Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Hello readers of Livejournal (he said in a manner that in no way mimics twilightboy)! I've been busy, busy, busy these last... day, so let's get down to it.

#1 - Work

Is quite the situation of upset. Our Office Administrator is leaving (in a manner of speaking), leaving myself and the New Girl the only Admin Assistants. I find this somewhat hilarious given that, technically, I am a temp.

For whatever reason, they really really like me here, and keep hinting darkly that they'd like me to stay. I fear this, on one hand, because my work here is not entirely satisfying. On the other hand? Employment = CDs, DVDs, pizza, visits to the girlfriend, and continued payment of rent, phone, and cable.

#2 - ADD

I have it. Not that this surprises ANYBODY. I went to a psychologist yesterday and talked for an hour to an hour and a half about myself, my scattered brain, my relationship with my father, and all the other stuff they have to talk about. Surprisingly, I am not OCD, which I suspected I might be, simply because I can be a real asshole about the things that I know without a doubt to be true.

Anyway, I'm now on Adderall... And I think it's working. The true test will be if they give me anything to do today. Or if I can finish my novel in record time. Or if I cure cancer with my brilliant legal mind. Or... ooh, butterfly!

#3 - Slay No More, Ladies, Slay No More

Still coming along. Should have some more scenes completed soon.

#4 - Social Life

Really need to amp this up. Hoping to hang out with ropa tonight, or at least watch her perform or something. Hopefully, kitesareevil will also be able to go.

#5 - The other Admin Assistant

I think she's a little too fond of me. Must squelch this. Damn my hotness.

#6 - Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Brilliant, if somewhat slight, film. George Clooney can direct many more times, if he likes, although Soderbergh's influence is heavy and on occasion almost inseperable from whatever artistic vision Clooney himself may have been trying to express. Sam Rockwell, as usual, does what few actors seem capable of doing - taking a strong self-personality, and spinning it into a completely different character. It's obvious that Rockwell is putting as much of himself into the role as anything, and yet Chuck Barris remains as distinct from the actor's other parts as any he's yet essayed.

True to reality or not, I always find Charlie Kaufman's interest in free-spirited women to be something of note in his films. Well, if not free-spirited, then certainly deeply different. Drew Barrymore here. Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine... (discussed later). Also, this film exhibits the dichotomy between the free spirit and the cool, inscrutable woman - Drew/Julia Roberts, which has much in common with Cameron/Catherine Keener in Malkovich. One often wonders about Kaufman's films, and how deeply his own insecurities with females (so divinely portrayed by Nicolas Cage in Adaptation) are splurged onto the page and then again onto the screen.

What's especially interesting about this is that Kaufman manages to display a singular vision of cinema in all of his films, despite the fact that he has never once directed one of his own screenplays. That is a rare gift in a screenwriter - to write a film so intensely that there are few true choices in its direction but the original vision.

#7 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Again, another brilliant film from Kaufman. This leaves his count (for me, anyway) at three brilliant (Malkovich, Confessions, Sunshine) and one near-brilliant however too indulgent of self (Adaptation). And all of this from one of the writers of Ned & Stacey.

I find it interesting that four of Kaufman's films have been directed by former music video helmers - Malkovich and Adaptation by Spike Jonze and Human Nature (which I have yet to see) and Sunshine by Michel Gondry. Usually, this is an indication of lack of imagination, a sure sign of a rapid-fire brightly-lit film with little substance of note, covered over with glossy and often bizarre visuals. Such is not the case with the films of Kaufman, however, as the scripts behind them are layered and wildly discussable.

I cannot reveal the plot of the film. For one thing, it's less of a plot and more of an exploration of human relationship and the emotion of memory, with a device to send us off on that journey. This is a film meant to call to a more adult audience and open a conversation up about their past experiences, and what they would give to keep or lose them...

It quotes from both Nietzsche and Alexander Pope (the latter providing the film's title) on matters of the beauty of erasure, the pure joy found in inexperience, but neither captures the sadness one is left with when one loses the core that makes them what they are. By the end of the film, those who have lost their memories are still left with the personalities those memories have formed - and that the memories were originally formed from - and are doomed to repeat their mistakes again, or perhaps such repetition is a blessing.

It's a beautiful film, that features Carrey at his most restrained, and with a bare minimum of his usual mugging. There's no Oscar in his future, but that's certainly not to say that such an award would be undeserved, if not for this film, than for a multitude of others.