Tech Flick

This afternoon before the UConn game I watched Social Network (2010).

I was a little in a mood for an Aaron Sorkin that's a little more Sorkin'd up than Moneyball. David Fincher sure directed the crap out of this one. When this first came out it was a movie that I was drawn to and didn't know why. Watching it around six years after it came out, I'm pretty sure that's because it's an incredibly well made movie that mixes a few naratives through a couple of depositions to make a very visual and fun dramatic film. There's a lot of flashy things that are used to show simple things changing the simple things like putting together a website and business meetings into engaging, exciting events.

One thing that was fun to notice was that a lot of the themes or shorthand used in the great show Silicon Valley seem to be established in this movie. It makes some things more recognizable for the viewer of the series by cutting some corners of having to have some mindnumbing exposition or creating a groundedness for odd characters. I like that the Justin TImberlake character-type seems ot have been used in Silicon Valley in their investor that "put radio on the internet." In Social Network a younger JT character sets up the line "you know what's cooler than a million dollars? A [billion dollars]." In Silicon valley the radio on the internet character is fixated on being a member of the "three comma club," a term that seems as though he created it just for himself refering to being worth a billion dollars (a number with three commas).

This is a really great David Fincher movie that I don't think he has quite equalled since, and the reference it has created in pop culture is great for Mike Judge's great series.