Why The Social Network is the best film of the year

Or the decade.

For the simple reason that Facebook---or pisbuk, as some of my colorful acquaintances lovingly call it---has taken control of every aspect of your life.

Even Friendster---that archaic incarnation of all things revolving around the spectrum of social networking has not conjured the kind of rabid following and dependence from people not unlike substance abuse and chain smoking the way Facebook did. I joined it with no real intention of actually spending any time toward it but MY HEROES ABILITY happened and it was all downhill from there. Underestimate the site at your own risk.


Even networking peers like Twitter and MySpace haven't successfully tapped into the collective sensibilities of all types of social strata, culture, and interests of the entire planet. Which makes the guy who came up with Facebook one of the most creative geniuses the human race has ever produced. A broad generalization, but I'm sure many will agree.


And that is what the entire movie was all about. But it was as much a story about Facebook's inception as that of highly talented individuals willing to sell their soul and screw each other over for profit. It's no more than a movie about Facebook than "SAW" is about a handyman tool.


Mark Zuckerberg is not a very likable person; at least if the way he was portrayed in the film and popular media is to be considered. But like most visionaries and innovators, a generous heaping of talent and imagination is apparently balanced by, well, let's just say being a 'people person' is not part of the package. 'Asshole' was a generally agreed-upon trait the guy's detractors were fond of throwing at his direction; and the real person the movie was based upon even went on record with a surprisingly civil statement about only wishing the filmmakers hadn't done a picture about him while he was still alive. Who could blame him? While the movie obviously painted a very 'human' side of the guy, pretty much everything else successfully painted him as an unfeeling and calculating manipulator capable of rivaling any reptilian entity in the planet.


David Fincher (SE7EN, Fight Club) managed to pull off an ambitious subject matter that would have been abysmally catastrophic had it fallen into the wrong hands. That it's a film where dialogue and a few shots of those rare 'Eureka!' moments Zuckerberg had in starting off the soon-to-be gigantic site, his Machiavellian strategies, and his different lawsuits are the only foundations to keep you interested and engaged instead of the kinetic action sequences, sappy teenage love scenes, toilet humor and CGI eye candies that are the staples in crafting movies for an audience who is increasingly devolving into a mass that's adapting the attention span of a housefly.

Another big revelation was Trent Reznor's involvement in the project. Another artist who I am confident can't do anything wrong. From ear-splitting anthems like 'Happiness In Slavery', the eerie soundscapes he did for the sound design of iD Software's Quake, to the gentle and ambient tunes off 1999's The Fragile and 2007's Ghosts I-IV, the guy is a walking incarnation of a modern musical renaissance man. He and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross created the music that enhanced the film's potency. Not that the NIN frontman is a relative newcomer to the film scoring scene; some of the early remixes of songs  from The Downward Spiral was also used in Fincher's SE7EN. And now it looks like Reznor is going to be nominated for the Oscar for this recent project.


Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg, while clearly played to suit the celluloid medium and probably a million times as obnoxious as well as interesting as the real deal, comes off as one of the best anti-heroes to have come out of the last decade. Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is up there with the likes of Travis Bickle, Gordon Gekko and Tony Montana.

Asshole? You bet. 

But he's still a billionaire, and he's the CEO bitch.

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In praise of B-movies

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Tomorrow we can drive around this town

For all its worth, The Gin Blossoms are still the same way I remembered them eons ago when I was still struggling with homework done in the middle of school halls and rest rooms. Not counting singer Robin Wilson’s obvious progression from a fresh-faced contender for the new alternative poster boy of the 90s to a scraggly-haired middle aged performer, guitarist Jesse Valenzuela’s weight, and absence of drummer Philip Rhodes, the music is pretty much what I expected to hear. Their appearance and lineup may have changed but the sound---despite the new singles from their latest album (No Chocolate Cake) pretty much sound the way you’d expect from something by the Gin Blossoms.


Whether the band will take that as an insult or a compliment is not relevant. Personally I like that they never deviated from what formula they used in crafting songs. There are just some bands that look and sound stupid (Chris Cornell’s “Part Of Me”, anyone?) when they tinker with the approach on how to create music. Gin Blossoms belongs to that category. Doing what they did best and snagging new fans out of evoking nostalgia from the old ones. The same catchy, hooky pop songs you wouldn’t mind humming to or hearing from the nearby coffee shop or PUV and tapping your hands along to the beat. Thank God the band has a good head on its shoulders and enough sense not to overstep their capabilities just so people would take them ‘seriously’ as “artists”. 

When I first heard about the news of the concert I surprised myself by not being too enthusiastic about it the way I’d probably had been when I was still in high school. I knew my high school version would kill just to see the concert. Two worn-out cassette copies of New Miserable Experience (1993) would attest to that. I was just a little apprehensive that they might not play a lot of their early materials because when I recently Googled the band I found they had a bunch of new albums after Congratulations I’m Sorry (1995), their second album and the last collection of tunes from the band I’m familiar with. I figured it’s okay if I missed the concert since they’ll probably promote the latest album anyway. And I’m only interested with the singles I knew.


Then the 18th came and I found myself with my wife in the middle of Araneta Coliseum yet again for a concert with another band that belongs to our generation (NIN: Wave Goodbye Tour last year.). 


The band launched into “Follow You Down” and the entire place turned into a massive karaoke sing along complete with the token howls and shrieks from the female fans. It was followed by other lesser known singles like “As Long As It Matters”, “Until I Fall Away” and a whole batch of new materials nobody knew because every time the band played them everyone kept quiet and sat down. I was waiting for the Douglas Hopkins-penned singles like “Hey Jealousy”, “Found Out About You”, “Lost Horizons” and “Pieces Of The Night”. Those were the songs I came for. As long as they played them, I couldn’t care less if they played a Linkin Park or April Boy single afterwards. And they did, with “Hey Jealousy” saved for the encore. 


For a few minutes it felt like it was the summer of 1993 again, somewhere in an old town with a big looming water tank standing before the mountains.

Seeing Red

The gist of it is that you'd be branded as the town leper.


Sore eyes---Conjunctivitis if you'd like to come off like one of those pompous sorts who always insist on using  "Photocopy" instead of the very proletarian "zerox"---can really hurt you in many ways. And I'm not talking about waking up in the morning feeling as if your eyeballs are about to pop out of their sockets like that disgusting film sequence in Gov. Schwarzenegger's Total Recall. 





Like getting stuck inside a bus in a 4 hour trip with  no possible means of stopovers, and it hits you: A subtle tingling sensation at the very core of your stomach; nudging, even playful at first., like a fart that's itching to get out as silently as possible. Then a sudden gut-wrenching pain that demands your full attention. And you're barely 45 minutes into the trip.


At first I thought it was just your average, shampoo-irritated red eye after bathing. I mean how would I know? The handbook says you'd have to wake up with your eyes sealed off by a disgusting sticky discharge with enough adhesive strength to repair broken vases. I went off to work thinking it'd just disappear like most of my bathroom mishaps. When a colleague commented on the grounds for termination because of smoking grass, I knew I was in trouble.



That the damned things stated itching only confirmed it. Before you know it, everyone starts telling you to go home lest you contaminate the workplace and spoil everyone's great time. Fine, it gives a sort of notoriety and fame that can't be achieved by endless preening and name-dropping like most guys at the office do, anyway. 


The eyes are the windows to the soul. 


I'm using tobramycin to heal my soul.

Proficiency

I recently had a lengthy discussion in Facebook with a cousin based in the US about the medium of instruction to be used on schools in the Philippines. It started with a status message I posted about a local TV program that featured a debate whether to use Filipino or a combination of Filipino-English in selected subjects. It was an interesting topic and allowed me to discuss my stand about most Filipinos's fascination and awe with English-speaking people. Hence the disturbing practice of forcing children to learn a foreign language at an early age where proficiency for their own tongue is still in the developing stage. What you'd eventually end up with is a person who's neither good at both and grasping at straws as far as clearly communicating what he wants to communicate properly. And it doesn't help that the so-called English "teachers" who guide the said children have neither the aptitude nor skill in English to effectively train people in the first place.

The explanation was so long I figure I may as well have blogged it.

The conversation in its entirety:

Roman: Interesting debate on Mel and Joey tonight about whether to just stick to Filipino or Filipino-English combination as the medium of instruction in schools. I think that's a very minor problem considering the guest science teacher they have at the show defined 'photosynthesis' as the green component in plants.

Jing: Roman, what's your take on this? (just curious hehe)

Roman: Personally I'd go for Filipino as the medium of instruction in our schools. And by that I mean teachers can explain their subjects in the language they and their students have no problem relating to or understanding. The debate has sparked an extreme form of mentality that references Gestapo-like directives that seem to constrict the use of language exclusively for only the medium chosen. As if foreign and common terms that do not have Filipino counterparts cannot be uttered in class anymore because, like the naysayers have been saying all along, it is not Filipino. Like mathematical concepts that have no known Filipino counterparts---specially complex subjects like Trigonometry or Calculus. But I came from a science high school and one of the best Trigonometry teachers there was able to explain and make us understand the difficult concepts in the subject because he explained the most difficult points and related it to their practical/realistic applications in our local dialect. 

I am no expert when it comes to Linguistics but the difficulty I see and have observed with imposing an English-only policy in some subjects is that 99% of the time, the teachers themselves have no command or aptitude whatsoever in that language. And 'Filipino' itself does not automatically mean 'Tagalog' either. It is a lot more dynamic than people think. If the boo boo above is any indication, I'm sure the teacher knows what 'photosynthesis' means. But look what happens when she explains it in a language that requires her to exert an additional effort just to get her point across. Now imagine that scenario in a classroom setting filled with bored and uninspired students. English is good, no doubt, but I think it should be a supplementary resource instead of the glorified entity people perceive it to be. And there is the mistaken idea that Filipino is limiting. On the contrary, it allows more freedom for teachers to express themselves better than when they are strictly adhering to an English -only policy during class hours.

Big talk about Filipino and here I am explaining myself in English right? True. But school has very little to do with this than my parents (your uncle specially), comic books, and television. I even sucked at grammar when I was in school. The thing is, before I started with this 'inglisan' crap I devoured hundreds of Pinoy komiks, endless reruns of Dante Varona, Lito Lapid and Chiquito movies on Channel 13 and Eat Bulaga. All before I even started first grade. The only reason I gravitated to English materials is because I wanted to read The Fantastic Four and understand what the hell Darth Vader was saying to Luke Skywalker on Cloud City.

Jing: Very well thought of and perfectly written :) I am glad I asked your take on this subject since I am not fully aware of what the debate is all about. I do not think converting the language of instruction to Filipino is limiting; learning EVERYTHING in English is limiting. As a health care worker here in U.S. it is (almost) embarrassing that I cannot translate medical procedures and anatomy in my own language.It would have been great to learn proper Filipino terminology, that would have saved me from explaining to my co workers my inability to properly and effectively translate..tsk tsk tsk..Thanks Roman.

Roman: Salamat Ate Jing. I don't think its your fault for not literally translating certain medical terminologies and jargons to Filipino. I doubt if there are literal translations of most of those in Filipino, anyway. And secondly, you are geographically located in a place where English is the dominant language. Of course you have to adapt. You see, the point is not the blow by blow literal translation of terms---that seems to be what everybody is so focused on when it comes to this topic---but the CLARITY of the message with which you wish to convey to the person you're talking to. 

It has always been about clarity and ease. If you can teach mathematics and science comfortably without worrying that someone will report you for not "ispokening ingglis" during class hours, then good for you and your students. Just because the textbooks are in English does not mean you can't discuss productively using Tagalog, Bisaya or whatever dialect you happen to find yourself belonging to. Just because you watched a Hollywood movie with friends does not automatically mean you should discuss the merits (or lack of it) of the film in English. You say "Hanep talaga lightsaber duel nina Darth Maul, no?" and not "Ang ganda ng ilaw-na-espadahang eskirmahan nina Darth Maul." Not only is the latter statement annoying and stilted, but that's how the majority of Pinoys view the topic of using Filipino as a medium of teaching. I think you get the drift of what what I'm trying to say.

It's also the reason why you react more strongly to "PUTANGINA MO" than "YOU SONOFABITCH."

There's just something about your own language that sticks and refuses to leave when spoken to you.

Ant-like

I always assumed most atheists are people who simply say they are one just because they don't believe in any otherworldly entities/deities overseeing everything.

You know, the old man sporting a white beard sitting on a throne up in the sky surrounded by cherubim and harp-playing angels with a propensity for singing in high octaves; and a predilection for belting  "Amazing Grace" on cue and in varying harmonics whenever someone who just died walks in through the pearly gates.That is of course the popular Christian cliche that people from this religion form in their heads whenever the subject of religion comes in. As a born Catholic I can say that that is definitely the first collage of images that comes to mind whenever anything remotely connected to my own religion is brought up. Even if I do not subscribe to that kind of perception about the afterlife, anymore. It is corny and overtly simplistic generalizing the concept of GOD like that and ignorant at times, specially when information about theology is readily available to most people these days; you'd assume that people would have a little more sophistication in understanding the dynamics of the human  behavior and historical errors of the faith they chose to follow. But like I always believed, to each his own.

There is no doubt that as far as providing naysayers ammunition to debunk religion, Catholicism is at the forefront. And it is also the most controversial and one of the most obviously flawed among the bunch. From the inquisitions to banning innocuous works of fiction like Dan Brown's books, to opposing the reproductive health bill, the list goes on. I have a lot of complaints about it myself but I won't deviate from it. Because it is the only way I know how to acknowledge whatever it is out there that I still believe to be the prime mover and architect of our very existence. Just because science and reason debunked the existence of anything utilizing human methods does not make it a universal truth. That is one conceit of the human race I truly do not trust. As if humans are the only authority in intellectual prowess in all of creation. As one major alien character from an Arthur C. Clarke novel said, "You'd be like an ant trying to count every single grain of sand in the world." That statement just about sums it up for me. Clarke, ironically, is an atheist. The video below presents controversial feminist/atheist/writer Camille Paglia on a very refreshing and informative discussion about religion, art, and atheistic sentiments.

And this thing about atheists---the garden-variety that is: These people share the same deluded self-importance with amateurs who proudly proclaim themselves 'artists' just because they wrote several lines of crappy poetry (if you can call it that) or doodled images in a canvass that would make every "Last Supper" portrait in every dining hall in the country seem like priceless Vermeers in comparison. I personally have no problem with anyone, whatever school of thought or religion they belong to as long as they keep their unsolicited opinions or beliefs to themselves. But what I have noticed is that people with very limited understanding of what they proudly espouse to others are the least knowledgeable about it---be it the endlessly annoying fundamentalists who think they have a one way ticket to heaven and are God's gift to mankind or the snide, so-called atheists who think they are paragons of common sense and higher thinking.

Everyone wants to sound smart.

I wonder what's for dinner?