But what movie did you see? I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the first movie I've gone out to see since House of Sand and Fog, which long time (or archive) readers of this blog know I saw back in January, in the first week of blogging. Fog ... Sunshine ... is there some kind of weather theme to your movie selections?

So was Eternal Sunshine "the best movie of the decade" as Slate would have it? That hardly seemed possible and of course it wasn't. It was bearable, but then I'm impatient. I prefer TV--including watching DVDs--because I don't like being stuck in the theater. Some things need to be seen on the big screen, but ES isn't one of them. It has a music video look that would do better on TV I think. There is a bluish pall over the whole thing, broken only by Kate Winslet's hair, orange sweatshirt, and a few other things. Okay, that's a color idea. I think color movies should have color ideas, but I think it is a video screen, not a movie screen idea.

Other random things I'll say about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:

1. Mark Ruffalo seemed to have the Rick Moranis role.

2. Kirsten Dunst looks like my mother looked as a young woman--not counting the hair.

3. Kate Winslet modeled her American accent after a particular American actress--a la Nicole Kidman doing Meg Ryan in To Die For--but I couldn't figure out which one. Email me if you do.

4. This movie is a powerful date movie, because it teaches the lesson that for all its flaws, the relationship you are in is the great love of your life that you must cling to desperately no matter how intent you may have been to rid yourself of every last vestige of it. Don't leave: you'll be sorry!

5. Romantic movie clichés that were done reasonably well: running about in the lapping waves shows how in love people are, a kooky young woman can show a man who doesn't know what life is what life is, romping in snow is reaching one's human potential.

6. As far as mess-with-your-brain movies go, I can think of three I like better than Eternal Sunshine: Total Recall, Brazil, and Being John Malkovich. There are probably others, but I just can't think of them.

7. With Kate Winslet in the picture, I couldn't help thinking about Titanic a few times, like when Jim Carrey was desperately pulling her along through hallways and when she (in the Leonardo diCaprio position) was dragging Carrey out on the ice to show him how to let lose and start to live (it was like that arms-spread on the prow scene).

End of random observations about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.