The Social Network

“The Social Network” is a movie about Facebook.  There’s been a lot of hype about it, since that’s pretty much the first mainstream movie about the modern Internet and the social networking.  And Facebook having half a billion registered users doesn’t sound like geek-only territory anymore.  But on top of that, what added plenty to the hype was that the film is not a documentary.  There is plenty of fiction in it.  Not in the sense that things didn’t happen, but in the sense that they didn’t happen exactly as shown, and they weren’t as important as shown.  Have a look at this Wikipedia page for more on that.

I was interested in seeing this movie for a number of reasons.  First of all, I am much involved with social networking and the modern Web.  And even though I don’t find Facebook particularly interesting for my personal needs, I do consider it to be paramount for the current state of the Internet.  Secondly, I wanted to see how the filmmakers will balance the geeky nature of the story.   And thirdly I wanted to see if I could disconnect from my technical bias and see this film as pure entertainment, without passing judgement to its authenticity.

So, here’s what I think about it.  I was able to see at as a “normal person”.  The film is not very technical, and it not being too accurate historically, I really didn’t have any other option.  It’s similar to how “Inglorious Bastards” are not a historical World War II movie.  So I had no problem with it.

The film is entertaining.  I think the character of Jesse Eisenberg who played the found of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg was interesting.  I was surprised as to how many technical details were allowed in a mainstream movie – Perl programming, web scrapping, security concerns over Apache directory listings, etc.  And yet, how all these technical tidbits were not at all important for the film.  I knew what they were talking about it, but I could in a very similar way had no clue and it wouldn’t have affected my perception of the film.

But even though the film was interesting and entertaining and wasn’t a waste of time by any means, I am still disappointed.  I think that there is a lot of cool stuff going on with and at Facebook.  I think there are plenty of cool people in and around it.  And I think that the real history of Facebook creation or milestone episodes of that history would have made a way better film.  It doesn’t have to be less entertaining, but it does have to be more accurate.  After all, it does have half a billion of registered users. After all, it is one of the most successful business on the Internet. After all, it is a social phenomena.  And I think that makes the history of Facebook and people who are involved with it very interesting.

I won’t however allow my personal wishes for this movie to interferer with what this movie is.  And what it is a good entertainment bit.  My rating overall – a 4 out of 5.

22 Bullets

I’ve heard a few good things about “22 Bullets” so I put some effort into getting a copy.  The film is also originally in French, so I had to spend some time finding a viewable translation.  I don’t really like dubbed films, so I opted for English sub-titles.  Too bad the ones I got were done via automatic machine translation (I am pretty sure it was Google Translate).  They conveyed the meaning, but had no authentic beauty.

Anyways, back to the movie itself.  For me it was a disappointment. I enjoyed Jean Reno acting, as I almost always do.  But everything else was bad.  The story was very simplistic and very straight forward.  No plot twists there.  The acting of most other characters was mediocre.  And really it was a move with nothing much happening.

On top of that, I have a problem with movies that make idols out of criminals and that promote criminal way of life.  I think we have enough crap in this world already to be asking for more, especially in such a way.  Maybe it was lost in translation, but “22 Bullets” seemed liked that kind of movie.

Overall, a 3 out of 5, mostly for Jean Reno.

From Paris with Love

“From Paris with Love” is a fast-paced action comedy with John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.  I found this movie by accident, but I quite enjoyed it.  So much in fact, that I watched it twice in the last month or so.  Sure, it has a few weird romantic moments that needed more polish, but all of those are nicely compensated by action, humor, and an explosive, brutal, yet humane character of John Travolta.  It’s John Travolta at his best.  The one I missed for a long time now, since “Pulp Fiction”, “Be Cool”, and “Michael”.

Remember all those James Bond movies with Sean Connery?  And then how all the charm was taken out of Agent 007 by Daniel Craig?  Well, this movie is a variation on a modern James Bond (an American, of course, but still in Europe), with plenty of charm, and yet with enough brutality of Daniel Craig.  Without Daniel Craig.  (Not that I have anything against Daniel Craig outside of James Bond role).

There is not much else that I can say about it.  Not your regular family entertainment, but a bunch of guys could have a blast with it over a pint of beer.  My rating – 4 out of 5.

Blogging milestone : 5,000+ posts

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you post number 5,005.  I nearly missed it altogether, so please excuse a not exactly a round number.  And now, before you throw things at me, let me highlight some disclaimer points:

  • I’ve written more than 5,000 blog posts in my life.  But quite a few of them went down, disappeared, or are blocked behind corporate firewalls.  Today’s celebration is only about my personal blog.
  • Not all of these blog posts were written by hand.  Some are aggregates from Twitter, Delicious, or some other third-party service that I used.  But I count them anyway, because they compensate for those lost posts, and because the spirit of sharing even via a third-party is too similar to blogging.  I found something worth sharing, I shared it, and it ended up on my blog in one form or the other.
  • Most of these posts are utter crap that nobody will ever read or use.   But I still celebrate them, because I took the effort to write them, and because they were important to me at some point in time.
  • On top of that, I celebrate all these posts that survived over multiple blog software migrations, hosting changes, restructuring and reorganizations.  While they are a huge mess that many of you would be glad to throw away, they constantly remind me of all those transformations that I went through.  And if nothing else, they provide me with an extra leverage in any data organization argument.  After all, thousands of posts and comments over 10 years of blogging should count for some experience.

Let the celebrations begin!

Day in brief