The Social Network
Many of you will know my aversion to going to the cinema, but Matt finally dragged me along last night to see The Social Network and I absolutely loved it. It had facinating dialogue, great acting, a clever soundtrack, wonderful sets and locations, etc, etc.
But most of all I loved it because I was in the story. That's right. I was there.
This wasn't a flight of fancy film that took me to another time or another world. This wasn't a film about unusual situations or character traits that I could never aspire to. This film told the story of the technology that I have used every day since early high school, and it made me feel so so good.
I still can't get over the way that it started with Livejournal! Take that, all my friends out there on Wordpress and Blogger! As the film opened with Mark Zuckerburg updating his LJ in the (American) winter of 2003 while he hacked into all the Harvard facebooks, all I could think was:
"Ohmygoodness - that is almost exactly when I set up my Livejournal!"
And on and on it went. His html as he updated his LJ, the lines of code written as Facebook took off, the gradual development of the website to look more and more like the product we interact with everyday. I was watching the characters do the things I do and the things I watch my friends do. The things we are all doing right now. I know it was also a sad story about what happens to people who lose sight of relationships, but underlying all of those serious messages I was experiencing something like an adrenalin rush: I can place myself in this story.
But then not everybody would have responded like that. Towards the end of the film, a guy a couple of seats across from me leaned over to his partner and whispered:
"What's 'blogging'?"
Oh well. I guess it's also a great film for exposing generation gaps.
But most of all I loved it because I was in the story. That's right. I was there.
This wasn't a flight of fancy film that took me to another time or another world. This wasn't a film about unusual situations or character traits that I could never aspire to. This film told the story of the technology that I have used every day since early high school, and it made me feel so so good.
I still can't get over the way that it started with Livejournal! Take that, all my friends out there on Wordpress and Blogger! As the film opened with Mark Zuckerburg updating his LJ in the (American) winter of 2003 while he hacked into all the Harvard facebooks, all I could think was:
"Ohmygoodness - that is almost exactly when I set up my Livejournal!"
And on and on it went. His html as he updated his LJ, the lines of code written as Facebook took off, the gradual development of the website to look more and more like the product we interact with everyday. I was watching the characters do the things I do and the things I watch my friends do. The things we are all doing right now. I know it was also a sad story about what happens to people who lose sight of relationships, but underlying all of those serious messages I was experiencing something like an adrenalin rush: I can place myself in this story.
But then not everybody would have responded like that. Towards the end of the film, a guy a couple of seats across from me leaned over to his partner and whispered:
"What's 'blogging'?"
Oh well. I guess it's also a great film for exposing generation gaps.