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David Fincher Might Direct Aaron Sorkin's Facebook Movie

BuzzSugar — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:30:21 -0700

The movie Aaron Sorkin is writing about Facebook looks to be getting even more bizarre: Word is Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button director David Fincher is in talks to direct the movie. Can I assume the first rule is to not talk about Facebook?

Actually, I probably can assume that when it comes to this top-secret project, the script of which has supposedly been printed on red paper so it would be harder to photocopy. (Seriously!) This is the first big news about the project since last year, when Sorkin joined Facebook for the first time to get familiar with the site while he was working on the script.

In addition to Fincher's possible involvement, there's also news of a possible title for the project: The Social Network. All we know plot-wise thus far is that it will "focus on the evolution of Facebook from its 2004 creation on the Harvard campus by sophomore Mark Zuckerberg to a juggernaut with more than 200 million members."

Could Sorkin and Fincher turn this into a project worth watching - or does it just seem baffling to you? And does this mean it's high time to get David Fincher on Facebook?

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Oscar Nominee: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button For Best Costume Design

BuzzSugar — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:30:06 -0800

As we gear up for the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees for Best Costume Design. It's a big year for this category as the films nominated represent several vastly different historical periods. Be it eighteenth century England or San Francisco in the '70s, these films include some gorgeous threads. Today's featured movie is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

No matter what you think of Benjamin Button overall, most agree that the movie is a stunning technical and visual achievement, and part of this is the gorgeous costuming. Director David Fincher sets his magical tale inside a sepia-toned universe, allowing the costumes to indicate the changing times throughout the story while the palette gives it all a mystical effect - as if we've dusted off some old photo book in our grandparents' attic. That is, until Cate Blanchett's character bursts onto the screen in a vibrant red dress or Tilda Swinton glides across a room in a luxurious fur. These costumes tell us the movie isn't just a window into the past but a vibrant living thing to be experienced in the now.

To check out the romantic costumes for yourself, read more.

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Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Not Quite a Fairytale

BuzzSugar — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:30:57 -0800

The notion of youth being wasted on the young is a compelling one, without a doubt. It inspired a famous Mark Twain quote, which in turn inspired an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, which has now lent its name to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a film starring Brad Pitt as the title character, born old and destined to die young.

It sounds like a fairytale, and at times, the screen version feels like one, with ethereal flashbacks, eerily spot-on visual effects, and a sweet if improbable romance between Benjamin and his normally-aging love, Daisy (Cate Blanchett). But director David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth almost crowd out the movie's central love story with too much stuff - there's a hurricane plot, a daughter learning the truth about her family, and nearly an hour of Benjamin's wacky adventures. Instead of enveloping the audience in a mystical story, it fights against its narrative, constantly breaking its own spell. Yet there are reasons to watch Benjamin Button even when it feels like work, so to see the rest of my thoughts, just read more.

Though it doesn't fully kick in till almost halfway through the movie, the relationship between Benjamin and Daisy is worth the price of admission. They're sweet as children (Daisy young, Benjamin physically decrepit) and as 20-somethings (Daisy cool and sophisticated, Benjamin finally starting to look like Brad Pitt), but it's when they meet in the middle, in their 40s, that their love story takes over the film. They don't have much time as equals, and that lends an urgency to their relationship that the rest of the movie lacks. Pitt rightfully gets praised for his work as Benjamin, but Blanchett should get more credit for her performance; unlike Pitt, she doesn't have a voiceover to guide her through the story, but she's a strong enough actress to show Daisy's emotions even without the luxury of explaining them.

It's a shame that Fincher and Roth couldn't trust that story to work on its own, because with that relationship at the center - and maybe with some deeper musings from Benjamin on what it means to be living his life this way - the movie could have been a masterpiece. Instead, it feels emotionally remote and over-cluttered, with a structure reminiscent of both Forrest Gump (for which Roth was also the screenwriter) and Titanic. The early scenes with Benjamin growing up in a New Orleans retirement home are strong - and Taraji P. Henson is outstanding as Queenie, the mother figure who discovers Benjamin abandoned on her stoop and raises him as her own - but once Benjamin leaves home and joins a tugboat crew, the movie drags. It doesn't help that the flashbacks are intercut with scenes of a dying Daisy in the hospital; that plotline never really hits its stride emotionally and mostly just feels detached. And a few references to Hurricane Katrina permanently anchor the movie in a particular era, which feels at odds with its more timeless qualities.

Luckily, just when Benjamin Button starts to feel aimless, the love story takes center stage - and, with that, the movie builds some momentum to reach a satisfying enough end. The special effects are also remarkable (and it's a good thing, because when you're talking about aging Brad Pitt's face and putting it on someone else's body, doing it poorly would be disastrous); I'd be shocked if Benjamin Button doesn't end up in contention for all kinds of visual effects and makeup Oscars. It will probably be a Best Picture contender, too, but I'm less convinced that it's deserving of that honor; as good as it is in parts, Benjamin Button ends up falling short of what it could have been.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

First Look: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button With Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett

BuzzSugar — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:30:19 -0700

Some folks are already declaring "Oscar!" just based on this Spanish-language trailer for the eerie Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I can definitely see where they're getting that feeling, as the trailer makes it look like the film succeeds in capturing the other-worldly atmosphere of the F. Scott Fitzgerald story on which it's based.

As ComingSoon puts it, the story follows "a man (Brad Pitt) who is born in his eighties and ages backwards. A man, like any of us, unable to stop time. We follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the twenty-first century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man's life can be." The post continues on to promise "a time traveler's tale of the people and places he bumps into along the way, the loves he loses and finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time."

Whoa, that's a loaded movie. But if anyone can handle it, it's Fight Club and Zodiac director David Fincher. Benjamin Button opens in theaters December 19 (oh, look at that, right when people start getting Oscars on the brain!). To check out the trailer which made my stomach all squirmy, read more.

Link Time! 3/6

BuzzSugar — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:26:09 -0800

I can't possibly write a better headline than Best Week Ever does for this photo of Jared Leto. So just go there.
TV With MeeVee fills us in on a new reality show for happy couples. Where's the fun in that?
Popwatch ponders the good and the bad of Meatloaf’s duet with Jennifer Hudson.
Merry Swankster designs an impressive NCAA-like tournament for albums from the '90s.
The Slant blog turns me on to Christina Aguilera’s “Candyman” video homage to the Andrews Sisters.
Cinematical reveals the delicious news that Daniel Craig and Heath Ledger are being considered for the part of Lucifer in Paradise Lost.
Earvolution compiles the Top 10 most corporate moments in rock.
TV Squad wonders: Why is "Rules of Engagement" getting good ratings?
Film Experience reveals that before Zodiac, David Fincher directed about a million music videos, including "Cold Hearted Snake."
Pop Candy tell us how to watch "Andy Barker P.I." online.
Give Me My Remote has photos of "The Office"'s John Krasinski on the set of Leatherheads.
Rolling Stone rounds up an exclusive Cat Power video featuring five songs.
FitSugar's Playlist of the Week? "American Idol," of course.

Zodiac: Spooky and Solid

BuzzSugar — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:01:56 -0800

Going into Zodiac, I was preemptively annoyed that it was such a long film, running 2 hours and 40 minutes. Director David Fincher even made the bold claim that he "couldn't find a way" to make it shorter, which made me roll my eyes. But when I went blinking back into the real world, I felt I actually could have watched even more. For one thing, it was a great movie and I really enjoyed it. For another, though, the case piqued my interest, and I still have questions.

The film primarily follows Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1960s and 1970s as he becomes gradually obsessed with the case of the Bay Area serial killer, The Zodiac. The killer sent letters and cryptograms to the Chronicle in which he claimed to have committed several murders and threatened many more if the newspaper did not run his letters. Thus, he became a media sensation. The Zodiac's elusiveness became infuriating and embarrassing for multiple police departments, and eventually, the letters stopped arriving. Long after the case faded from public interest, however, a few journalists and investigators were still obsessed with the Zodiac - Graysmith in particular - so

Gyllenhaal's Graysmith is the only real bleak spot in the cast of extremely capable actors. He comes across as a wide-eyed goody-goody with no identifiable reason why he gives up his life to pursue a case that is all but forgotten. Ruffalo far outshines him as investigator Dave Toschi, creating a character you immediately trust and want to succeed and playing nicely off his partner William Armstrong ("ER"'s Anthony Edwards). Robert Downey Jr. does his normal thing as the seasoned crime journalist Paul Avery, delivering his cynical lines in the usual deadpan, slightly effeminate manner.

One of the most fascinating things about the story is how the Zodiac used the media in a period of technological history that is drastically different from today's. It was a time when a call trace could take 15 minutes, few police departments even had a fax machine, and people didn't have cell phones, not to mention cameras in their cell phones. The way this one person could create such a public frenzy and elude the grasp of so many is baffling to modern audiences and was certainly of interest to the filmmakers.

With comparatively little gore, it’s a far cry from Fincher’s Seven or Fight Club, coming off more like a documentary in its meticulous attention to every piece of evidence. By two-thirds of the way into it, we are as worn down by the investigation as the characters are, and while that is true, the movies’ timeline sweeps along too swiftly to elicit much frustration. The way Fincher builds suspense is admirable, and the way he sustains this suspense and unravels each discovery even more so. The subject matter could have lent itself to more bloodshed and unrestrained, Hollywood-y deviation from the facts, but Fincher didn't fall into those traps. The storytelling is steady and controlled, creating - despite no actual resolution to the case - a fully satisfying movie.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Movie Preview: Zodiac

BuzzSugar — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:25:34 -0800

Coming out this Friday, March 2, Zodiac is a psychological thriller about a real-life San Francisco serial killer who called himself the Zodiac. In the still-unsolved case, the Zodiac killer taunted police and journalists in the '60s and '70s by sending letters and cryptograms to the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., the film follows the investigators and reporters who became obsessed with this killer-turned-media phenomena.

The film is already being lauded for its detailed adherence to the true story, with the filmmakers largely avoiding dramatization. The result looks like a movie with some tedious parts but with even more that are eerily realistic. Zodiac is directed by David Fincher, who already has hair-raising successes Seven and Fight Club under his belt.

Will you see Zodiac? To watch the creepy trailer, read more

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Link Time! 2/13

BuzzSugar — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:35:38 -0800

"Top Design" judge Jonathan Adler attempts to explain his weak "see you later, decorator" catch phrase.
With a very awkward video, Best Week Ever proves how much Sharon Stone needs a new schtick.
Stereogum shows us what Vanilla Ice is up to: rapping about doing taxes. And it's actually pretty awesome.
TV Squad serves up five reasons to avoid "American Idol" as it moves into Hollywood Week.
Film Experience tells us how much they can’t wait to see the next Tim Burton-Johnny Depp film, Sweeney Todd.
Defamer is all over Tina Fey's swipe at Aaron Sorkin.
Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Daily has an epiphany: The "Cold Case" soundtrack is to baby boomers what "The OC" music is to 20-somethings.
Popwatch provides some handy pointers on how to get out of your Valentine’s Day obligations so you don't miss any good TV.
BuddyTV wonders if "Lost" will jump the shark in sweeps.
You Ain't No Picasso gives us Arcade Fire covering the Clash.
Reeling talks to Fight Club director David Fincher about his upcoming thriller, Zodiac.

Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg Cast in Facebook Movie

BuzzSugar — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:30:07 -0700

Look for some new status updates: Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg have been cast in The Social Network as the founders of Facebook.

Eisenberg has taken the role of Mark Zuckerberg, after both Shia LaBeouf and Michael Cera were rumored for it (Geek totally called it, btw!) Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield will play the two other Facebook founders; Timberlake is taking on Sean Parker (also founder of Napster), and Garfield is playing Eduardo Saverin.

I think Eisenberg is an excellent choice to play Zuckerberg - he has the right resemblance and can play awkward authentically. Timberlake is kind of a surprise here, but the mix so far of inspired casting, Aaron Sorkin producing, and David Fincher directing is making this movie quite the interesting project.