{"id":1803,"date":"2005-08-24T09:30:28","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T16:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/08\/24\/scattered-thoughts-about-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind\/"},"modified":"2005-08-24T09:30:28","modified_gmt":"2005-08-24T16:30:28","slug":"scattered-thoughts-about-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1803","title":{"rendered":"Scattered thoughts about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Charles, Elkins and I watched &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0338013\/\">Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/a>&#8221; last week.  This is the third time I&#8217;ve seen this movie, which I love &#8211; I love all the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0442109\/\">Charlie Kaufman<\/a> movies I&#8217;ve seen &#8211; but the first time that I wasn&#8217;t totally exhausted and fighting not to doze off, so there was new material.<\/p>\n<p>Some scattered thoughts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s a science fiction movie with no violence and no scenes in which any character is physically endangered. Watching this movie, you&#8217;d almost think that science fiction can be about playing with ideas, instead of about action scenes. Is that even legal?<\/li>\n<li>Yet another movie that can&#8217;t pass the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/the-mo-movie-measure\/\">Mo Movie Measure<\/a> &#8211; at no point in this movie do two women talk to each other. (There is a brief moment when Kate Winslet&#8217;s character has a two-second exchange with Jim Carrey&#8217;s memory of his mother, but I don&#8217;t think that counts, since the mother isn&#8217;t a real character.)<\/li>\n<li>I think that if this selective-memory-wiping technology really existed, couples would use it to purposely do what the two main characters of Eternal Sunshine did accidentally &#8211; wipe the memory of each other out of their minds not to break up, but to be able to experience the giddy infatuation stage again. (I mentioned this to Elkins, who said that she thinks Robert Sheckley might have written that idea into a story at some point. It certainly sounds like a Sheckley idea).<\/li>\n<li>I really enjoyed Elijah Wood&#8217;s character, who is a type of misogynist creep you occasionally encounter in real life, but who isn&#8217;t usually presented as a creep in the movies &#8211; The Guy Who Believes The World Owes Him A Girlfriend.<\/li>\n<li>Favorite quote:<br \/>\nJoel: Is there any risk of brain damage?<br \/>\nDoctor: Well, technically speaking, the operation <em>is <\/em>brain damage.<\/li>\n<li>The movie producers made a website for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lacunainc.com\/\">Lacuna Inc<\/a>. Cute.<\/li>\n<li>Both Kate Winslet and Tom Wilkinson are British but do perfect American accents. You see this a lot nowadays &#8211; I wonder if &#8220;American accent training&#8221; techniques have gotten much better in the last decade or so. I miss bad American accents &#8211; remember John Cleese&#8217;s American waiter in &#8220;The Meaning of Life&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>Isn&#8217;t Kate Winslet the actress with the rep for being zaftig? That&#8217;s ridiculous &#8211; she&#8217;s a tiny thing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles, Elkins and I watched &#8220;Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind&#8221; last week. This is the third time I&#8217;ve seen this movie, which I love &#8211; I love all the Charlie Kaufman movies I&#8217;ve seen &#8211; but the first time &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1803\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}