Here we finally have our first glimpse of Rooney in the infamous opening scene from “The Social Network”!!

039 x Movie Images – The Social Network: Clip #1 Captures

Some new Rooney in this!

021 x Movie Images – The Social Network: ET Featurette Captures

Rooney probably won’t be able to attend since it’ll be right in the middle of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” filming, but *fingers crossed*!

TOKYO — David Fincher’s “The Social Network” will open the Tokyo Intl. Film Festival, the fest announced on Tuesday.

Ben Affleck’s suspenser-actioner “The Town” is skedded to close the 23rd edition of the fest, which will unspool Oct. 23-31 in Tokyo.

The lineup of guests has yet to be announced, but given the fest’s track record as a B.O. launch pad for its opening and closing pics, talent from “The Social Network” and “The Town” will no doubt be present in force.

The opening pic last year, “Avatar,” finished its Japan run with nearly $180 million.

“The Social Network” is skedded for release by Sony on Jan. 15, while Warner will bow “The Town” sometime in 2011.

The Tokyo fest also announced a special screening of Claude Chabrol’s 2009 pic “Bellamy,” as a tribute to the late helmer, who died on Sept. 12, as well as the 10-pic lineup of its World Cinema section, which will include Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer” and Michel Gondry’s “Thorn in the Heart.” Pics in this section have screened at major fests around the world, but have not yet secured a Japan distribution deal.

Source: Variety

I probably won’t be posting all the reviews for “The Social Network”, but here is one that is just absolutely lovely regarding Rooney’s performance.

In the very first scene of David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” Rooney Mara quells any doubt that she’s qualified to play Lisbeth Salander in Fincher’s version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” As a woman who decides that she can no longer date a bundle of insecurities and ambitions named Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), she anchors the entire film with her decency and sanity and trust in her own instincts. All the other characters, at one time or another, over-value mere brilliance. Mara and her character bring the movie rare emotional intelligence. She’s under a lot of pressure as a performer here — in just a few minutes she must operate as a flesh-and-blood Rosebud in a film that is the ‘Citizen Kane’ of the Facebook generation. But Mara pulls it off. It isn’t a showy role but it’s a crucial one, and for my money Mara embodies it as superbly as Judi Dench did Queen Elizabeth in “Shakespeare in Love.” (In other words, award-givers should ignore the brevity of the part and take note of Mara’s mettle.) Those who worried about Mara playing Salander should now be avidly anticipating what she can do under Fincher’s direction in the plum female role of the decade.

Source: Baltimore Sun

There are some great new clips and a new interview with Rooney in this awesome interactive trailer for “The Social Network”. Check it out!

014 x Movie Images – The Social Network: Interactive Trailer Captures

Here we have our very first official word on Rooney being cast as Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. David Fincher answered a few questions from Hitfix and of course they asked about the highly anticipated project, particularly Rooney.

I wrote: Rooney Mara’s role in the film is pivotal, although brief. What experience on this film led to you bringing her back in for “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”? The moment where I felt like I saw a flash of Lisbeth was her final encounter with Mark when she destroys him quietly. Did you have her in mind immediately, or was it a gradual realization?

Fincher’s reply: “We read her and, not surprisingly, loved all of the things about her that we’d initially loved for Erica. She’s smart and capable and works really hard. She is ridiculously photogenic in a very interesting way — she can be plain, or she can be exquisite in a matter of moments — and she’s a great listener. Lisbeth is a very tough role to cast — the audience needs to project into a mystery, so we needed a mystery for them to fill.”

On a personal note, I saw “The Social Network” and Rooney’s performance will blow you away. Even if you were already a fan of her other projects, this is acting on a whole other level, and she’s as I’ve never seen her before (and I’ve seen her in everything!). Many more people will start to understand why Fincher cast her as Lisbeth after seeing this movie. It comes out on October 1, so go see it as soon as you can!

Some online sites were invited to a screening of “The Social Network” and the high praise for the movie seems to be unanimous, with many of them singling out Rooney’s performance! Here are a few choice sentences directly related to Rooney below, and check out The Wrap for a more comprehensive sampling:

Eric ‘Quint’ Vespe of Ain’t It Cool News: “Everybody is fantastic across the board, including Rooney Mara as Zuckerberg’s suffering girlfriend, Erica. I’d only really known her work from her brief bit YOUTH IN REVOLT and the A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake, which is not a good indicator of her acting talents. In NIGHTMARE she just walked around looking confused all the time. Her part in THE SOCIAL NETWORK isn’t big, but she does more with it in her 7-ish or so minutes of screen time than she was able to do with the lead role in a Platinum Dunes movie. I think you’ll get why Fincher settled on her for his Lisbeth Salander. ”

Peter Sciretta of SlashFilm: “Jesse Eisenberg perfectly captures the awkward and impassive qualities of Mark Zuckerberg… Andrew Garfield will win audiences over and Rooney Mara finally shows us why she was cast as the lead in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

Austin Lugar of The Film Yap: “Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake and Rooney Mara are all stellar… See this movie. It’s one of my favorites of the year so far.”

Remember the movie comes out on October 1, so GO SEE IT!!!

Here’s a new TV spot for “The Social Network” that features a brief new glimpse of Rooney! See it below.

002 x Movie Images – The Social Network: TV Spot #1 Captures

The official site for “The Social Network” has launched and it is chock full of so many new goodies from the movie!! To start, here’s several new stills of Rooney as Erica and a gorgeous promotional photoshoot. Have I mentioned how much I can’t wait for this movie?!

003 x Movie Images – The Social Network: Promotional Stills

008 x Movie Images – The Social Network: Promotional Photoshoot

The very first couple of reviews are out for “The Social Network”, and it’s the kind of praise not very many movies get. Remember to catch the movie when it comes out on October 1. Can’t freakin’ wait!!!

First Peter Travers of Rolling Stone:

Scott Foundas of Film Comment concurs:

Revenge of the Nerd
The misanthropic soul at the heart of The Social Network, David Fincher’s 21st-century moral tale

It was E.M. Forster, of course, who scripted that immortal, oft-abbreviated imperative: “Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” But had Forster lived to see the advent of something like the Internet, would he have been so quick to admonish the life bestial or monastic? As I write this, I am not nor have I ever been a member of those ubiquitous online communities known as Facebook and Twitter, which have separately and together transformed millions of us into the stars of our own reality shows, complete with “friends” and “followers” tuned into our every banal thought or change of mood, and where human popularity is tabulated in numbers as readily as the weekly box-office returns. In my Luddite way, I harbor a healthy suspicion for any technology whose adopters seem more its slaves than its masters. Above all, I cling foolhardily to the belief that the more time-honored methods of human interaction maintain a slight edge over the electronic ones. Indeed, though we may now live in public, we seem to see rather less of one another.

On the other hand, half a billion people can’t be wrong—or, rather, they can, but good luck convincing them of it. A scant seven years into its existence, Facebook is already an inevitability, a cultural axiom. Among other things, it is said to have played a role in rallying America’s youth for the 2008 election (even if some of those youths were actually the fictitious avatars of middle-aged men and women seeking a little masked-ball escapism, or something more sinister). Nor is its reach limited to these shores: recently, Facebook was banned in Pakistan for supposed trespasses against Islam, which is no small achievement for a website that traces its origins back to an Ivy League social misfit’s drunken act of revenge against a girl who spurned him. Like so many historic achievements in arts, letters, and commerce, Facebook was born of a romantic rejection.

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