ok this one's for sam, who i know will probably read this tonight because he's the type of guy to check blogs on a friday night (it's not an insult!):

finally gave in and watched goddamn vanilla sky. i saw abre los ojos (the original version of the film) one random saturday night in england with my flatmates in jenna's room when it was on the bbc or itv or something. abre los ojos gave me fucking chills, and i couldn't sleep a wink that night (ask sam, i think i called him). it was a total mindfuck; it was unexpected, it was visceral, it was about science, and arrogance, and love, and physical beauty, and utter ugliness, and sex, and the completely fabricated line between dreams and reality, and the lengths people will go to in order to blind themselves to things they can't handle or don't want to see. even the title, "open your eyes," has so much more meaning than "vanilla sky."

damn, do i have a bone to pick with cameron crowe -- he has this annoying tendency to simplify everything, to sanitize it, and he throws in all these unnecessary pop culture and music references (which is probably why sam likes him so much; cameron crowe is the nick hornby of film). cameron crowe took the soul out of abre los ojos and replaced it with tom fucking cruise. also, he's really got a thing for conventionally beautiful women -- kate hudson? penelope cruz? he fetishizes them with his camera, and it's just too easy for men to fall in love with them. i dunno, i think his movies aren't very challenging, that's all. it's not a bad movie, i suppose, but it didn't give me chills.