Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is amazing. You must all go out and see it, and do it soon because I think it's probably going to be playing for only a week. I love it Love It LOVE IT LOVE IT. I don't think I've reacted this strongly to a film since maybe Amelie. It further cements Charlie Kaufman's status in my eyes as the best working writer in Hollywood. Everyone in it is good, and the supporting characters' roles in the story are more significant than I expected. Jon Brion's score is perfect, and so is Ellen Kuras's soft colors. The aesthetic is also a wonderful blend: there are the clever tricks you'd expect from Gondry, but incidental in the context of a very gritty, handheld, realistic, unglossy style, which I didn't expect from him. The story is terrific: as good as I expected as regards the central relationship (Jim Carrey-Kate Winslet) but the other things they touch on are entirely welcome examinations of the technology (the temptation to abuse it, moral gray areas, repercussions and consequences, etc.) There's an aspect of it that brought to mind Vanilla Sky/Abre Los Ojos. I absolutely love that the shining, beating heart of the story is still the love story. Not the clever conceit of "what if you could erase specific people/events from your memory?" or the imaginative ways in which they depict memories "vanishing" while the subject is still occupying them. It's still about what we cherish and choose to keep even if they're painful; they're part of what made us who we are, the hammer blows that shape us. And the risks we take, even if we know the possible outcome to be traumatizing, and doing it anyway, and not caring if whether or not that's the brave choice, recognizing that for some of us it's the only choice.

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Powerbooks' annual sale has begun. There are some new editions of Haruki Murakami books you can get, and as usual, it's the time to complete your Calvin & Hobbes collections and buy whatever comics you feel are interesting. The big steal is the Tintin collections; each hardcover collects 3 stories, and are selling for something like 330 pesos, half-price. If I didn't really need to save my money right now I'd plop down the 1800 and get Vols. 2-7. Unfortunately, all Harry Potter books are only on 5% discount. I had to find out the hard way when I went to buy a copy for my godchild. I actually had to use my PowerCard because my discount would at least be 10%. I'd be more understanding if only Order of the Phoenix got the 5%, but no, it's every HP book, even the old ones. Greedy cunts. There's also this Chuck Palahniuk book called Non-Fiction, but I think it's just the UK version of his Stranger Than Fiction. Anybody have more information on this?

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Since Neva gave me 2 surprise birthday parties in a row, she couldn't possibly do it again and still have it be a surprise, so what she came up with was giving me my birthday gift 26 days in advance.

This is the Bone One Volume Edition. It is probably the deal of the year. The entire Bone saga of Jeff Smith, all 9 collections, in one volume, for only US$40. Over 1300 pages. Do you realize what a steal that is? The average price of one of the 9 collections is 17 dollars. So if you bought all 9, that'd be 153 dollars. At which price, you could almost buy 4 of the Bone One Volume Editions. It's a little smaller in size, but not as small as the manga digests you see.

I realize that the forthcoming Scholastic editions will be in color, and the typos will be cleaned up, but this is the format in which I fell in love with Bone: black and white. I'll probably be picking up the Scholastic versions anyway, since I want to see it in color. Those books will be 10 dollars apiece, so it'll still be 90 dollars total.

So get this! Please! As I understand it, it's a limited edition kind of thing, and when they sell out of it, they're not going back to print.

I love Bone, and wish I was rich enough so that I could get a copy for all my friends. It is THAT good. So the best I can do at this point is tell you all to get it, and not forget about it. At this point, Comic Quest may still have some copies. Neva got CCHQ's last one. When they get more copies I'll do my best to let everyone know.