disassociated

A scene from The Social Network, a film by David Fincher.

The Social Network (trailer), directed by David Fincher, is based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires, which he penned with the help of Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), one of the co-founders of social network Facebook, who later fell out with CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg).

Bookended between numerous litigation sessions in lawyers’ offices, The Social Network pieces together the early days of Facebook through a series of flashbacks. The story focuses mainly on the roles of Zuckerberg and Saverin in creating the network, and how they dealt with raising money and profile, while fending off people claiming they had stolen the Facebook idea from them.

After his girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), ends their relationship, Zuckerberg, a technically brilliant but emotionally cold Harvard University computer science student, hastily builds Facemash. It’s a hot-or-not style website that compares female Harvard students with each other. Zuckerberg sources the photos Facemash needs by effortlessly hacking the databases of Harvard’s colleges.

Although Facemash is quickly shut down, word of Zuckerberg’s programming and hacking skills spread, and he’s soon approached by twins, and fellow students, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer). They have an idea for an exclusive Friendster/MySpace clone, but want to restrict membership to only those with Harvard email addresses.

They ask Zuckerberg to help, but after agreeing he instead creates the first version of Facebook, then called The Facebook. His friend and roommate, Saverin, puts up one thousand dollars to cover web hosting in return for a thirty percent share in the venture, and role of CFO.

The Facebook proves a hit with Harvard students, and other universities in the US and Britain are soon admitted to the fold. Meanwhile Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) hears about The Facebook and arranges hefty financial funding for Zuckerberg. Saverin however sees Parker as a threat to his influence, which quickly becomes a source of tension between him and Zuckerberg.

Any dramatisation about an organisation as ubiquitous as Facebook is certain to be of interest to a large number of people. Unlike many highly anticipated films that might play on the hype surrounding their subject matter though, The Social Network does not create false expectations.

Facebook made clear before the film’s release that neither they, nor Zuckerberg, had any involvement in the production of The Social Network. And while Zuckerberg does not present as a villain per se, his portrayal by Eisenberg is far from flattering.

Facebook has certainly had a controversial history (are stories of the early days of Friendster and MySpace anywhere near as colourful?) and it seems every other week brings news of another alleged privacy breach, or a new court action of some sort. Is it therefore a portent of things to come that the final scene plays out in a lawyer’s office?

Originally published Friday 29 October 2010.

Twenty-five years on and people are still asking questions about 1985’s Back To The Future. One that consistently crops up regards the apparent inability of George and Lorraine, Marty McFly’s parents, to remember him, and the part he had in bringing them together, many years earlier.

And to a degree the question makes sense. It would certainly be easy to forget a person you knew only briefly — like for a week — from thirty years earlier. But surely you’d remember anyone who played a big, and very active, part in bringing you together with your future spouse.

The conundrum is this: you tend to remember the people who brought you together in life. You’d certainly remember the person who played Johnny B Goode in such dramatic fashion at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance. And, given that Lorraine had such a crush on Marty in 1955, she’s unlikely to have forgotten him altogether.

What can change over time though are individual perceptions and memories of a person. While I doubt George and Lorraine had forgotten Marty (aka Calvin Klein) all together, they would have forgotten exactly what he looked like after a while. Twenty to thirty years is a long time to remember something like that, more so when you don’t have a photo either.

Even so though, who in their right mind is going think their child, born years after the event, could possibly have had anything to do with their meeting? Can we get back now to simply enjoying repeat screenings of this classic, without the excess analysis?

Originally published Friday 29 October 2010, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Summer Coda, trailer, is the debut feature of Melbourne born filmmaker Richard Gray, and something he’s been working on since 2004. Gray lives and breathes film, working part time in cinemas while at school, and later studying the medium at the Victorian College of The Arts.

Set predominantly in the Mildura fruit growing region of the Australian state of Victoria, Summer Coda is the story of two people, Heidi (Rachael Taylor), and Michael (Alex Dimitriades). The two become drawn to each other, but are initially reluctant to reveal too much of themselves.

The Sydney premiere of Summer Coda took place on Monday, 18 October, 2010 at the Dendy Opera Quays, Circular Quay. This followed its Australian, and International, premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival on 4 August 2010.

Although born in Mildura, Heidi’s lived in the American state of Nevada with her mother since age seven, after her father moved in with another woman. Now in her late twenties, news about him — the first she’s heard of her father in many years — prompts her return to Australia.

Travelling on a budget, Heidi takes to hitch-hiking to reach Mildura after flying into Melbourne, and eventually thumbs a ride with Michael, an apparently easy-going and happy orange grower. Their first exchanges are tense and guarded, but after a somewhat eventful evening in a pub, they begin opening up to each other.

Heidi soon reaches her father’s home and meets Angela (Susie Porter), the woman he abandoned her mother for. Angela, meanwhile, is wary of Heidi, believing she’s only after money. Heidi also learns she has a half-brother, Lachlan (Reef Ireland), who’s ten years younger than her.

Feeling less than welcome at her father’s home, Heidi goes to Michael’s orange orchid, and takes a job helping with the summer harvest. After bonding with the regular, and sometimes rumbustious, gang of fruit pickers who help out on the orchard each year, she learns of a tragic event in Michael’s past that he’s kept from her.

Summer Coda is a drama that may burn a little too slowly for some viewers. An action film this is not. Instead the storytelling is meticulous and deliberate, preferring to leave engaged watchers to piece together what is happening. There is little to fault in the performances, especially of the leads, Taylor, and Dimitriades, who here is worlds removed from the hotheaded Nick Poulos of Heartbreak High.

It was Gray’s intention to focus on the cinematography and soundtrack, something the beautifully filmed sequences from across the film’s settings in Melbourne, Mildura, and Reno, Nevada, attest to. But this might frustrate some viewers, who could perhaps walk away from Summer Coda believing it sacrifices substance for style.

Originally published Tuesday 19 October 2010, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Let Me In, trailer, is American director Matt Reeves’ take of the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), about a lonely twelve year old boy who befriends a vampire girl of apparently the same age, after she moves in next door.

Let Me In is the latest in a line of Hollywood remakes of European films. It follows on from the likes of this year’s Neil LaBute version of the 2007 British made Death at a Funeral, or David Fincher’s upcoming interpretation of The Millennium Trilogy book series. This includes a re-rendering of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is slated for release in late 2011.

Twelve year old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lives with his separated mother (Cara Buono) in the New Mexico town of Los Alamos, but has few friends. Life at school isn’t much fun either, he is often the target of taunts and assaults from a group of older bullies. But Owen finds some solace playing puzzle games, or drifting in and out of an imaginary world in his mind.

He is intrigued by the arrival of a girl, Abby (Chloe Moretz), who seems to be his age, and a man who appears to be her father (Richard Jenkins), in the apartment next door. But Abby has a few quirks Owen can’t make sense of, such as walking around barefoot in the snow. Or the ability to quietly appear, without warning, where ever he is.

While Abby tells Owen on their first meeting they cannot be friends, they nonetheless become close. Meanwhile the town is the grip of a macabre series of murders, which has local police detective (Elias Koteas) thinking a satanic ritual killer is on the loose.

As the murders become more frequent, and begin occurring ever closer to his home though, Owen begins to realise Abby is no normal twelve year old girl. In fact he begins to suspect she might be involved. But does he report her, the only friend he has ever had, or does he instead help her?

The prospect of a remake of any reasonably highly regarded film is enough to strike dread into the minds of many film-goers, something Reeves was acutely aware of, but here, in the director of Cloverfield, is a safe pair of hands. While I haven’t seen the Swedish original, there’s little to fault.

Perhaps there have been a few teen vampire romance films too many recently, but Reeves strikes the right balance between suspense and action, horror and romance/friendship. There are plenty of moments that make Let Me In feel like another sort of story all together.

Originally published Friday 15 October 2010.