Movie Review Monday! The Social Network

Welcome to Movie Review Monday!

For the first installment of this new weekly tradition, I wanted to write about a movie that has had a lot of hype lately and is still somewhat relevant, what with the Oscars not too far behind us.  So I chose The Social Network; the riveting story of the founding of Facebook.

This movie, when it first debuted in theaters, immediately generated whispers of several Oscar nominations.  The Academy didn't fail to disappoint and gave it a well deserved 8 nominations including: Best Writing (Adapted screenplay), Best Original Score, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Picture.

Now, I don't want to spoil anything, but if you're the kind of person who needs a resolve at the end of a movie, who needs a happy ending where everyone finds a way to get along, this is not the movie for you.  This movie is based on a true story so there's no way to distort the truth of what ultimately ends up happening, but you can sure as hell find ways to make the ride that gets you there as exciting as possible.  This is what The Social Network does.

The writing in this movie is some of the smartest, most exciting dialogue I've heard out of a movie since the great black and white era where you needed great writing to make a movie exciting.  Aaron Sorkin is masterful in his writing to say the least and completely deserved the Oscar win.  With the perfect script, you feel some pressure to find the perfect cast.  That's just what they did when they found Jesse Eisenberg to play Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. If it weren't for no-doubt winning performance from Colin Firth in The King's Speech, he would have had a good shot at winning the Oscar for Best Actor.  The sidekick Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, definitely deserved some Oscar recognition with at least a nomination but there was no such luck for Garfield (I was upset when he didn't get a nod).  And Justin Timberlake as Napster founder, Sean Parker, is great as a guy who you can't help but hate because of how much of an a-hole he is throughout the movie.

Other things to watch out for are: the unique but driving, Oscar-winning score from Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, especially the scene of the crew race where they use "In the Hall of the Mountain King;" the way the editing makes scenes of typing "seem like bank robberies;" the heated scenes between the Winklevoss twins and Zuckerberg in the conference rooms and, actually, any scene where Mark Zuckerberg talks (that's basically the whole movie).

AAAAND the iWantbesexy rating is....

9.4 out of 10!

Brainstorm!

Hello both of my two followers,


So as it turns out, I jumped into creating a blog without any actual ideas of what I wanted to write about.  This post will be to anyone who may or may not stumble upon it.  I NEED your HELP!


I can give you a few ideas as to what I do, what my interests are and so on, but it's up to YOU in the end to tell me what it is you are interested in hearing about.


So first things first.  I sing in an all male A Cappella group called Not Too Sharp and I am a complete A Cappella...not addict, to soft of a word...yes I am an A Cappella junkie.  I love listening to it all the time, I love arranging songs, I and I even love getting technical sometimes and reviewing other peoples' songs.  I am currently a co-host on an A Cappella radio show called The Voice Box on WUNH and I love everything about it.


Next I feel I should warn you (if you haven't already guessed from my inaugural blog) that I am a movie geek and a huge movie fan.  Once again, I sometimes get into a technical side of things where I like to pretend I write for some famous newspaper (maybe in the future?) and review movies that are talked about or really well-known.


I like musical theater. No, I LOVE musical theater.  But unfortunately, the availability for me to go see a show is very limited because I am a full time student and I am poor.  But if you have any recommendations of soundtracks for me to give a listen to, I will be happy to do so.  I'll even wikipedia the plot so I can make some sense of it.  "Wikipedia" is a verb right? To "wikipedia" something...? Yeah.


Lastly I should tell you the reason I started this blog is because I love to be journalistic at times and I'm even considering making that my major (definitely at least a minor).  I won two awards while I was writing for my high school newspaper The Lancer Spirit, based out of Londonderry High School. One for an article I wrote about my good friend Andy Lee and another for an editorial I wrote ripping PETA a new one called "My beef with PETA." I'll definitely post that sometime.


Anyway, there you go!  Maybe I can have a theme for each day of the week or maybe I'll just wing it everyday like I did today.


And remember: iWrite. uEnjoy. iWantbesexy. See uAgaintomorrow!

And the Oscar Goes to...Me! Cause I'm awesome.

Wait.  So, are movies getting better or worse?

Last night, the event that all cinema geeks such as myself wait in agonizing anticipation for, finally came.  The red carpet was rolled out and every celebrity from the A-list to the F-list rolled in telling the camera men and women who they were wearing.  All seemed perfect and everything was a go for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, but then why do I sit here writing with such a lack of satisfaction and enthusiasm with how the supposed climax of the cinema-year played out?

The first few awards came and went with their usually side of apathetic nature and I thought to myself, “It’ll get better when the bigger awards with the big name movies get announced,” but no such luck.  With each progressing award presentation, I felt this growing feeling of dissatisfaction when all of the expected excitement never showed up.  So I began searching for what was making this Oscar night so...dull.

The hosts?  Now Anne Hathaway and James Franco look like the perfect hosting-duo on paper, and the opening cinematic that featured Alec Baldwin was quiet funny, but when it came down to the two of them being on stage, all the proverbial crickets in LA were chirping away.  But I don’t think that they were the cause of all my confusion.  After all, Anne Hathaway actually did display a near perfect host-like demeanor and I’ll give James Franco the benefit of the doubt.  He did have to go through the whole show waiting for his nomination category to be announced...and he still managed to have his funny host moment when he came out in full drag featuring a pink dress, blond wig and make-up.  Very tasteful, might I add.

So if it wasn’t the hosts, then perhaps it was just the layout of the show in general that made it lose it’s pace.  All the actual moments where things could’ve gotten exciting, such as Anne’s musical number or the lackluster original score presentation, were cut too short or weren’t interesting enough.  And with all the A-list presenters that were lined up you’d expect more humor and entertainment.  But once again, I don’t think that this was the cause of my inexplicable dilemma.

I wasn’t dissatisfied with the actual winners of the awards.  I believed all the receivers to be very deserving.  So then how could it be that in my first official year of being a movie geek, that I was unimpressed with the Superbowl of movies?  This was the first year where I made sure to see every movie that was nominated and I loved everything about every single one of them.  I was enthralled and captivated by these movies whereas, in previous years, I would have found them boring.  It was my coming of age into cinematic maturity.  I wouldn’t have more than a sentence of criticism about any particular movie that was nominated this year.

Maybe that’s the problem, then...the movies are, in fact, too good.

Watching the award show itself, one would expect it to make the audience feel the same excitement that they get out of watching the movies that are being honored.  But with such high expectations, no one would be satisfied.  Such was my problem.  I fell in love with each one of the movies that were nominated and thus expected each of them to be recognized in some way or another.  No wonder I felt such disappointment; what with 10 movies being nominated for best picture, only 6 of them winning any actual awards and the most that any individual movie won was 4.  Then there were bad movies like Alice in Wonderland which ended up taking home 2 awards and the terrible movie, Wolfman, bringing in the award for make-up.  All of this happened this year when I’m used to excellent movies getting their dues.  For example: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King winning 12 Oscars and Slumdog Millionaire winning 8.  Now that makes for exciting television.

However pleased I was with the results of the winners, I still feel this longing and hope that the movies that weren’t recognized will become so.  And I suppose I can’t be disappointed for movies being too good.  That’d be crazy.  If anything I should be hopeful that this year has set a new precedent for movies to come, and that new precedents will be set with each coming year’s movies.  To those bold enough to try, I say good luck.

For a full list of the nominees and the winners from The 83rd Annual Academy Awards, go to: http://www.imdb.com/features/oscars/2011/nominations