I think it's a little too late to be calling anything "a lock." Some of my friends who saw BLACK SWAN in Toronto are calling that "a lock." Let's wait a few months and see what the rest of the field looks like.

*puts on Oscar hat*

With a field of ten nominees, I think we can start calling certain movies locks. From the looks of it, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, Toy Story 3, The King's Speech, and - indeed - The Social Network are in. I'm not comfortable calling anything else in the clear, though 127 Hours and Another Year seem to be a shoo-in. If this were a five nominee year, the only lock at this point would be The King's Speech, though I'd feel pretty comfortable calling out The Social Network.

I should start making Oscar topics one of these days. Or maybe I should write my paper on Primary and study for midterms. Oy.

Leonardo DiCaprio should and probably would have been nominated for best actor for Shutter Island but it came out at a horrible time.

Considering all of the buzz that this film has been getting over the past several months, not to mention the near-universal acclaim that it has been receiving now that it has been released, there is no doubt that this film will be up for some Oscars. Now, it's just a matter of which Oscars it will be nominated for.



He probably still has a shot at a nomination for Inception; I personally hope that he not only gets nominated but actually wins the damn thing one of these days because he has more than proven his chops over the years!

I'd be a bit surprised if DiCaprio got nominated. I view Inception as being like Slumdog Millionaire--a director's movie. The Social Network, conversely, is both a director's and an actor's movie. I think Inception will get nominated for best picture, possibly best director, and a slew of technical awards, but I'm a bit doubtful that it will get any acting nods.

Unless Swan is far, far beyond Network, I think the Academy will favor Fincher over Aronofsky this year. King's Speech will probably get a lot of buzz for Colin Firth, but I doubt the actual movie will win. True Grit will be great, but definitely won't win as a remake of a western. Hereafter might just be another Invictus...I guess we'll see.

I still haven't seen this... Still looking forward to it!!

But as far as Oscars go, I would go ahead and say this is in, along with Black Swan, maybe True Grit, and Stone should get a couple of noms.

I'm going to go ahead and create a topic in the General Forum for Oscar buzz. If you want to post something about The Social Network's or any other film's Oscar chances, do it there.

Here's a link: http://reelviews.net/reelviewsforum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3107

Ironic that Fincher should make a movie about sensationalism when he is about to make a sensational ass-clown of himself with GWTDT.

I'm sure that's what everyone said about him and The Social Network. I honestly don't have a shred of thought as to why Fincher would want to remake the Millennium trilogy, but maybe he'll add a little something to it that it didn't already have. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt until I see the final product.

I have doubts about GWTDT. For one thing, the Swedish version was excellent--I can't imagine topping it, and I can't imagine finding an actress who could embody the character better than Noomi Rapace.

Also, though, I can't imagine that he won't make concessions. We're talking about a big budget movie, here--I imagine that Salander's bi-sexuality will be downplayed if not eliminated, the more graphic material will be absent or considerably toned down, and what we may be left with is...well, I won't say the Da Vinci Code, because Fincher will never make something that awful (and the source material is infinitely better), but I just don't see it measuring up.

I've only seen Dragon Tattoo, but I can say with full confidence that Fincher is a better director than the guy who made the Swedish version. Daniel Craig is also a better actor than the Swedish lead, so we might have something to look forward to.

I'm not too wild about the reporter character in general--personally I think that Larsson was not a very good writer, but a guy who happened to create a phenomenal character (Lisbeth Salander)--kind of like Thomas Harris. I think that he started out wanting to write a story about a reporter, a thinly veiled, idealized version of himself (hence the incredible libido of the reporter), and threw in Salander as a supporting character. Somewhere along the way, he realized that the thing that drives the story is Salander.

But I doubt that even Daniel Craig can do much with that character, unless they make some revisions. To me he's Nick Carraway--he's necessary but simply not the engaging character.

I liked the direction of the first one, but I found the second one to be a letdown. And having read the third novel, I find it very hard to believe that a compelling movie can be made without substantial rewrites.

Rooney Mara (Erica Albright in The Social Network) is going to be Lisbeth Salander and I liked what she did with her limited time in TSN. But I don't think anyone can outdo Noomi Rapace's performance.

Very good movie. Longer review is forthcoming.

If you take somebody's idea, it doesn't really count as stealing if their idea is really a localized composite of a bunch of other ideas already in widespread use by many businesses.

Zuckerberg didn't take anything substantive from them. In fact, if the movie is any indication, they didn't have anything substantive to take. Zuckerberg did the work on Facebook, secured the financing, executed the whole thing without any involvement from them whatsoever. He did refuse to talk to them after the initial meeting, which wasn't cool, but being an asshole isn't the same thing as being guilty of intellectual property theft.

In short: dick move? Sure. $65 million dick move? Hell no.

Requiring "@harvard.edu" is such an intrinsic element that it makes the difference between one guy creatively owning a billion dollar idea and somebody else owning it? I don't buy it.

For one thing, Facebook didn't stay at Harvard for long, and the expansion to other colleges (and, eventually, everywhere) didn't impede its functionality or its viability in any way. The Harvard exclusivity was a transitory element that was quickly done away with. For another, you might just as well highlight the other major element of the twins' idea that didn't make it into Facebook--the fact that it was specifically to be a dating site, rather than a comprehensive social networking service.

Furthermore, this ignores the arguably more innovative elements that the twins had nothing to do with. Relationship status. Interested in. Classes, and so forth. If the movie is a reliable indication, Zuckerberg accurately perceived those the things college students would want to know about each other, and did so independently.

Again, I'm not arguing that Zuckerberg is a choirboy by any means, but I don't think a couple of guys who pitched their dating site to him are entitled to his money.

Has it really been so long since SEVEN and FIGHT CLUB?

How soon people forget that Fincher made his reputation as a rather fearless filmmaker who isn't afraid to push buttons and the envelope. I agree that THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO doesn't need to be remade, but if it must be remade then Fincher is the best case scenario. It's not like we're talking Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman here.

My take on the movie.



The rest is here.

Liked the movie a great deal, but disagree completely with Berardinelli's claim that the movie was "even-handed" in its depiction of Zuckerberg. I think he was painted as borderline sociopathic.

Zuckerberg was certainly portrayed as lacking empathy, but it seemed like something he couldn't help--that it's a problem he was never able to overcome, which gives an interesting subtext to the unusual fervor of his approach to other problems.

The guy who really takes a beating for the ages is Sean Parker.

Yeah, Parker comes close to Mephistopheles in the film; I think that Zuckerberg is shown as someone who only wants what he can not get--first, to be able to join clubs that his social ineptness prevents him from, then to have the girlfriend that dropped him, etc. he's borderline Asperger's, but I definitely wouldn't say sociopathic.