The Social Network

to be honest, my two latest favourite movies would be The Social Network and The King's Speech (the two movies that had their share of fights at award events) and i had intended to review both albeit my reviews are lame, incomprehensible at times and even incorrect for some unfortunate movies. i will still review the movies i've watched.

however, seemed that my brother had reviewed The King's Speech, i wouldn't fare better than him so let me just bring you to the other movie of the year (for now); The Social Network.

TSN was inspired by David Fincher's The Accidental Billionaires. it's about the origination of the mind-blowing, blood-sucking and addictive-as-hell website called Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, played brilliantly by Jesse Eisenberg, was a genius sophomore at Harvard University with average look and a little bit high self-consciousness (made even more badly after insensitive comments thrown at him by ex-girlfriend Erica Albright). the dump proved to be something of a blessing for him because (flashing far, far forward now) Facebook today worths 50 billion dollars.

this story of the founding of Facebook is told through flashbacks during two lawsuits faced by Mark; one from the Winklevosses twins (Armie Hammer) and their partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) and another one from Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). can't recall any other movies that i like which used this method of story-telling but TSN pulled it off almost flawlessly.

Mark was approached by Cameron, Tyler and Divya after he made a website which allows Harvard students to rate the female students based on their hotness. the girls were obviously furious when their private facebook profile photos were illegally published at the website and be compared to each other (Mark hacked the other houses' facebooks in order to gain the pictures). however, the site was a major success among the guys and it caused the Harvard's network to almost crash.

the Winklevosses and Narendra were impressed by Zuckerberg's talent in computer programming and asked him to work with them to build a site where women could get on with Harvard guys called Harvard Connection. in the flashback, Mark remembered that he said 'yes' to them (to the proposition to work with them) but when asked by the lawyer, Mark said something about his answer was very vague to him because he had said it three or four years ago. Mark ended up did not build Harvard Connection but instead he came up with another idea (perhaps inspired by Harvard Connection) which he called The Facebook. this caused the lawsuit from the said Harvard's upperclassmen.

on another story, Mark was sued by his best friend and co-founder of Facebook Eduardo because he had diluted Eduardo's shares in Facebook from 30%++ down to 0.03%. Eduardo admitted that he did not read the papers first shoved to his face to sign because he himself was excited about the new 500,00 dollars investment made Peter Thiel but the second time around, when more papers were asked of him to sign, he started reading and he realised he made a huge mistake signing the first papers.

in the end, the Winklevosses and Narendra were paid to sign a non-disclosure agreement while Eduardo's name is back as the co-founder of Facebook.

i wouldn't know how the lawsuit from Eduardo was resolved but i am just glad it did. because Mark and Eduardo are a symbol that money can't replaced friendship and that's the moral of the story.

p/s: my friend said that the real Mark Zuckerberg's friends were not happy about the movie because it did not reflect the true reality. oh well, the movie's fine by me.

credit picture: http://www.cheri-movie.com/archives/378

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