Buzz – The Listening

A brand new single is available from the indie rock quartet called The Listening (band site). Animals Part 1 (Criminals and Submarine Dwellings) was released 10-10-10, and consists of a single and a corresponding shortfilm six-and-a-half-minutes long.

An under-promoted act, The Listening acts like a combo of Pink Floyd and Radiohead, theologically and philosophically digging deep into some sick drum loops and strange moog-y sounds. They glisten with introspective lyrics and sparkle with shiny guitar licks.

If you’re a Listening fan, you already know all that. Let me say that the new single continues the dreamy psychedelic sound featured on the recent Transmission 1 EP. This song on its own pretty much their most depressing work yet. However, it is just a Part 1. Animals may yet turn out another adventure into the hopeful fare this band is known for. See for yourself:

Review – The Social Network

Ok, so: not indie. But worthwhile.

The Social Network is the dramatic rendering of the origins of the social networking site Facebook that at opening held the #1 slot at the box office. More than that, it currently holds a 97% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and a 95% from Metacritic, both sites that give films scores based on reviews by top movie critics.

Henry Blodget of the San Francisco Chronicle calls the film “the latest incarnation of the American Dream.” Ann Hornaday of The Washington post calls it “a vital, engaging, even urgent parable for our age.” So what makes this technology-driven legal drama seem to so many people a not only entertaining, but socially relevant commentary on our digitally driven society?

Troubled People With Computers
The film opens with Harvard programmer Mark Zuckerberg chatting it up with a girl in a bar. Obviously very eccentric and virtually obsessed with advancing in Harvard’s harsh social strata. He’s able to successfully keep two topics of conversation going simultaneously, with almost shocking verbal dexterity.

He’s also an asshole, which the girl he’s with makes painfully clear while breaking up with him in the bar. Mark runs home and gets considerably more intoxicated before hacking five or six mainframes and creating Facemash, a site which he uses to compare pictures of his female classmates to each other to see who’s hotter.

The results are heroically disastrous. Mark’s site receives enough traffic overnight to crash the Harvard server, and he is placed on academic probation for hacking and sexism. He realizes he’s really onto something, however, and soon starts work on his new project, originally titled “The Facebook.”

Flash forward and Zuckerberg is facing two lawsuits – both from people with claims to part of the Facebook franchise. The now-billionaire seems completely disaffected, as he toys with their rhetoric and spouts off sarcastically. The film continues to tell his story in narrative-style flashbacks.

A (Mostly) True Story
The film is based on the Ben Mezrich novel The Accidental Billionaires, which claims to be an accurate record of how Zuckerberg and company struck gold and created the world’s largest and most popular social networking website.

The Social Network, however, does not claim to be accurate in its tellings and showings. The girlfriend who drops Mark Zuckerberg in the opening scene is apparently completely fictional. Rumor is that the real Mark Zuckerberg won’t comment on the film.

Scene Cuts and Cross Words
Fight Club director David Fincher is fresh off his work on 2008′s Oscar-magnet Benjamin Button, and, judging from Social Network‘s critical reception so far, he’s up to his neck in another. This project was something distinctly difficult to manage, however, compared with his past successes.

It takes a lot to make a story based on a legal drama work, especially while incorporating so many diverse characters. In spite of the challenge, the transitions in this film are well-done, and the story flows along without a hitch – screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War) makes sure of that.

The dialogue is rich and often technically advanced; my roommate, who’s a programmer, assures me that the technical jargon is not fabricated either. There is so much going on, and so fast that I often found myself staring at the big-screen in wonder, trying to stay caught-up. The story is told in a very engaging fashion.

An Unconventionally Classy Cast
Jesse Eisenberg has been riding the Michael Cera wave lately. ‘Til recently, most every film aimed at an under-30 audience featured at least one semi-macho male protagonist who’s secretly unsure of himself, and learns to achieve as a means of eliminating his adolescent insecurities.

The recent Michael Cera flicks (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Juno, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World), however, have been pretty much pushing in the opposite direction – with unprecedented success. They make the protagonist an geeky semi-sociovertic who’s personal battle is coming to terms with himself, not striving to achieve the cultural stereotype for a successful male. Eisenberg played a similar role to Cera’s typecast persona in 2009′s Zombieland.

Social Network adds a little twist to that scenario by making Eisenberg’s character… well… a bad person. A 19-year-old genius-level alcoholic, Zuckerburg virtually ignores the sex, drugs and fame offered him, only pushing to expand. He wants two things – revenge on the social elitist world of Harvard and the approval of quasi-mentor and Napster creator Sean Parker (played by a wheelin’, dealin’, cavalier Justin Timberlake).

Also: Justin Timberlake
I’ll just say this once: I’ll watch any movie that casts JT as a smooth-talking, cocaine-sniffing homeless celebrity. The 31-year-old recording artist had a field day with Social Network, portraying a carefree hyper-social celebrity (wonder where he got the inspiration for that role?).

Andrew Garfield knocked ‘em dead as this half-legal billion-dollar technology scheme’s straight man and Zuckerburg’s CFO Eduardo Saverin. Suprise! He’s suing a cold-hearted back-stabbing Zuckerberg, after being scammed out of a few hundred mil by the greedy son of a bitch.

Disney actress Brenda Song plays one of the first Facebook groupies, turned Savarin’s girlfriend. She subsequently turns psycho, doing more than her share to add to the drama, even lighting things on fire in Saverin’s apartment (definitely a highlight).

Song’s inclusion in the film, however, represents one of the few casting mistakes, as she is not quite as believable on the big screen as she is pulling slap-stick stunts on the Saturday morning sit-coms (nice try Mickey Mouse).

A Sick (and Slimy!) Soundtrack
Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor (in collaboration with British composer Atticus Ross) breaks out the keys for this eccentrically eclectic soundtrack. Highlights include the opening sequence (entitled Hand Covers Bruise) and an oddly rendered re-mix of romantic composer Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. Reznor and co. are offering a five-song sampler of the soundtrack online for free on the Nullco site.

So, Really…
The take-home? We have fundamentally changed as a culture. Cliché as it may sound, this movie is more than just a sign of the times. The Social Network‘s Mark Zuckerburg exhibited a genius only rivaled by his propensity for social apathy and his thirst for a twisted form of revenge on society.

This movie really does provide a contemporarily accurate presentation of the new face of the American dream. Opportunity really didn’t die with the tech boom, the job crisis or the recession. Every American is free to succeed in whatever ways they can dream up and drum up some capital for. We are all free to achieve.

However, what made The Social Network so great was its depiction of success – in the last scene a lonely and bitter 20-year-old billionaire is seen staring down the screen of his laptop, awash in the emptiness. He won.