All Hallow's Eve...

I've never liked Hallowe'en. It's got a stupid name, a stupid non-history and an even stupider gimmick. But hey, people like it and it's all... I dunno... fancy-dress-y? Personally I've never gotten on with the majority of publicly celebrated annual occasions, with the exceptions of Bonfire Night and New Years. Those two I have an appreciation for, but not the rest, especially not Hallowe'en.

This year was nightmareish. After just having finished the agonisingly long run of My Fair Lady all week at the Corn Exchange, we had 'Hallowe'en Hullabaloo' in the Newbury Marketplace just outside, which featured live (not very good) music, a wandering magician, face painting, puppet making, tomfoolery, child vomitting and eighty thousand requests for pretentious coffee.

And kids. Lots of kids.

I hate kids. With a burning passion. There are few things I detest more than having to deal with lots and lots of children, but one of them is having to deal with their parents. Eugh.

But anyway, the real funtimes of this trip down to newbury was friday/saturday. A big shout out to my belov'd friend Idge, who turned the youthful and bounding age of 34 this week and we then had party times on friday night. Now, I was working friday night from 5 until 9:30 (which then turns into 10). I get across to the Canal Bar just after I've finished and join in the revelries, with (really good) live music, lots and lots of people I know and general good times. We get turfed out of the Canal Bar around midnight, as they wish to shut, and it's left to me and Kerry to make sure that Adam (Idge's fella, who had been drinking since about 5) got from the Canal Bar to the Snooty Fox, about 2 minutes walk away. This in itself was a nigh-on Herculean task, as was the ongoing process of keeping an eye on him until half 2, but all that was eclipsed by the neccessity to get him back home at that time, for which we owe eternal thanks to Jen (whom I'm ashamed to say I was not to kind too back in our college days).

So after navigating Adam home and making sure he'd passed out in the living room, I walked Jen back to the pub, found that it had just closed up, walked her back home and then set about going out to find Wiggy, my distant cousin and Rios' colleague. Found him at about 5:00 in the morning, managed to convince him to come back to Jen's, where he slept on the sofa. I then trapsed back to Emma's, where I was staying, to partake in a particularly satisfying hour and a half's sleep. I then staggered down to Rios, in order to open up the place for 10am and cover Wiggy's shift for him, since he was in no state to do it himself! I was supposed to be working at the Corn Exchange at 7pm and to my amazement, Wiggy was there at 5 to take over. I headed over to work early in order to chill out and have a drink before I started, only to be pressed into service at 5:30 and made to go and be useful. I finished at 11:30, then proceeded back to Rios to make sure that Wiggy was okay shutting the shop. Apparently, I'm *really* helpful.

That day lasted a good 39 hours.

Man, this has been a long post.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

First off, I just wanna say that this is one of the top three movies of the year (the other two being Inception and Four Lions). There is no competition for this movie in terms of sheer nerd-cool, script quality or acting performances. I mean, this is two hours of nerds complaining about money and facebook... and it's AMAZING.

I think this is down to the Four Principal Genius Men of this movie. Without these four guys, this film wouldn't have been good, or even in existence, really. I'm pretty sure that producers only went for this movie because they saw the potential for these four names to be attached to this movie. They are:

1) Aaron Sorkin (Writer, also the creator of the West Wing)
2) David Fincher (Director, also did Seven and Fight Club)
3) Jesse Eisenberg (Actor, from Rodger Dodger, oh yes!)
4) Trent Reznor (Composter, frontman of Nine Inch Nails)

That's four pretty hefty names going in there, all of them seriously pull their weight for this movie, there's nothing about any of their work that I can criticise. Jesse Eisenberg is a serious rising star with a lot of potential, he's everything that Michael Cera will never be (talented, likeable, in possession of a broken voice) and he's got one hell of a career ahead of him. Fincher is an uncompromising director whose quick and ruthless visual style gives us everything we need and a hundred extra little details if you want to catch them. Reznor's just great. His inclusion of Hall of the Mountian King was inspired.

But of course, I'm a writer, so I look to the writer the most. Sorkin is one of the best working at the moment, the West Wing is still his masterpiece creation, but this is up there with it. The script for this movie is so snappy, packed and glib that it's hard to believe just how much of it he managed to pack in there. It's very fast paced, skipping over whole swathes of time in the blink of an eye in some places, but at precise, almost surgical intervals. This is one of the best scripts I've ever seen, proof that you can write a great film about any subject, no matter how trivial and irrelevant it might appear to be.

On a casting note (apart from Eisenberg), it was sheer inspired. Armie Hammer carries off the best supporting character(s) award for playing the Winklevoss twins, Garfield shows promise for Spiderman and would you believe it Justin Timberlake is actually good at this acting lark.

To sum up this movie (going back to my old method of not talking about movies I actually like), at the last scene, where Zuckerberg is sitting and refreshing his webpage, I could quite happily sit there and watch that for another half hour. I wanted more of this movie. Enough said.

Next post: Let Me In.