Eternal Sunshine
I’ve been excited about this movie for about as long as I’ve known about it. Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, a serious Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo….How much better can it get? Answer: not much. The story was incredible, the visual style was brilliant, the performances were excellent, the music was beautiful. I don’t think there was anything in this movie that didn’t work for me. I’m trying to find the soundtrack on Soulseek right now, mainly for the new Beck song from the ending. His voice is just getting better and more assured with every release, and this one is so moody and memorable.
The premise behind the movie (that there is a pseudo-medical procedure that can erase the memory of certain people or events from your mind, while leaving the rest of your memories intact) ties in really well with the book I just finished, Godel, Escher & Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The book deals a lot with the various levels of abstraction in the brain, and how the “mind” relates to the brain’s physical substrate of neurons and electrical charges. There is some consideration of how concepts and memories in our mind relate to the physical structures of the brain itself….like, can you point to a specific neuron, or group of neurons, and say “this neuron here represents this specific memory or idea”? food for thought, about thought.
Anyways….so Cerebus is over. I haven’t been following the series since Guys, several years ago, so I’ve missed almost the entire final third of the series, but the ending still struck me as oddly appropriate. It’s somewhat open to interpretation, I suppose, but it does seem to relate to the general themes that have consumed Dave Sim lately.
I’ve also finally managed to pick up THB #4, and a handful of the Maxx issues I was missing. I still need THB #2, and the Maxx #’s 29, 30, and 35, to have both complete series’. But I’m much closer!
Looks like band practice is happening later today. Once Joey gets back from rehearsal, it’ll be time to rock out. We don’t do this often enough. Ah well….we do what we can.
More later….
