Generation Why by Zadie Smith. The Social Networka film directed by David Fincher, with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkinby Jaron Lanier. Knopf, 2. 09 pp., 2. ONE PIECE Wan Psu is a pirate adventure manga written and drawn by Eiichiro Oda. Merrick MortonColumbia Pictures. Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and Rooney Mara as his girlfriend Erica in The Social Network. How long is a generation these days I must be in Mark Zuckerbergs generationthere are only nine years between usbut somehow it doesnt feel that way. This despite the fact that I can say like everyone else on Harvards campus in the fall of 2. I was there at Facebooks inception, and remember Facemash and the fuss it caused also that tiny, exquisite movie star trailed by fan boys through the snow wherever she went, and the awful snow itself, turning your toes gray, destroying your spirit, bringing a bloodless end to a squirrel on my block frozen, inanimate, perfectlike the Blaschka glass flowers. Buy One Piece: The Movie Movie ' title='Buy One Piece: The Movie Movie ' />Directed by Hiroaki Miyamoto. With Mayumi Tanaka, Kazuya Nakai, Akemi Okamura, Kappei Yamaguchi. The Straw Hat Pirates are taking on Gild Tesoro, one of the richest. Ah, One Piece, a series in the high seas where physics are ignored unless they add to the awesomeness what, with the Pirates and World Government clashing. Doubtless years from now I will misremember my closeness to Zuckerberg, in the same spirit that everyone in 6. Liverpool met John Lennon. At the time, though, I felt distant from Zuckerberg and all the kids at Harvard. I still feel distant from them now, ever more so, as I increasingly opt out by choice, by default of the things they have embraced. We have different ideas about things. Specifically we have different ideas about what a person is, or should be. I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate. Perhaps Generation Facebook have built their virtual mansions in good faith, in order to house the People 2. I feel uncomfortable within them it is because I am stuck at Person 1. Then again, the more time I spend with the tail end of Generation Facebook in the shape of my students the more convinced I become that some of the software currently shaping their generation is unworthy of them. They are more interesting than it is. They deserve better. In The Social Network Generation Facebook gets a movie almost worthy of them, and this fact, being so unexpected, makes the film feel more delightful than it probably, objectively, is. From the opening scene its clear that this is a movie about 2. Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, forty nine and forty eight respectively. Its a talkie, for goodness sake, with as many words per minute as His Girl Friday. A boy, Mark, and his girl, Erica, sit at a little table in a Harvard bar, zinging each other, in that relentless Sorkin style made famous by The West Wing though at no point does either party say Walk with mefor this we should be grateful. But something is not right with this young man his eye contact is patchy he doesnt seem to understand common turns of phrase or ambiguities of language he is literal to the point of offense, pedantic to the point of aggression. Final clubs, says Mark, correcting Erica, as they discuss those exclusive Harvard entities, Not Finals clubs. He doesnt understand whats happening as she tries to break up with him. Wait, wait, this is real Nor does he understand why. He doesnt get that what he may consider a statement of fact might yet have, for this other person, some personal, painful import ERICA I have to go study. MARK You dont have to study. ERICA How do you know I dont have to studyMARK Because you go to B. U. Simply put, he is a computer nerd, a social autistic a type as recognizable to Finchers audience as the cynical newshound was to Howard Hawkss. Mystery Thriller Movies The Princess And The Frog. To create this Zuckerberg, Sorkin barely need brush his pen against the page. We came to the cinema expecting to meet this guy and its a pleasure to watch Sorkin color in what we had already confidently sketched in our minds. For sometimes the culture surmises an individual personality, collectively. Or thinks it does. Dont we all know why nerds do what they doTo get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls. Sorkin, confident of his foundation myth, spins an exhilarating tale of double rejectionspurned by Erica and the Porcellian, the Finaliest of the Final Clubs, Zuckerberg begins his spite fueled rise to the top. Cue a lot of betrayal. A lot of scenes of lawyers offices and miserable, character damning depositions. Your best friend is suing you Sorkin has swapped the military types of A Few Good Men for a different kind of all male community in a different uniform GAP hoodies, North Face sweats. At my screening, blocks from NYU, the audience thrilled with intimate identification. But if the hipsters and nerds are hoping for Finchers usual pyrotechnics they will be disappointed in a lawyers office theres not a lot for Fincher to do. He has to content himself with excellent and rapid cutting between Harvard and the later court cases, and after that, the discreet pleasures of another, less remarked upon Fincher skill great casting. Itll be a long time before a cinema geek comes along to push Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who plays Zuckerberg, off the top of our nerd typologies. The passive aggressive, flat line voice. The shifty boredom when anyone, other than himself, is speaking. The barely suppressed smirk. Eisenberg even chooses the correct nerd walk not the sideways corridor shuffle the Dont Hit Me, but the puffed chest vertical march the Im not 58, Im 59. With rucksack, naturally. An extended four minute shot has him doing exactly this all the way through the Harvard campus, before he lands finally where he belongs, the only place hes truly comfortable, in front of his laptop, with his blog Erica Albrights a bitch. You think thats because her family changed their name from Albrecht or do you think its because all B. U. girls are bitches Oh, yeah. We know this guy. Overprogrammed, furious, lonely. Around him Fincher arranges a convincing bunch of 1. If its a three act movie its because Zuckerberg screws over more people than a two act movie can comfortably hold the Winklevoss twins and Divya Navendra from whom Zuckerberg allegedly stole the Facebook concept, and then his best friend, Eduardo Saverin the CFO he edged out of the company, and finally Sean Parker, the boy king of Napster, the music sharing program, although he, to be fair, pretty much screws himself. Its in Eduardoin the actor Andrew Garfields animate, beautiful facethat all these betrayals seem to converge, and become personal, painful. The arbitration scenesthat should be dull, being so terribly staticget their power from the eerie opposition between Eisenbergs unmoving countenance his eyebrows hardly ever move the real Zuckerbergs eyebrows never move and Garfields imploring disbelief, almost the way Spencer Tracy got all worked up opposite Frederic Marchs rigidity in another courtroom epic, Inherit the Wind. Still, Fincher allows himself one sequence of literal showboating. Halfway through the film, he inserts a ravishing but quite unnecessary scene of the pretty Winklevoss twins for a story of nerds, all the men are surprisingly comely at the Henley Regatta. These two blond titans row like champs. One actor, Armie Hammer, has been digitally doubled. Im so utterly 1. I spent an hour of the movie trying to detect any difference between the twins. Their arms move suspiciously fast, faster than real human arms, their muscles seem outlined by a fine pen, the water splashes up in individual droplets as if painted by Caravaggio, and the music Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails, commits exquisite brutality upon Edward Griegs already pretty brutal In the Hall of the Mountain King. All synths and white noise. Its music video stuffthe art form in which my not quite generation truly excelsand it demonstrates the knack for hyperreality that made Finchers Fight Club so compelling while rendering the real world, for so many of his fans, always something of a disappointment. Anyway, the twins lose the regatta, too, by a nose, which allows Fincher to justify the scene by thematic reiteration sometimes very close is simply not close enough. One Piece Burning Blood on Steam. For EMEA EIICHIRO ODASHUEISHA, TOEI ANIMATIONGame BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. For the Americas EIICHIRO ODASHUEISHA, TOEI ANIMATION. License coordinated by FUNimation Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc.