Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings
Tax the Rich

Website Wednesday

OK, I'm a very private person (and, just what does that mean, really?) but I'm going to share a guilty pleasure: I love reading reviews. Especially book and movie reviews. Not too guilty, I guess, but I love reading bad reviews because I do think you can learn so much more from reading the negative. Like the Twilight series whose reviews can be found as part of my pick for today:

http://www.goodreads.com/

The positive reviews are pretty gushy and teenager-like but the negative reviews go to the jugular of this pedestrianally written but phenomenally successful series. It's good to know that there are discerning readers out there.

Goodreads says of itself: What Is Goodreads? Goodreads is the largest social network for readers in the world. We have more than 5,300,000 members who have added more than 160,000,000 books to their shelves. A place for casual readers and bona-fide bookworms alike, Goodreads members recommend books, compare what they are reading, keep track of what they've read and would like to read, form book clubs and much more. Goodreads was launched in December 2006. Our Mission: Goodreads' mission is to get people excited about reading. Along the way, we plan to improve the process of reading and learning throughout
the world.

Wow! I fell like I'm recommending a literary Habitat for Humanity! Take a long look at Goodreads and be sure to cruise away from the home page. It's all reading this Wednesday, no pictures, but if you enjoy reading books, you'll get a lot of good critical analysis here. Oh, and don't forget to hit "More" at the end of the review since usually you're only looking at the first part of the review.

And now, for a minute, back to The Social Network. I've seen it again and I still don't get its high rating (96%) on Rotten Tomatoes. However, I can flesh out one major criticism, the camera work. I think it contributed to my disengagement with the movie. For example, the scene where the Winklevoss (I love that name!) twins and Zukerberg's roommate realize and then discuss how he has royally screwed them. Director Fincher shoots the scene in close-ups. Instead of a wide-angle shot (and truth be told, I have no idea what that is but I think it's a shot which takes in all the actors in a scene) he focuses on close-ups. First, one twin speaks, then there's a closeup of the roommate speaking, then the other twin.....you get the picture. I know this is an easy way for pick-ups since you only have to call back one actor but you lose dramatic impact this way. These were young men who had been royally screwed by Zuckerberg; in fact, the ensuing lawsuit by the twins is a pivot point in the movie. It's a scene with good dialogue but it works like a TV scene, not a movie scene. TV just moves the plot along; movies, especially movies that want to be seen an intelligent, should work harder for empathy.

Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

Tax the Rich

Movie Monday - The Social Network

Why? Why 96% approval on Rotten Tomatoes for this movie? Why a rating which puts this movie up there with Pulp Fiction (94%), The Godfather II (98%) and Citizen Kane (100%) ?

For those in the world who know nothing about TSN, it's about the rise of Facebook, focusing on its co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and the lawsuits against the company in its nascent stage (circa 2003.). Though I do think the Winklevoss twins are still suing.

The movie is based on The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal,2009, (now there's a title which says it all) by Ben Mezrich.. So, I guess Mezrich's lawyers vetted for libel and I also realize I'm watching a fictionalized real story.

It's not a bad movie in any way. It's intelligent but not engaging; thorough but not boringly so. Based on the movie, I would say that Zuckerberg has Asperger qualities: very bright but lacking effective social skills. In fact, we're first introduced to him as his girlfriend is breaking up with him. Despondent, he starts blogging while drunk and blasts her to the Internet world. And at the same time, he starts posting pictures of girls with the question: Which one is hotter? He gets so much traffic that he crashes the Harvard network......and, yes, folks, this is the seed of the idea which will grow into Facebook.

The actors are all very competent with Justin Timberlake given the juiciest role of the bad boy, Sean Parker, founder of the infamous Napster, and early advisor to Zuckerberg. (His greatest advice probably being call it Facebook, not The Facebook.)

Jesse Eisenberg nails the distant, brain-always-churning look which fits how Zuckerberg is presented. Even at the end, we never learn if he is really as devious as others believe.

What bothers me throughout the movie is that I'm never really engaged with the characters nor their situations. It's like I'm reading a well-written news article on an interesting topic. At the end of the movie, it's thanks and good-bye. Not much more.

And that's why I can't understand its almost perfect critical acclaim. Movies with such ratings should be innovative (Citizen Kane) or out-of-the-box (Pulp Fiction.) I just wouldn't put TSN, a good, solid narrative of a cultural meme, in this category.

Now, if the screenwriter and director had tied in the metaphor of Facebook: worldwide human connections which, since they are only electronic, are really not "human" nor actual connections I could understand its ratings. Facebook and its ilk may have changed our social fabric for the foreseeable future. With its invention, we may be moving closer to the stay-at-home, pajama-clad society as seen in Surrogates. Now, there's a story. But watch TSN. Then go have coffee and discuss stuff.

Note: Two things I did bring away from the movie: I'm not joining Facebook and I'm not sending my kid to an Ivy.

Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

Tax the Rich

Website Wednesday - Good

http://www.good.is/

OK, even though I'm about to use the word good for a third time this week, this website was too good to pass up, for many reasons.

My Good choice today seems to be used as a adjective like in Good Intentions or Good Ideas. But in its About section, it just calls itself Good and says:

GOOD is a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward. Since 2006 we've been making a magazine, videos, and events for people who give a damn.

What’s not to love? Currently, you can read about such things as the US annual hot dog eating contest, NASCAR and solar panels, and “shilling” the male birth control pill. Scroll down and you’ll see a headline saying that anti-war protests could be counter-productive.and the article goes on to discuss the sunk-cost effect based on recent research from psychologists from Washington University. They found that when people have invested in a lost cause (Afghan war) they don’t want to walk away from their investment (lives and money) but would rather pour more money and lives into it to prove their investment was worthwhile.

You get a lot of out-of-the-box articles like that from a video on how creativity can be nurtured to an article with 20 quotes on rape showing after the DSK scandal how different people around the world think about rape.

Good stuff here. (Damn, I can't get away from that word!) Go, take a look.

Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings
Tax the Rich

Movie Monday - Good

I thought Good would be an appropriate movie review choice for the US holiday of July 4th. It’s not a perfect movie, probably no movie can be which has a best-selling book or play as its parent, but it’s a well-acted, adequately constructed movie which looks at the effects of Nazism without resorting to the sledge-hammer approach. (Note: I'm saying "adequately constructed" because there were scenes where I felt I needed to know missing back-stories.)

A general complaint first: the director seems unable to take this movie out of its stage setting. He allows a staged, static quality to pervade. Even when John Halder participates in Kristallnacht, the mayhem in the streets fails to capture us.

And then there’s the imaginary metaphoric music that Halder hears in time of stress. I haven’t read nor seen the play but I bet that music comes from there, probably as an identifying mark, like Rosebud in Citizen Kane. But it doesn’t work in the movie. It could work on the stage where the viewing venue even with the best plays always reminds you of your separation of the stage. There is a special power in movies however so that the best of them “join” with us. Unfortunately, the recurring music in the movie, Good, is the most glaring reason as to why I never connected to it.

OK, after damning this movie, let me tell you why I think it’s worthwhile movie to see. Remembering that I have no history with Good (no play knowledge), I watched it as a well-acted morality play. I watched John Halder, the everyman for all good people, get sucked into a vortex of a fascist government like the proverbial frog first placed in the cold water.

I didn't look at Good as yet another Nazi genocide movie, as many do, but rather as a movie which asks the question: When must good people take a stand? And I’m not talking about good people as heroic people, for John Halder is no hero. We meet him as an adequate college lecturer and slightly befuddled husband and son who assumes household duties as his wife spends hours piano playing and his terminally ill mother moans in the background.

The first scene shows him being driven to Nazi headquarters in the early 1930s. A frightened Halder assumes this summons bodes ill for him and then is relieved that Nazi official, Bouhler, (played by Mark Strong, who seems to be replacing Basil Rathbone as the “good to” villain) only wants him to write a position paper on euthanasia since Halder had written about this topic earlier in novel form.

Of course, the audience hears bells and whistles going off at this point since we know how WWII progressed. However, if you can remove that piece of information from your brain and just look at Halder’s situation as it’s happening you will just be seeing any educated citizen, in any country, at any time. The Nazis, at this stage in their power, want Halder for the cover his academic credentials give their policies and Halder is a man so needy in the areas of love and praise. Well, he gets both, and fast. The succubus of Nazism and Anne both appear at the same time and he lets them both in.

The best parts of the movie are the conversations between Halder and Gluckstein. Mortensen and Issacs are good actors and they both play imperfect people very well.

You’ll miss a lot if you view this movie in the context of Nazism. It’s really a movie about all of us, then and now. And that’s why it’s my choice for our July 4th. Celebration of your country’s representative government should not be flag waving events. They should be times of introspection. The Declaration of Independence was only a fledgling step (and a step only for an elite class.) What have we gained, what have we lost in our march to the present? The music is not the metaphor in Good; John Halder is the metaphor and as such, he is the metaphor for all of us.