Twitter – The Movie

Would you like to see a movie about Twitter?

If so, I think you’re the only one of about 12 and a half people on the surface of this planet. But the idea is ripe for parody.

This post is a quick follow-up of my previous blog about David Finchers Facebook movie (“The Social Network”) and it's parodies. It seems another one has surfaced on the web, or maybe it was there all along and I just missed it for my previous post. Who knows. Anyway here is the trailer:

And just for clarification – no there is no actual movie about the making of Twitter in the works, as far as I’ve been able to tell.

“Inception” – the Further Adventures of Scrooge McDuck?

As of this writing Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” has grossed over 370 million dollars at the US Box Office, and is being adored by the public and hailed by the critics, with a rating of 87% percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Of course whenever a succes soars high, accusations of plagiarism appear, as an alternative to the more traditional (and/ or legitimate) criticisms of a work.

In this particular instance, an uncanny number og similarities have been found between a story from a 2002 issue of “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” and the plot of “Inception”.

A lot of elements a similar. The device used for dream invasion, the idea of information extraction itself (in the comic it’s the combination for McDuck’s Money Bin, to absolutely noones surprise), the idea that a fall kicks you out of a dream, noises in the waking world being implemented into the dream and finally the shifting landscapes where a dreamer has no real consistency.

Yes, all these things appear as important points in Inception. But what I think people are forgetting here, or are perhaps unaware of in the first place, is that these ideas are paramount to dream psychology in the first place. How many times have you implemented the sound of your alarm clock, or some other noise into the dream because you just didn’t want to wake up? Have you never woken up just after dreaming that you fell?

Does this mean that I think the similarities are coincidental? I really can’t tell, but I think they are. I do however, think that it is worth mentioning that at least one iconic film scene was taken from a Scrooge McDuck comic. The scene in question is from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, in particular the one where Indiana Jones flees from a rolling boulder.

All this however, does nothing to ease the fact that Nolan was previously accused of ripping of the French New Wave Classic “Last year at Marienbad”. I find myself unable to comment on these similarities however, seeing as how I’ve not seen the latter movie. Perhaps a blank that needs to be filled in later?

Source: The Geeks of Doom

And if you wish to view the comic with your own eyes: It can be done right here.

Facebook, MySpace, Youtube – The Movie

Only one of the above is going to theaters … for now.

In case you haven’t heard David Fincher (Who made thousands of people think it was cool to be a neo-luddite with “Fight Club”) has just directed a movie about the creation of Facebook, aptly titled “The Social Network”. What’s wrong with “FaceMovie”?

Most of you probably have a Facebook profile, but few are probably aware that it started out humbly, as many Internet Billion Dollar Babies do, with the young Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, and that the network was initially a literal Harvard Facebook. A student who’s-who really.

I’ll admit that the idea of a biopic based on this subjects isn’t excatly thrilling me, but I am actually very interested to see what Fincher will bring to the table.

The first trailer for “The Social Network” is right here:

But of course, as we all know in these internet days no deed goes unspoofed. So it’s wasn’t long before a parody of the trailer, alledgedly advertising a movie about MySpace (remember MySpace? Chances are you were on there more than once).

Here is the trailer for “The Other Social Network”

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And finally, here is the parody trailer about the only other website that eats up more teenage and adolescent waking hours than any other.

The trailer for “The Video Website” (where strangely I couldn’t find any of the other trailers)

The Social Network will open the New York Film Festival on September 24 and then appear in US theaters on October 1.

The Never-Ending Story: “Dexter” – Dark Passengers All Around

Dexter Morgan is a geeky lab worker for the Miami Metro Police Department, he is the lover of Rita, and a surrogate father to her kids Astor and Cody, other than that he is the chewtoy of his foster sister Debrah, and is the guy that brings the entire precints donuts.

And he is a serial killer, who has killed at least twenty people by the start of season one.

But don’t worry, they were all killers themselves. All is well and good in the jungle. The women and children and cuban immigrants have a dark protector watching over them.

At it’s heart Dexter is a show about what it means to be human, as opposed to being a monster. Dexter uses his narration very frequently to remind us that he has no real emotions only emptiness. But it takes no shrink to see that Dexter is obviously mistaken, almost self-deceptive.

Dexters constant musing inner monologue serve two purposes. First of all they allow us a glimpse of the mind of this killer, and allows the audience to sympathize with him. Though the fact that he is played by Michael C. Hall (pulling of cute and creepy with equal amounts of ease) doesn’t excatly hurt either.

And then I propose this to you:

The second purpose of the narrative is in fact a far more sinister one, which only comes to mind if one allows oneself a great enough distance to the narrative device. Dexter narrates as if to a specific person, and it is clearly obvious that this person can not be any other character within the diegesis of the show itself.

We are the Dark Passenger that Dexter speaks of. We are the ones that compel him to perform these task, that are in any categorical sense of justice just plain wrong.

I find that thinking about “Dexter” in this way opens many new and interesting interpretations. Try it. 

Dexters returns for his fifht season on America’s Showtime on September 26th 2010.