Movies and an update

Oh hello, Neglected Blog. I've had a busy past few days- gearing up for a big two day training session at work and preparing for my trip home to Massachusetts...I leave in about three hours (so I should probably finish packing). I'm really looking forward to catching up with family and friends and enjoying some Dunkin Donuts iced coffee and Mexican food cooked by real Mexicans rather than Australian teenagers.

I have seen a couple of movies recently:

1. All About My Mother. This Spanish film from 1999 comes from the famous director Almodovar, known for his unconventional characters and the fact that most of his movies are about women. I've seen several of his movies, and my previous favorite was Volver. However, I must say that now I consider All About My Mother Almodovar's best. It's a stunning film- interesting and creative and a treat for movie/theater buffs, as allusions to All About Eve and A Streetcar Named Desire pervade the movie. All About My Mother is about a mother, Manuela, whose teenage son dies in an accident at the beginning of the film. She travels to Barcelona to find his father, a drag queen named Lola who never knew that he/she had fathered a child. However, instead of finding Lola, she befriends and unlikely group of misfits: a transvestite ex-prostitute, a famous theater actress in love with her troubled co-star, and a pregnant nun (played by a young and adorable Penelope Cruz). Almodovar's movies aren't for everyone, but one of his strengths is that he portrays the types of people who live on the edge of society, the freaks, weirdos, and misfits, with compassion and without judgement. I thought All About My Mother was fantastic- highly recommended!

2. The Social Network, a.k.a the Facebook movie, stars Jesse Eisenberg (from Adventureland and Zombieland...perhaps they should have called it Facebookland to continue the trend?) as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. It's written by the people from the West Wing, and as expected, features some great dialogue and good acting, notably Justin Timberlake as the egomaniac developer of Napster, Sean Parker. The Winklevoss twins (played by just one guy, I wonder how they did that?) were hilarious. However, the movie didn't do much for me, basically, because Mark Zuckerberg is big jerk. He has a big chip on his shoulder for being a geek, and if that's supposed to make you sympathize with him, it didn't work. Hey, if you're brilliant and go to Harvard, don't expect people to feel sorry for you. In the movie, he's mean to his ex-girlfriend, he steals the idea from Facebook, and he royally screws over his best friend. I guess I have trouble enjoying a movie when I don't like the main character.