Pajiba

Marty! WHOA!!

Hmmm...could the "maybe we'll do another one" have anything to do with the Lionsgate deal to possibly produce through Saw IX that was inked a few years back? You know, when V wasn't totally eviscerated by the critics but movie bloggers weren't aggravated enough by the series to report news like this? Cause I think it might. And I think it will get that far.

And I hope above all hope they kill of Costas Mandylor and bring in an actor who can sell crazy genius serial killer. Like Betsy Russell, whose character is supposed to have that opportunity, but is instead possibly disemboweled by a runaway race car driven by the lead singer of Linkin Park in this film.

AH! I heard the Eric Stoltz thing was one of those great shameful Hollywood secrets where all of the footage was destroyed. Thank you for sharing that. It's still crazy to think that 5 weeks of work was all just thrown out the window. Also, how bad was he that the studio was like, "Yea. We need to let you spend more money and time to get this fixed?" Studios are notorious for freaking out over budget and scheduling issues. PFC, indeed.

And Taco Bell is my secret shame. I know I shouldn't love it. I know it's probably made up of ground up hopes and dreams and cooked in the fires of anguishing lament, but I love it so much. Their fresco tacos are bitchin'.

P.S. Are we all sure that's actually Sorkin? I am making a dubious face.

Look, I'm not really looking forward to a Mad Max sequel, but they could do far, far worse than Theron and Hardy. I got a half chub just from typing those two names in close and sweaty proximity.

Ohhhh, someone is throwing sand near my lady bits.

I agree, Dustin. As a card-carrying feminist, I'm usually the first responder on the scene when sexism is charged, but the critiques against the Social Network seem hollow and desperate. In fact, I thought that the Social Network was a pointed critique of the hyper-masculine ego of the tech field, including the obsession with sexual conquest and blatant misogyny. The film doesn't endorse the gross, dripping sexism of facemash, facebook's predecessor; it explicitly criticizes it. I think that's why the only characters we really empathize with in the movie, Eduardo and Erica, are the two most level-headed, socially aware, and non-ego obsessed characters.

Man what a bunch of hipster pussies you guys are, make wanna PUKE. If it had been Eli Roth no punches would be getting pulled, but since it's Sorkin and his crew, excuses have to be made, rationalizations and all this hand wringing. "OH MY GOD Sorkin couldn't possibly, could he?"

Whatever, you need to grow a pair Rowles.

Zombies in Russia? Didn't Alias do that already?

P.S. Are we all sure that's actually Sorkin? I am making a dubious face.
Posted by: coveredinbees at October 12, 2010 12:30 PM
For the spell check alone, at least..

I think the problem with The Social Network is that when you're crafting a film with sexist characters, it's very easy to fall into the trap of "Well, we're portraying women this way because that's how our characters see them." Which is basically what Sorkin is saying, if I read him correctly.

The problem with that approach is you're filling your movie with stereotypes and not really offering a counterpoint to demonstrate that those stereotypes aren't really true. This gets complicated when your film exists somewhere between fact and fiction, like this one does. But Sorkin himself has officially said that he was more interested in telling a compelling a story than following facts. So his characters were to a large extent his own creations, and he chose to only include stereotypes.

Those stereotypes include more than the sex object stereotype. You get two women in the movie - Rooney Mara and Rashida Jones - who seem to be the kind of thinking women we like in our movies. Okay, cool. But Mara's character (even though she gets the best line in the film) is not a person of her own - she exists as a flash point to inspire Zuckerberg's diabolical genius. As for Jones' lawyer character, she's respectable enough, but she's, again, not fleshed out enough to be any more nuanced than Serious Female Lawyer.

So what you've got is a multitude of well-written, layered male characters - not all sympathetic, but at the very least, they're real, complicated people. Your women, on the other hand, are either party favors or Serious. This is despite the fact that all signs from real life seem to point to the fact that Zuckerberg did have female friends (and a monogamous girlfriend!) in his life that existed as more than props for his creation, and the film chose to ignore that.

So while the counter argument has been that it's unnecessarily heavy-handed in a movie about men to throw in token well-rounded females where they don't exist, just for the sake of being PC, the film deliberately chose to invent a fiction that didn't include women as real, multi-faceted human beings, even though those women did exist in real life. They've just been omitted for more glossy Hollywood fantasy.

Oh Amanda6, I swear I read your post and then I rehashed some of your points anyway. Sorry!

@ Androstarr.

No fucking shit. You think we don't know Taco Bell is crap? I don't even consider it Mexican food, any more than I consider a Big Mac to be a burger. They're garbage. Complete manufactured, artificially flavored and colored dogshit.

But that doesn't mean I don't crave them periodically. It's not because I crave Mexican food or tacos. It's because every now and then my body inexplicably cries out to be mistreated, and every now and then my brain indulges it. It's the same reason I occasionally drink cheap beer.

Trust me, your snobbery and culinary regionalism, while perfectly understandable, is totally misplaced in this particular conversation.

Goddamnit, now I want fucking tacos. Someone get on that.

Have fun with Big Momma Does Bad All By Herself, Goes to Jail, and Meets the Browns IV, Jeremy

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

*squeels*

JEREMY!

Rowles, you're good and all...

It's because every now and then my body inexplicably cries out to be mistreated, and every now and then my brain indulges it. It's the same reason I occasionally drink cheap beer.

@ coveredinbees

Re-hash away! :)

I don't think the problem with 28 Weeks Later was the direction; it was the incredibly stupid screenplay.

Oh...it appears Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was responsible for both.

Anyhow, as much as I respect Danny Boyle and his body of work, I can't see how he'll do himself any favours returning to this.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Taco Bell is an abomination of unspeakable proportions and its mere mention makes me nauseous.

Also: yay, Danny Boyle! Maybe he can make it so that we find out that the entirety of the second film (FIE! FIE UPON YOUR WORTHLESS FILM!) was someone's bad dream. Possibly someone who hates Americans and, well, smart writing.

Stoltz cuts quite a brooding version of Marty McFly. Make no mistake, this Marty would have totally fucked his mom.

Is there any way of making clear that the omission or even diminution of certain characters of a certain gender or nationality is not meant as a slight against real-life members of that group?

Yes. It's by not making that omission or diminution happen in every single fucking movie. We women don't make a fuss over feeling slighted in every single film, because gosh that would take up a lot of time and energy. But we will point it out for films like The Social Network, which is demonstrably a good film, critically acclaimed, and is being heralded as the defining movie of [my] generation. Welcome to my generation - where the men are misogynists and the women are... nonexistent.

Because including one character of each possible ethnicity etc. and making sure everyone gets an equal balance of screen time is going to make for some very cumbersome movies.

It seems like there is this problem where, every time this complaint is made about feeling stereotyped and objectified in a movie, that argument pops up about how cumbersome it would be to stick a token person of every minority/oppressed group into every movie. This argument treats every movie like it exists in a vacuum. It absolutely would be trite and sappy to work in a Benetton ad angle to every single movie. A more realistic approach would be to make more movies where women and minorities are written like individual human beings, not like what the writers think "women" and "minorities" act like. And then, plant the idea that those movies are accessible to everyone, not just niche chick-flick or minority audiences.

Not having been previously exposed to anything else Sorkin had done previously (because my viewing habits don't owe a damn thing to anything), I was startled by the brownface. Hand in hand with the 'how are minorities handled' in film, is the 'are they handled?' issue--i.e., did they whitewash the characters or brown up the actors and if so, why?

People go to Taco Bell because their products have lard in them, I really don't think it's anything more complicated than that. Kids, I'm a student on permanent disability and the odd thing about Canada is that it's not the cheaper alternative to go out for fast food. Fast food is expensive here and really more of a 'special occasion' type of thing, for money and health reasons. Maybe I'm living in a post-Ramsay world, but I have less than no patience for food snobs. I eat what I can afford and what I'm feeling well enough to prepare and I don't care to suffer through what every Tom, Moz and Sorkin can pull out of their treatise caps. Man, Lenny Henry wasn't overdoing it at all! Eat in silence, or do as Depeche Mode does and 'Leave In Silence'. It's 1984 again, kids, but don't listen to Kajagoogoo this time: they suck.

Well now, isn't Katharine Hepburn's character Susan the most irritating little shit-bitch in BRINGING UP BABY? I've always thought so.

Danny Boyle is considering a return to the director’s chair for the next installment in that franchise

Blargh.
Dude needs to remove the head/destroy the brain of 28 Demarcations of Time Later and just move the fuck on to something else.

Dustin needs to write this column full-time. It is sooo refreshing to not be drowned in curse words (esp. fuck) every three words. The usual writer is so foul-mouthed I either use selective reading skills to avoid the filth or skip the column altogether. Too bad, since there are usually some good links posted.