The 8 Hotties of Hanukkah: Jesse Eisenberg

To celebrate Hanukkah and my love of Jewish men, I thought it would be fun to bring you a sexy Jew every night at sundown in honor of each day of Hanukkah. A big thank you goes out to Fuck Yeah, Jewish Men for bringing some men to my attention who I had no idea were Jewish. For this first night of the "Festival of Lights," I chose perhaps the most notorious young Jew in Hollywood: Jesse Eisenberg. Although not traditionally good looking, there's a lot to be said about his quick wit and charming personality (not to mention his bromance with Andy Garfield). We love him in these parts and wouldn't mind if he took a chance on this Gentile right here. Mazel tov!

Finishing Up the 2010 Diva Cup Awards

As you may have noticed, 2010 has been over for nearly eight months, yet I'm still rolling out my Diva Cup Awards honoring the best in film from that year. I'm not one for deadlines, especially when it comes to this, but it's time to finish this up. The problem is, I don't really have the time or the energy to do a long write-up defending my choices at the moment. So, what I'll do is give you my nominees for Best Actor & Actress and my Top 10 Films of the year with the promise that I will write about these more in the future. I realize only a few people will actually care about that but it would be more for myself than anyone. Without further ado, here are the final awards:

Best Actor

Aaron Eckhart, Rabbit Hole

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

Édgar Ramirez, Carlos

Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter

And the Diva Cup Award Goes to: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Best Actress

Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank

Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole

Lesley Manville, Another Year

Emma Stone, Easy A

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

And the Diva Cup Goes to: Emma Stone, Easy A

Top 10 Films of 2010

10. Catfish (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman)

09. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg)

08. The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm)

07. The Fighter (David O. Russell)

06. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)

05. Everyone Else (Maren Ade)

04. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)

03. Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)

02. The Social Network (David Fincher)

01. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)

Rants on The Social Network

Truth plays an important role in David Fincher’s The Social Network. Did Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), founder of Facebook, steal the original idea for the site from Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, two all-American rower twins, and their best friend, Divya Narendra? Did Mark maliciously drive his best friend and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) out of the business through an underhanded business transaction? Was Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), guiding hand to Mark after the initial success of the project, the one to convince him to dump Eduardo? The Social Network raises all of these questions and, thankfully, the film refuses to answer them as well. There are plenty of reasons why Fincher, writer Aaron Sorkin and company are unforthcoming with what exactly went down between these characters but perhaps the biggest is also the simplest: no one knows the truth. The lack of what constitutes “the truth” in The Social Network really sets off the film’s detractors, who are angry that the filmmakers did not get certain facts correct or that certain characters do not resemble their real life counterparts. To complain about this, however, is to completely miss the point of the movie. Fincher and Sorkin are not interested in perfectly recreating history like this was some Oscar bait biopic about an artist with a physical handicap; they relish the moments of ambiguity, the way the story of the founding of Facebook does not have a clear trajectory. As one character says about deposition testimony, 85% of the memories are greatly exaggerated while the other 15% are complete bullshit. One cannot expect a typical biopic when you’re dealing with a story that is all about exaggerated memories and unclear motivations spurned on by unhealed emotional wounds.

The character most affected by this ambiguity is, of course, Mark. Fincher and Sorkin have a blast playing with his role in the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. He starts off quite obviously as the villain of the piece, where scathing attack after scathing attack are hurled at Mark with reckless abandon from each of the characters. Whether in the flashback scenes at Harvard or in the present day deposition scenes, where we realize that the Winklevoss twins, Divya and Eduardo are all suing Mark, smug, superior and self-satisfied when delivering his testimony, for their rightful part of the company, The Social Network wants to position Mark as the bad guy, no ifs, ands or buts. As the film progresses, though, and more and more of the supporting characters’ motives are revealed, Mark’s villain status becomes murkier. Were the Winklevii, as Mark snarkily calls them at one point, and Divya in the right for suing Mark, or were they actually jealous of the fact that he had found a way to make an extremely successful, highly-functioning social networking site and, for the first time, “things didn’t go according to plan”? Did Mark in fact steal the program, or was his chair analogy—just because you invent a chair does not mean that you can claim copyright to every chair afterwards—on point? And was the motivation for kicking Eduardo out of the company revenge-based as Eduardo suggests after discovering the bad news? Was Mark, who Eduardo had previously admitted did not care about money, even involved in the whole affair? The answer is not so clear anymore and leads to a far more interesting film than one with a pat resolution or more decisive black/white reading of the characters would have been.

Even without the duality and consistent flip-flopping of these dilemmas, the Mark Zuckerberg character is an enigma through and through. Even the ones closest to him are unable to read his moods or predict what his reaction to any particular situation will be. When we first meet Eduardo, he is coming to the aid of Mark after hearing that his girlfriend had just broken up with him. Eduardo invites Mark to share his sorrow, practically begs for it in fact, but Mark, who had worked through his feelings through blogging and creating a website that ranks the hotness of the girls of Harvard, looks at him as if he does not understand why he would need to do that. He has quickly moved on to the next thing and has no need to reflect on that experience again. As if Mark’s not enough of a cipher on his own, The Social Network presents him in Citizen Kane-like fashion where each of the characters around him remembers him in a different and distinct way. In the opening scene, Mark is in the middle of a His Girl Friday-style rapid-fire conversation with his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) about everything from taking the SATs in China to getting into one of Harvard’s prestigious Final Clubs. Mark is animated, jumping around from one topic to the next so quickly that Erica is always three questions behind. He is perhaps more animated here than he is with any other character in the film, although it is more likely a symptom of nervousness than because he is truly involved with the conversation. Mark is also always on the defensive, looking for ways to attack Erica first before she can hurt him, which prompts her to say as she dumps him, “But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a tech geek. I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole."

With Eduardo, Mark is freer to be himself, to be lost in his own little world 90 percent of the time. Because Eduardo is accepting of this behavior and will not call him out on it, Mark can act this way. Eduardo knows to tiptoe around every sensitive subject and seems to understand Mark’s inability to offer praise and congratulations when something good happens to him (although you can tell that Eduardo wishes just once Mark would surprise him). For example, when Eduardo comes to tell Mark that he made the second cut to get into one of the Final Clubs, he approaches the conversation methodically. Instead of openly admitting, “Hey, I made the second cut!” Eduardo tosses the information out with a self-effacing tone, as in “I don’t know how in the hell I got in. It must have been a clerical error rather than because they truly want me to be a part of their club.” Later on in the film, Mark also loses his temper at Eduardo when he, in a fit of anger when Mark was allowing Sean to set up investment meetings behind his back, freezes the account that Mark was using to finance the company. Andrew Garfield is perfectly cast in the role of Eduardo, for he proved in Boy A that he is at his best juggling 14 emotions at once. With Mark as his screen partner in a good majority of his scenes, Garfield is really put to the test since he needs to work on three different levels of caution just talking to him in a normal conversation. And when he’s speaking with Mark in the aforementioned scene, not only is he dealing with that while trying to explain his position, he also has his crazy girlfriend, who has just burst through the door uninvited, in the other room, lighting the present he just bought her on fire. With so much going on, it is no doubt that it is Garfield’s best scene of the film.



When Sean Parker enters the life of Mark, he is immediately accepted as a sort of god. Sean thumbed his nose at the music industry and earned a reputation for not playing ball with the bigwigs in Silicon Valley. Mark highly respects him for this and treats everything that he says like scripture. During their initial meeting in a sushi restaurant in New York, Sean regales Mark, Eduardo and Eduardo’s girlfriend with tales from the days of Napster and his spectacular fall from his second start-up company. Eduardo thinks he is full of shit and finds him to be slightly paranoid, but Mark is captivated by him and finds Eduardo’s reservations unfounded. As the film wears on, Sean becomes the devil on Mark’s shoulder and, in a way, could be seen as the catalyst that ultimately drives apart Mark and Eduardo. One way of looking at the situation is that Sean seduces Mark with the good life and everything that could come to him if he ignored Eduardo’s “lame” advice and waited just a bit. There’s a scene that takes place in a club (with sound design that reminded me of the club scene in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, oddly enough) in which Sean, surrounded by Victoria’s Secret models and ultra expensive alcohol, tells the story of the founder of Victoria’s Secret who sold the company for $4 million only to have it valued two years later at somewhere close to $500 million. His message is clear: bide your time and the rewards will be larger.

With a character as complex as Mark Zuckerberg, it might appear strange that Jesse Eisenberg, best known for being an awkward smartass in the shadow of Michael Cera, was cast in the role. But in The Social Network, Eisenberg is really able to push the boundaries of his persona to the breaking point. The deep furrow that takes residency on his face throughout the film becomes a part of Mark’s enigma; his face becomes an unreadable mask and you have no idea how the outside world is affecting him. But, then again, there is no outside world to Mark besides Facebook. He becomes so focused on it that even the relationships he once maintained, as flimsy or difficult as they were for him, get pushed to the background. Thankfully, though, Eisenberg does not completely rely on this blank mask to do all the work. There are flashes in several important scenes where you see the guard come down and find a vulnerable human being. In the opening scene again, Erica at one point says something quite rude (albeit totally on point and appropriate) to him and he visibly winces for the briefest amount of time. It’s a crack in the façade, but it proves that Eisenberg is still fully aware within each moment of the film. For a character that was so thinly characterized and completely obtuse in the source material, The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, Eisenberg does a hell of a job at finding ways to integrate his own persona (the funniest bit of the entire movie is when he checks the math of one of the lawyers: “One second…yes, $19,000 is what I got, too.”) into the uneasiness and impenetrability of Mark. In a film filled with unsolved mysteries, Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg is the biggest question mark of them all. A-

Andy Garfield is a Potential Oscar Nominee...I Think

There are some new pictures from the upcoming film The Social Network, undoubtedly my most anticipated film for the rest of the year, over at /Film. Star Jesse Eisenberg and Disney starlet Brenda Song (who plays Andy's girlfriend, the lucky bitch) appear in a few of them, but I have to share the shots of my boo Andy Garfield, looking good as always. Between this film and Never Let Me Go, these next couple of months are shaping up to be the Autumn of Andy. And because these films are looking like major hits, whether with critics, audiences or both, I'm going out on a limb and making a bold prediction:

Andrew Garfield will be an Oscar nominee come next January.

Why, you ask? I have no real evidence to support this hypothesis; it's just a complete and utter hunch on my part. Here is my reasoning. First of all, he has major roles in both Never Let Me Go and The Social Network. The success of both of these films will hinge, in part, on Andy's performance in each of them. If he's good, he'll definitely be remembered. Oscar definitely responds to actors who have multiple acclaimed performances in the same year (just as long as there isn't category confusion or general confusion as to which performance to back). Secondly, the news that Andy has been cast as the new Spider Man in Marc Webb's upcoming series reboot proves that he's poised to be the Next Big Thing. Don't you think Oscar would want to cash in on that so they can say, "Na na na na boo boo! We discovered him before you!"? Sure, the fact that Andy is a young, attractive male will be a negative in his favor as the conservative group likes their actresses young and perky and their men past middle age and rapidly approaching death. This is why actors like Ben Foster, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gael Garcia Bernal are nomination-less while Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson and Philip Seymour Hoffman have nominations up the wazoo. But, as films like Brokeback Mountain and Half Nelson proved, when a film hits Oscar's sweet spot, they have been known to loosen their "No Hotties Under 30" rule.

I think Andy will have a better chance in the Best Supporting Actor category, as it seems more open to new blood than the Lead category. The question is now which film will get him there? Both roles are borderline lead roles and, depending on the adaptation, a case could be made for either category placement. In Never Let Me Go, he's the male romantic lead, but there's an argument to be made that the story belongs solely to the character Carey Mulligan plays in the film. I just started the book The Social Network is based on (I'm literally 19 pages in) and the story is told through Garfield's character's viewpoint. But, based on what we've heard about Mark Zuckerberg and the film's trailer, it looks like Jesse Eisenberg is the star of the film. My guess is that they'll campaign Andy in both categories, but which film will go where? Never Let Me Go appears to have the best shot at a nomination (based on renowned book, world famous author, "prestige" factor, shot in trailer of Andy screaming his lungs out in anger) but it's also the film that is the hardest to make a case for to downgrade him to supporting. And who knows if director Mark Romanek will be Oscar's cup of tea? David Fincher has already proven capable of rubbing Oscar the right way, but will The Social Network be another Benjamin Button-esque attempt at prestige filmmaking? Lord I hope not, but, if it isn't, Oscar may not bite either. Geez, this is fucking complicated! You can easily talk yourself into thinking one way and then just as easily come up with examples that disprove your theory. That's what you get when you try to figure out Oscar: a headache. But, no matter how convoluted it sounds, I still stand by my hunch that Andy Garfield will get his first Oscar nomination this year.

A Defense of Kristen Stewart's BAFTA Rising Star Award...About Three Months Later

I wrote this piece for a project that never got off the ground soon after the BAFTA Awards this year. I was tempted to just toss it out for its irrelevancy, but I think I say some things in here that need to be said. As a lifelong Kristen Stewart lover, I am a bit tired of having to defend her every time I open my mouth when there are so many other actors in her position that seem to get a free pass. Anyways, just ignore the fact this is old news and focus on my defense.

Kristen Stewart’s (admittedly unsurprising) win at the BAFTAs last weekend a couple months ago caused a major ruckus among “serious” film buffs, bloggers and critics. Well, I am here (also unsurprisingly) to stand up for Ms. Stewart and her win, a well-deserved one at that. First of all, let’s get one major thing out of the way: the Orange Rising Star Award is a major load of bollocks. In all honestly, if you’re going to get so upset about an award that basically amounts to the same thing as a People’s Choice Award, congratulations, you are officially the saddest person on the planet. I, for one, have better things to save my irrational hatred for (for instance, American Idol results or the Oscars).

Secondly, looking at Stewart’s competition in the category, as stiff as it was, she still deserved the damn award. No offense to Tahar Rahim, who I’m sure is wonderful in A Prophet, but in all seriousness, what does this award matter to him? As a French Arab, he has about a 5% chance of ever being in a film that receives international distribution again (let alone one with the acclaim of A Prophet). He may be fantastic in the film, but a breakthrough artist award seems a bit silly. I like Jesse Eisenberg. I adore his awkward shtick, plus he gets on my nerves less than Michael Cera does these days. But, honestly, an award for it seems too much at the moment. Give him a couple of films and let’s see if he is able to expand upon his persona in any significant way. You all know that Nicholas Hoult is my new boo. I’m truly thrilled that he is finally getting international exposure after being on the brink for oh-so-long. With that being said, however, A Single Man is seriously the least interesting performance I’ve seen from him. He is not bad in the role; rather, the role requires very little of him besides to get naked (oh how glorious that is!) and to be a lusty object of affection for both Colin Firth’s George and Tom Ford himself. If he was nominated in 2007 when series one of Skins was on the air, then I could see giving him the award for that staggering, volatile performance. And now we come to Carey Mulligan, everyone’s favorite “It Girl’ for 2009. I’ve gotten a lot of flack for not being absolutely smitten with her and her performance in An Education. I keep insisting that, yes, I do think she’s rather good in An Education and can see a bright future for her. What I don’t think, however, is that she Revolutionized Screen Acting As We Know It as many of her supporters seem to think. My God, she’s not Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Mulligan offers a nice, pleasant, occasionally grating, performance but nothing more. Besides, wasn’t her Best Actress win enough of a compensation for not winning this silly award? Oh no. She must win every award under the sun because she is the greatest British actor around since Sir Laurence Olivier.


So what about Kristen Stewart? How about I start off with my usual list of reasons why I love her: She’s refreshingly awkward and unpolished. She couldn’t craft a sound byte to save her life. Her “Stewart-isms” are soothing for me. Her performances, Twilight aside, are risky and unexpected. Unlike most 19-year old actresses slumming it in cheap high school romantic comedies and horror movies, she revels in dark, moody works that allow her to wallow in wordless distress. I could probably go on and on, but I will stop right there. I find it ridiculous that, over and over again, I find myself defending her from Stewart-haters who can’t seem to get over the fact that she stars in Twilight, which, by golly, is consistently pretty bad but also made a shit-ton of money. As if she’s the first actress to act in a shitty, high-grossing film series solely for a nice paycheck and career exposure. “But,” I’m sure you’re arguing, “she won this award for those movies!” Yes, she did; I can’t argue with that. But, Shia LaBeouf also won this very same award two years ago after the mega success of a little film called Transformers, and no one seemed to give a shit then. Why? Because he’s a “serious” actor who is “serious” about his craft. Yeah. Everything he’s done since then--Indiana Jones, Eagle Eye, Transformers 2--has been solely for the advancement of the art form. If you’re going to discredit an actor solely on what they won for, at least do it consistently (But Shia constantly gets a free pass from everyone, for God knows whatever reason. If Kristen Stewart had done half the shit he has, she would have been crucified by now. But I digress). But, if anyone had bothered watching New Moon before they started bitching about anything and everything about it, they might have noticed that Stewart was noticeably better this go-around, much breezier and smoother than she was in the first installment. She’s not earth-shattering by any means, but, then again, she’s hardly a commercial actress meant for blockbusters. In a way, I imagine she’ll have a career much like Nicole Kidman’s once this Twilight business ends: every couple of years she’ll pop out a commercial film that will most likely not do very well at the box office, but in between she’ll flourish with risky, dark, uncommercial indies. With the potential for this, how can you not support Stewart and her Rising Star Award? She appears to be going places, but even if she crashes and burns, it will be damn interesting watching her doing it.