure the acting was terrible, the special effects were low budget, the script was overall cheesy and rather stilted, the characters unbelievable, and the entire plot (what little there was) gave me the creeps on a profound level; despite all this it was a Watchable Movie, taken from a book that appeared to have no plot until somewhere around page 300 (which I never reached, having gotten stuck somewhere in the first two hundred pages of He Hates Me, I Love Him) at which point SMeyer realized something needed to happen to make it marketable. In the first Twilight movie the pacing was managed impressively and the plot (entirely pointless and irrelevant to the main focus on the progression of Bella and Edward's ~twu wuv~) was interwoven into the utter schlock that was the rest of it, and was made relevant from the beginning. I at no point felt like falling asleep.

Eclipse cannot say the same for itself. I sat in my uncomfortable movie seat, next to the poor unfortunate boy I had dragged with me to the early morning showing, and constantly changed position just to keep myself awake. Next to me the boy slammed his face against his knees, whined, pouted, and mimed stabbing himself.

The movie jumped between scenes with nothing to connect them, leaving me blinking and thinking 'why is this relevant to what was just happening?'. Bella and Edward spent a lot of time speaking in monotone about their Epic Love and inability to be apart while making unconvincing doe eyes at each other. Jacob, who could previously have been argued to be the Better Choice, committed minor sexual assault. Charlie (Bella's father) found it amusing when Bella was forced to break her hand on Jacob's face because of this. Edward and Jacob growled at each other and treated the supposed object of their true and earthshattering love as just that, an object, giving her very little choice in anything they did.

At one point Bella got horny and tried to jump Edward's bones and as always, Edward knew what was best and made the decision for her and said No Sex For You. Bella is then portrayed in book and movie both as the uncontrolled seductress with no knowledge of what she's actually doing, and pure loyal all knowing Edward must protect her from herself by denying her what she wants. Edward proposes and Bella gives in because he won't sexually satisfy her OR turn her into a vampire unless she does, Edward is of course a manipulative bastard. Then Jacob and Bella cuddle on a mountain while Edward watches, and Jacob thinks loud dirty thoughts to piss Edward off. Down bellow a random clan of newborn vampires attack the Cullens and the werewolf pack. Jacob leaves to help them after emotionally manipulating Bella into kissing him and saying she loves him (she does, but 'not enough' because Edward is perfect for her, obviously). Edward sees all this but loves her all the same. Then Jacob kills vampires and Edward kills vampires and Bella is thoroughly useless.

At one point near the end Jacob tells Bella that loving him would be 'as easy as breathing' and she wouldn't have to change anything for him. But nope, Bella would rather abandon everything/one she's ever known to be get dead with a virgin a hundred years older than her.

Is this not making sense to you? Good, it's not supposed to, this is pretty much exactly how the movie was paced. NOTHING MADE SENSE, NOTHING WAS CONNECTED, THERE WERE RANDOM FLASHBACKS. NO COMMON SENSE WAS USED. Everyone did exactly the opposite of what they were advised to do.

The only watchable part of this movie was near the end, where vampires were literally punching each others faces off. But you can find a clip of that online and avoid wasting your money and your braincells like I did.