TIME Magazine Names Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year

Facebook founder and the world's youngest billionaire Mark Zuckerberg has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2010.

The editors explain their choice:

At 26, Zuckerberg is a year older than our first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh — another young man who used technology to bridge continents. He is the same age as Queen Elizabeth when she was Person of the Year, for 1952. But unlike the Queen, he did not inherit an empire; he created one. (The Queen, by the way, launched a Facebook page this year.) Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is a recognition of the power of individuals to shape our world. For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them (something that has never been done before); for creating a new system of exchanging information that has become both indispensable and sometimes a little scary; and finally, for changing how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even optimistic, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year.

The story of the founding of Facebook is depicted in the movie The Social Network starring Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, adapted from a fictionalization into a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher. The movie has been winning several  end-of-year critics awards and must be considered one of the frontrunners for the Best Picture Oscar.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Social Network

The Social Network is more ubiquitously known as "The Facebook movie." This is odd, because although the movie does tell the story about the creation of what would go on to become the largest social networking website in the world in Fall 2003 in the dorm room of a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate, it is really about Mark Zuckerberg the creator and current CEO of Facebook.

The movie is directed by the brilliant David Fincher (Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Alien³) from a screenplay adapted by the equally renowned Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men) from a book called The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.

The movie stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, whom he plays as a fast-talking, emotionally distant computer genius. In fact, emotionally distant doesn't begin to describe Eisenberg's emotional affect as Zuckerberg in the film; he appears as clearly somewhere advanced on the Autism-Asperger's Syndrome axis.

Since the film makers are well aware that the audiences for the film will likely be on Facebook themselves they provide us with all the details of how a computer program essentially created in a single dorm became a worldwide cultural behemoth less than 7 years later.

Sorkin's screenplay cleverly intercuts between Zuckerberg being deposed in two separate lawsuits over the creation of Facebook, one from his erstwhile best friend Eduardo Saverin (a fellow Jewish student of Brazilian descent played by the attractive actor Andrew Garfield) and from Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. The Winklevoss Brothers (who are 6'5", 220 lb, blond blue-eyed champion members of Harvard's crew team, played by a single actor Armie Hammer with his face digitally projected on a body double) and Narendra had plans to make a website called HarvardConnect which would allow Harvard students to interact with each other online. They approached Zuckerberg after he became famous on campus for nearly bringing down Harvard's network connection after he developed a website in one night, while drunk, which allowed Harvard students to rate female Harvard students on "hotness." Zuckerberg agreed but never produced any actual code for the Winklevoss twins, and instead started his own website with $1,000 in seed funding from his friend Saverin which he called "thefacebook.com." This is about as much of the plot as I want to reveal; suffice it to say it is worth watching, in the theaters, for yourself.

The film is an engrossing, well-told tale of how friendships and relationships can be destroyed by an overwhelming desire to be successful in business, and although Zuckerberg doesn't come out smelling like a rose for his interactions with both the Winklevoss twins and with Saverin, the film clearly demonstrates that Zuckerberg is the reason why Facebook is what it is today and in the word of Eisenberg's character scoffs at the notion that either of the groups suing him could have created anything similar.

It should be noted that Fincher, Sorkin and Zuckerberg have all declared The Social Network to be a work of fiction, but in some sense that makes the film even more entertaining.

Hopefully the film, as well as the work of Eisenberg, Fincher, and Sorkin will not be forgotten at end-of-year awards time. I fully expect this film to be high in my annual Top 10 list.

Running Time: 2 hours, 1 minute.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language.
Release Date: October 1, 2010.
Seen: Sunday, October 24, 2010.

Writing: A+.

Acting: A+.

Visuals: A-.

Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: A (4.0/4.0). 

MOVIE REVIEW: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of the leading contenders for the Best Picture of the year but has been receiving wild ecstatic raves and vicious pans from the filmerati.

The Oscar nominations come out on Thursday January 24th and most Oscarologists expect "Ben Button" to be in the elite group of Best Picture nominees, and may have the most nominations overall.

As the above pictures indicate, the film stars Oscar winner (The Aviator) Cate Blanchett and (2-time) World's Sexiest Man Brad Pitt and was written by Oscar-winner Eric Roth (Forrest Gump). Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) also has a pivotal role. However, the real star of the film is the stunning visual effects that depict the reverse-aging of Brad Pitt's character Benjamin Button as well as the forward-aging of Cate Blanchett's Daisy.

This is clearly film-making at a very high level, with the art direction, cinematography and score particularly notable. The producers of this film often work with Steven Spielberg and clearly they intended The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to have the magic of some of his classic films and/or Forrest Gump. Sadly, "Ben Button" does not reach those heights; it is a very good, but not great film.

The central conceit of the film, that someone would be born very old and physically age in reverse actually is quite effective. This plot device actually provokes some serious ruminations on the nature of life by the viewer which is often the hallmark of great art. Interestingly, despite having a structural lack of suspense (we know that Benjamin Button is going to have to "grow young and die") Eric Roth's script does an excellent job of still providing twists and turns that surprise and delight.

Both Blanchett and Pitt give spellbinding performances. Pitt, especially astounds in his physical ability to embody younger and younger versions of himself. However, I was also struck by Blanchett's even more difficult (albeit more traditional) performance that contains more physically humbling scenes. Taraji P. Henson plays Brad Pitt's adoptive mother as one of several "magic negroes" that mar the film's emotional impact. The shooting of the film in and around New Orleans, Louisiana does provide an interesting emotional frisson as well as the inclusion of the somewhat controversial Hurricane Katrina sub-plot featuring Julia Ormond.

Overall, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of the best films of the year; with outstanding performances by both lead actors and an intriguing plot devices that provides an opportunity for self-reflection.

Running Time: 2 hours, 46 minutes, MPAA Rating: PG-13.

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A-.

ACTING: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
PLOT: B+.
IMPACT: B+.