This is the story of the civil rights movement, from 1952-1965. Interviews and archival footage tell the story of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that declared school segregation unconstitutional and the Montgomery bus boycott that forced the South to begin to allow equal access in public accommodations. As momentous as those events were, they were even more significant in what came next — decades of social, legal, and cultural upheavals that would lead to the Civil Rights Act, the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia abolishing the laws that prohibited inter-marriage, and, a generation later, the country’s first African-American President. The bigotry is shocking to us today, which is all the more reason we need this documentation. And the heroes are here: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, and more.
The PBS series, its sequel, and the companion volumes by Juan Williams are an indispensable reminder of our past and inspiration for our future. The struggle continues.
I’m not where I want to be.
I’m not where I’m going to be.
But thank God, I’m not where I was.
Rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language
Profanity:
Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:
Tense confrontations and charges of betrayal
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie, diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:
October 1, 2010
Date Released to DVD:
January 11, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:
B0034G4P7G
Change is not polite. The bigger the change, the more likely that it is messy and painful and ugly. Even its beginnings are often disturbingly uninspired and uninspiring. Despite what Hollywood and history books tell us, change is less often sparked by a passion for justice or a vision of a better world. More often, even the most beneficial change is inspired by ambition, competition, revenge, spite, wanting to seem cool, or the most frequently compelling reason of all — some romantic companionship or a reasonable approximation thereof or at least to appear cool in front of whichever gender you are hoping to attract.
And it is change that is the subject of this movie. Don’t call it “The Facebook Movie.” It’s about a small group of college students who almost accidentally create a product that almost accidentally becomes a phenomenon. As screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has said repeatedly in interviews, it could just as well have been the invention of a toaster that he was writing about. Sorkin, whose past work includes “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The West Wing,” and a Broadway play about the invention of television, uses the origin of Facebook as a way to engage with classic themes of loyalty, innovation, greed, class, and the challenges of relationships of all kinds.
In a meta-touch, the movie’s shifting points of view effectively crowd-source the storyline and its own willingness to bend the facts acknowledges that there is no one way to tell the story. However, even with the inevitable scenes of pale dudes staring intently into computer screens while they furiously bang away at the keyboards, the story is grounded in the same emotions depicted in ancient Greek drama — ambition, rebellion, anger, betrayal. It depicts the contrast between the arrogant brash and very young upstart who starts a spite project because he can’t be accepted by girls or clubs and the arrogant smug club members who assume that all they need to do is cite the school handbook to the university president (probably once brash, now smug, perpetually arrogant). Is there an underdog in all of this that we’re supposed to root for?
No one is better at writing dialogue for smart people than Sorkin. In the opening scene Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg of “Zombieland” and “The Squid and the Whale”) and his girlfriend are on a date. They have a blisteringly fast exchange about status that shows he has some issues when it comes to navigating contact with other humans. She dumps him. Frustrated, bitter, and a little drunk, he goes back to his dorm room and impulsively does two small things that will have seismic consequences. In olden days, someone in that situation might go back to the dorm and trash the now-ex to his friends. But this was 2002, so instead he wrote something nasty about her on his blog. And then he decided to create a mean “hot or not” website by posting student directory photos online. This gets him into trouble with the school. And it brings him to the attention of three upperclassmen, in both senses of the word. They have the dazzlingly casual arrogance of members of the most exclusive of the final clubs. Two of them are gigantic twins who are on the Olympic crew team and look like they walked out of a J.C. Leyendecker ad for Arrow shirts.
They ask Zuckerberg to do the programming for a website that will post and connect all of the students at the school. He brings on his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield of “Never Let Me Go” and the upcoming Spider-Man reboot), as chief financial officer — meaning that he provides the initial $1000 in start-up money.
A few months later, “thefacebook.com” is up and running and growing exponentially. Zuckerberg combined the appeal of a blog (students can express their feelings or describe their activities) and the connectivity of a computer network. When a classmate awkwardly asks Zuckerberg whether a girl in their class is dating anyone, Zuckerberg adds a function to the site that lets participants state their availability and interest.
There is change that comes because people want something. And then there is the more profound change that comes about because of something people didn’t even know they wanted. Facebook did not exist ten years ago. Today it has more than 500 million members around the world.
Zuckerberg meets Napster co-founder Sean Parker (a seductive Justin Timberlake), who entices him with a combination of glamour and venture capital. He plays the role in this movie that Lampwick does in “Pinnochio;” taking him to the fun place that turns little boys into donkeys. But he is right about some important decisions, including dropping the “the” and raising money from backers rather than advertisers. And it turns out there are two ways to become a cool guy; you can be accepted by the guys who are cool or you can be the one to redefine what cool is.
But who created Facebook? Zuckerberg is sued by the upperclassmen, who never participated after proposing the initial idea and by Saverin, who is pushed out after Parker comes on board. The movie allows us to make up our own mind. And then it ends with a reminder that even an enormous innovation in making human connections cannot substitute for the real thing.
The performances are all top-notch. Eisenberg is superb, playing not the real Mark Zuckerberg but the character created by Sorkin, hyper-alert and obtuse, his voice both taut and tremulous. Armie Hammer is outstanding as both of the towering twin brothers and Rooney Mara (soon to play Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) makes a strong impression in her brief appearance as the girl who starts the whole thing by dumping Zuckerberg. Sorkin perfectly captures the cadences of the Harvard community, including a gem of a cameo by Douglas Urbanski as Harvard president Larry Summers. Director David Fincher minimizes the scenes of people staring intently at computer screens while madly banging away on a keyboard to keep this movie about the power, the lure, the fragility, and the importance of the social network of the analog world. It might inspire the next Facebook, but it is more likely to inspire people to log off.
Let’s say you’re a guy. And the girl you really like has finally agreed to go out with you. You’re at the restaurant ordering pizza. And she says her favorite pizza is Hawaiian, with pineapple. The idea makes you feel a little queasy; normally you order pepperoni. What do you say? On a first date, isn’t it likely to be, “Sounds great!” And you hope someday you’ll be telling your grandchildren the funny story of your first date with Grammy, and how you either discovered that you loved pineapple on your pizza or that three months later, when you were finally comfortable enough with the girl to tell her how you really felt, she laughed and confessed that she wasn’t really interested in college basketball as she had pretended to be on that same first date. So you may not have pineapple pizza and the NCAA in common, but you have something even more important — you both cared enough about making the relationship work to create some superficial commonality while the more important connection was building.
Now let’s say you’re online. There are two reasons online attachments get intensely personal so quickly. The first is the capacity of the internet to connect you to the one other person in the world who cares as passionately as you do about not just pineapple pizza but pineapple pizza with pesto-encrusted pineapple slices and fontina cheese. That connection is so immediately validating that you can’t help feeling that whatever else you have in common is enormously significant and whatever you don’t doesn’t matter. The second reason is that online communication is like a Rorschach test; we project onto all the empty spaces all the things we subconsciously want to see there, unable to realize how much of what we see comes from our own minds. Which brings me to a third reason — they work because we want them to. They are the perfect fantasy relationship, creating the illusion of intimacy without the risk because we have control over what we send back. Until we don’t, when it stops working and fantasy relationships lead to real-life heartbreak.
And yes, there is a movie review here, not just a meditation on the pleasures and perils of online relationships. But it is hard to talk about the movie directly without giving too much away. So, I’m going to tell you as much as I think is fair and then, after you’ve seen it, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com and if you’d like to see the rest of my review, I’ll send it to you.
Nev (pronounced Neev) is a young, New York-based photographer whose brother, Rel, is a film-maker. Rel and his partner Henry Joost, started filming Nev as he opened a package from someone who had seen one of his photos. The gift, a painting from a little girl inspired by the photograph, led to connections online via Facebook — the little girl’s mother Angela and sister Megan and their relatives and friends, all in Michigan. Nev began talking to them on the phone and texting them, getting caught up in the daily details of their lives, and growing increasingly attached to Megan. And then, when he began to have some doubts, Nev went to Michigan to see them, bringing Rel, Joost, and the camera along.
What happens then is a haunting exploration of identity, intimacy, desire, and the temptations of online relationships. Whatever you expect, the movie will surprise you. And if you want the rest of my review, send me an email.
Celebrate the birthday of Caroll Spinney, the man behind (or, I should say, inside) Big Bird. 1985’s “Follow That Bird,” features all of the show’s favorite characters and an array of guest stars but focuses more on gentle humor and lessons of tolerance than letters and numbers.
A well-meaning social worker decides that Big Bird needs to be with “his own kind’ and packs him off to live with the Dodo family. But while they may have feathers and wings, they are not really “his own kind,” and he feels lost and alone. He decides to go back home where he can be with the friends who are his real family and has adventures along the way, including an encounter with the Sleaze Brothers, who want to paint him blue and put him on stage as the “Blue Bird of Happiness.” But all ends happily as he is reunited with the people who love him, who are truly “his own kind.”
Families who see this movie will want to talk about the many ways that families are created and about how we decide what “our own kind” really means.
Cartoon violence including explosions, shark, crashes, peril, but no one hurt
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
July 9, 2010
Date Released to DVD:
December 14, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN:
B0042U94UQ
We usually just take it for granted that the villain wants to rule the world without worrying too much about why. But one of the many charms of this utterly delightful film is that we get a glimpse that is both funny and satisfying of what it is that makes not one but two super-villains so intent on being despicable.
We even get a flashback of our anti-hero, Gru (voice of Steve Carell with a Boris Badenov accent) as a child, confiding his dreams of being an astronaut to his mother (voice of Julie Andrews as Natasha!). She crushes his hopes with a cruel insult. So decades later, he is still trying to earn her respect, now as a super-thief. No matter how audacious his capers, however, she is still unimpressed. He has stolen the Jumbotron from Times Square and the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty (okay, those last two are the replicas from Vegas). But he still needs to make that one heist that will show her he can earn her respect. He could not be an astronaut and fly to the moon. So, maybe he could steal it.
And then there’s the anti-anti-hero, who has just adopted the villain name Vector. He may have a nifty name and even niftier equipment, his lair guarded by everything from heat-seeking missiles to buzz saws and a shark, and he may have just pulled off the theft of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but it turns out he has some trouble pleasing his parent, too.
So it’s a race between Gru and Vector to see who can steal the moon, which first involves stealing the shrink ray they need to make it small enough to carry home. And, adorably, this requires the involvement of dozens of little yellow “minions” who look like oompa-loompas made out of marshmallow peeps and three little orphan girls who live with a Miss Hannigan-style harridan as they hope someone will give them a real home. Maybe made of gummi bears.
The resilience of the three girls (the oldest voiced by Miranda Cosgrove of “iCarly” and “School of Rock”) is a sublime counterpart to the unhappiness and insecurity of Gru and his arch-rival Vector (voice of Jason Segal), showing us that even the rottenest of circumstances does not have to make you overly vulnerable or mean. When Gru brings them home as a way of getting into Vector’s compound (his security system features missiles and a shark but he can’t resist the girls’ cookies), he is so clueless he puts out candy in a dog bowl and newspapers on the floor. But as we have glimpsed in his interaction with the minions (I loved the matter-of-fact way he knows all the names of the almost-identical horde), he is susceptible to being liked and trusted. And he slowly begins to learn that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to care; he was scared to.
Brilliant production design contrasts Gru’s goth with a touch of steampunk lair in the middle of a street of identical homes with Vector’s sleek, Apple-eseque, creamsicle-colored high-tech headquarters. The expert pacing keeps things fresh, funny, and exciting. And a twist on the usual race-to-the-big-event-to-show-your-new-found-values reminds us all that the great thing about families is you can always have a second chance.
It looks like 2010 will go down in history as the year 3D animation kicked the stuffing out of all the live-action releases. Pixar opened the door and it is a thrill to see studios like Illumination showing what they have to bring to audiences ready to accept animation as art and as heart-warming family entertainment.
And here’s a special glimpse of one of the extras on the new DVD release:
