Faces on Film: Facebook, the movie, coming soon

It was only a matter of time before someone made a movie about Facebook. Although, frankly, I think a movie about the pervy, dark underbelly of the early days of MySpace (pre MySpace music, which is a great tool) would be far more interesting. MySpace is creepy, dude, and yet somehow seductively so. Point in case: I was once propositioned for a threesome with an Ohio man and his "triple D, super hot girlfriend" as a birthday present to said lady. Through MySpace. Which I found at once deeply unsettling and pathetically flattering. But I digress.

David Fincher, the brilliant and twisted mind behind Se7en and Fight Club, is now trying his hand at a subject a bit more accessible to the rest of us...social networking. The flick, now in post production and set for release in 2010, is called, aptly, The Social Network and tells the story of the founding of Facebook...and the ongoing-frenzy that followed. The movie stars Jesse Eisenberg (quietly, awkwardly brilliant in Adventureland and the Squid and the Whale,) Rashida Jones and Justin Timberlake (taking over the entire world one media outlet at a time.) One has to wonder, though, what the trajectory of drama and intrigue could possibly look like in a film about the founding of a site where people cultivate online farms and profess to digitally "like" anything from "the cold side of the pillow" and, in the case of one particularly bright bulb on my own homepage: "i'd rather be hurt by the truth than pretected by a lie :(" I'd personally rather spend my time getting a firmer grasp on the English language.

According to the film's tag-line however, Facebook is not all fun, games and infuriating status updates. "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies," it reads. Sounds intense, though factually inaccurate: Big Brother Facebook cuts users off at the 5,000 friend limit. Seriously, if you try to add a 5,001 "friend" (an experience I can't personally attest to...I'm still floundering around in the low hundreds and seem to have reached my own friend limit...real or otherwise) Facebook steps in and suggests you get rid of some of the online pals you already have. Basically, the site takes you aside for a little intervention: is it really possible that you have upwards of 5,000 friends? Unlikely. Get a grip, man. And then they suggest you de-friend some of the cronies you already have (ouch) before taking on a new online relationship. It makes one wonder how many of their own friends have cut them loose in favor of a more attractive candidate for online friendship. Best not to dwell.

Creative licensing aside, the movie looks pretty dark. Even Trent Reznor, purveyor of all that is moody and spiky, has got his finger in this pot. According to Pitchfork, Reznor and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross have written the soundtrack to the film. So you know that there's not going to be a whole lot of sweetness, light and mooing cow avatars in this particular movie. Only time will tell if this movie will be a triumph or a major flop, but one thing seems certain: it's release should make for some great status updates. "At Loews for the premierrrrrr of 'The Social Network'! :) ;) !!***"