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I?ve been excited for the next Charlie Kaufman picture, Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind, ever since I heard the storyline. Unfortunately, even though production wrapped up quite some time ago and the movie was scheduled to be released this summer, the opening has been pushed back to early 2004. Sadness.

For those of you who, like me, can?t wait that long, I share with you a link to a first draft of the screenplay which has been floating the internet for a little while now:

To read it, Click here.

The story is classic Kaufman style; most of it takes place in the mind of one of the characters. On top of that, it is told out of order, requiring you to piece it together like a puzzle. Basically, it?s about a couple who decide to go through a procedure to have their memories of each other erased due to the demise of their relationship and the emotional strain it lays on them. Part way through the procedure, when the worst of the memories are erased, the man (Joel) decides that he doesn?t want to go through with it anymore. However, by this point one of the doctors administering the procedure has become infatuated with the woman (Clementine) and uses his knowledge of Joel and Clementine?s relationship to woo her. Kaufman also plays with the idea of fate and destiny throughout the screenplay as the paths of the two main characters continue to cross and they go through the procedure multiple times.

So, check it out. Especially if you?ve enjoyed any of Kaufman?s other films (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Human Nature). You won?t be let down. And if you do like Kaufman, you might want to read as well the screenplay adaptation that Kaufman wrote for Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly (a great book by the way); that script is also on the page linked to above.

Remember way back when Disney made good animated movies?

Okay. So maybe it wasn’t that long ago. I think the last great animated movie they put out was Mulan. The only good movies since then have been the computer animated ones (Toy Story, Monsters Inc), and in my opinion they were only exceptional due to the CGI wizardry of Pixar.

In 2001 Disney released Atlantis. I saw it for the first time this morning, even though I have been meaning to see it for a while. The movie never looked too exciting, but the fact that the main character was a linguist/cartographer sparked a smidgin of interest in me.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy the movie all that much as most of my time was spent in mocking laughter and wincing at the pure BS they were calling linguistics.

I had heard a while back that Disney had hired Marc Okrand, creator of the Star Trek Klingon language, to develop an Atlantean language. “This can’t be all to bad,” I thought.

And his contributions weren’t bad at all. He developed an Atlantean orthography and also wrote the few segments of Atlantean dialouge. However, I can’t help but wonder if Dr. Okrand himself winces as he sees the way that langauges are used in the film (the single Latin alphabet character to Atlantean character correlation, the fact that the Atlanteans who have been isolated for thousands of years can speak contemporary French, Spanish, and English, etc.)

But what should I expect? It’s just a cartoon. A cartoon from a company symbolized by a talking mouse. Should I expect to see things as they really are? Of course not.

At the advice of Kelly I rented the movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead over the weekend.

I loved it. It was absolutely amazing. After I got home from classes this evening, I watched again while I made dinner and washed the dishes. It was only better this time. I highly recommend it.

I was going to try and get to bed by midnight, but I just realized that I have an essay due tomorrow in my Spanish Class. Totally forgot about that. Maybe I can be under the sheets by 1. . .

Today I had to use all my might to prevent myself from going to buy caffeinated beverage. I think I have done a pretty decent job of refraining from Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew in the last week, but it hasn’t been easy at all. Still, the fact that I feel and look incredibly healthier having not drank mass quantities of it takes some of that thirst away.

My newest musical addictions:
Cory Branan - The Hell You Say
Steven Delopoulos - Me Died Blue

Give them a listen. You won’t regret it.

Though it seems that the weather can’t decide on it’s behavior today (the sounds out my window in the last two hours have alternated between birds chirping to heavy rain and thunder), I am pretty sure that it will end up being a wet day. Weather.com seems to agree. For some reason it never fails to rain on the weekend. Especially in the Spring.

Over the last few years there has been a so-called Latin Explosion in the American music industry. People like Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and the like have become famous names to those who listen to the radio and watch MTV. Even though I am not one of those people (who are into the radio pop crap), I have noticed that the Russian duo TATU has been gaining popularity here in the US. I’ve been told that the Russian singer Alsu has gotten some attention as well. Maybe the next musical imports will come from Russia. . .

I first heard of TATU a little over a year ago when I was searching for some good modern Russian music. They didn’t really fall into that category for me, so I kind of forgot about them for awhile. Now, they are all over the place.

Apparently they are currently in the US promoting their English album and appearing on the tv circuit. I think their appearances are limited by the fact that they don’t really speak English. Of course, they don’t have to open their mouths to stir up controversey (which is what this duo seems to be all about). Here’s a picture of them from their recent Jay Leno performance.

I was told that they wore these same shirts for another appearance and that their translator was asked what the shirts meant, to which he replied, “They are war protest shirts.” He heh… Yeah. To put it way too nicely. Properly translated the message (??? ?????!) printed on the shirt comes out to be “Fuck War”, which surely would have been censored had it been written in English.

But as I said, they are known for being controversial. It’s in their name. Literally. The duo’s name TATU comes from the Russian “?? ????? ???” which could be translated “she loves her”.

I didn’t catch the Grammy Awards last night because I was taking a nap. I wouldn’t have watched it even if I had been awake though cause it’s usually just a bunch of crap: performers parading around as scantily clad as national tv networks will allow them while lip-singing to their bubble gum pop songs and a bunch of lame acceptance speeches laced with name dropping and props to God (even those rappers with songs about ho’s and bitches thank God, as if He would have something to do with the creation or success of such a song.)

I just read on the front page of nytimes.com that Norah Jones walked away with 8 Grammys after last night’s show. That’s pretty stinking cool. I’ve really enjoyed her music a lot ever since I first downloaded it a little less than a year ago. I got her first national release this Christmas and it was just as good as the live tracks that I had been floating around the net for awhile. She has a beautiful voice which goes well with her jazz/pop piano playing. I’d recommend giving her a listen.

I haven’t yet decided if she is more beautiful than talented or more talented than beautiful. She can Come Away With Me any day.

Mmm mmm. . .

If you want a quick laugh, check out this crazy David Hasselhoff music video with low budget special effects. I’m a tad confused whether he is trying to be more like Ricky Martin or the Crocodile Hunter with this. . .

David Hasselhoff Video

I hear the Germans love David Hasselhoff, so perhaps this will fit some of Jordan’s new tastes. Just be careful, because everybody knows that David Hasselhoff is the antichrist.

The second film installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers, came out this week, and of course I had tickets to the Tuesday midnight advance screening. The entire day was spent in anticipation, and when I go to the theater at 11 to find that all four screens were sold out, I could see that I wasn’t the only one excited to see the movie. I don’t regularly buy food at the movies, but since this was no regular movie, I figured I word splurge and treat my taste buds to some food and drink as they were growing increasingly jealous of the three hours of stunning visual effects my eyes would be treated to.

I’ll try not to include too many spoilers as I know there are a few people who are waiting to see the movie till next week (like my sister Katie, with whom I will see TTT again on Sunday.) Still, I have to mention a few things. So be warned:

I have no hesitation in saying that the absolute best thing about this movie was Smeagol/Gollum, who was entirely CGI. Before I saw the movie I was worried that a CGI character would not be able to display Gollum as he needed to be. After all, though he isn’t one of the first LOTR characters that people would think of, he is incredibly important to the story, and even more important to this part of the story. The first five minutes of scenes with Gollum COMPLETELY assuaged my worries. WETA Digital did a spectacular job at creating him, and Andy Serkis did a fine job of giving Gollum the perfect voice and movements. I was impressed.

The thing I liked best about the way that they made Gollum was that they didn?t let the audience (or at least the audience who was familiar with the storyline) forget that Gollum was once a Hobbit named Smeagol. It would be far too easy to just think of Gollum as some dark little creature . . . as an animal. That would be wrong. It is important to realize that as Frodo now is, Gollum once was and also, that as Gollum now is, Frodo could become if he lets the ring overcome him.

When Samwise is violently yanking at the leash around Gollums neck at the beginning of the film, I found myself feeling sorry for him (Gollum). These are the same feelings that Frodo has, as he sympathetically begins to trust Gollum more and more.

The second best thing to me was the Battle at Helms Deep. It was an amazing battle sequence that had my adrenaline rushing the whole time it was going on. I loved it. Tolkien fans should be proud. Peter Jackson should be proud.

Of course there were also a few things about the movie that I didn’t like all too much, still those scenes were few and far between they were few and far between. While I really have enjoyed the way that Peter Jackson is depicting the friendship between Legolas and Gimli, I have to say that I don’t really like the way that he is portraying the relationship between Frodo and Samwise. Does any one get a strange homosexual vibe about it every now and then? I know I am not alone on this one . . .

There were also some attempts to lighten things up through the film by adding little jokes that weren’t Tolkien’s books. I am not trying to be some kind of Tolkien purist here or anything, because I can appreciate some of the creative liberty that Peter Jackson has taken with the film, I just think that the humor does not always fit well with what is going on in the story.

For example, the joke with Gimli not being tall enough to see over the castle wall of Helm’s Deep destroys some of the tension that is supposed to be building at that moment. I didn’t like that. Also, during that long battle sequence there is a scene where Legolas grabs a shield and rides it down a staircase like a snowboard. That was dumb. Really dumb. I didn’t like how the Urak-Hai were portrayed so comically at times either. These are the most vicious and fierce orcs of all, not a bunch of bumlbling warriors.

While I thought that the visual effects were top notch for the most part, I have to say that Treebeard the Ent looked like something from Jim Henson’s Muppet Movie. It could have been done better, at least in my opinion. Still, in Jackson’s defense, I think that with the way that Tolkien describes them in his stories, each rider may develop a slightly different picture of what an Ent typically looks like.

Overall, I thought it was a spectacular movie. I cannot wait to see it again on Sunday, because I know that there will be new thing that I did not pick up on the first time I saw it. I you are reading this and you haven’t yet seen the film, then please go see it. Oh, and while you’re at it, read the books too.