I watched Donnie Darko again last night, as a direct result of having read my sister's ravings about it. Jacob didn't want to watch, so he retreated to the study to play Tribes and I watched the movie in the living room by myself with the lights off and the doors shut.
The nice thing about the mirror in our bathroom, which is a high-tech Ikea swiveling-mirror-slash-cabinet, is that you can turn it around to the cabinet side and then it's not a mirror anymore. The nice thing about the rest of our house is that it doesn't have any mirrors at all. The nice thing about that is that creepy messianic bunnies can't appear in the mirror if there aren't any mirrors. The thing that isn't nice is that creepy messianic bunnies can still appear on front lawns and in movie theaters, and the middle of the road for that matter, so I'm not entirely safe.
If I can think of any rhymes for "rabbit", "jet engine", "apocalyptic", or "Jake Gyllenhaal", I'll write a limerick. Don't hold your breath.
Posted by dianna at September 14, 2004 10:09 AMHave you had the chance to see the director's cut yet, which has now been released to theaters? Not that it's any better -- I prefer the original -- but several minor changes have been made which add up to an entirely different impression.
Posted by: Danny at September 14, 2004 11:34 AMI'm a little worried about this director's cut, actually, given what I've heard about the director having a totally different interpretation of the movie than most of its slavering fans. But I kind of want to see it anyway.
Posted by: Dianna at September 14, 2004 11:53 AMThe starkest difference I noticed was that I was given a completely different impression of the parents in the two movies. The Director's cut has much more parental dialogue. This is not necessarily a good thing. I was in love with Mrs. Darko's character in the original, but her character somehow seemed to have less depth once she was given more dialogue.
Richard Kelly also emphasized the scifi over the psychological in this second cut, which I thought cheapened the movie. Still worth seeing, though. There were one or two little changes made which I saw as improvements. Can't remember them now, though. Maybe it was just Maggie Gyllenhaal. Over and over again.
Posted by: Danny at September 14, 2004 12:17 PM
A teacher played by Drew Barrymore
Was obsessed by the words "cellar door".
Was it part of the plot?
Maybe so, maybe not,
But I sure do wish they'd explained more.
There once was a kid named Frank
Whose driving abilities stank.
He ran over Don's honey
While dressed as a bunny
And then got shot, point blank.
To open a hole in the sky,
I shot this weird dude in the eye.
Now I'll go to bed
I hear a plane overhead
And before this all happens I'll die.
Er.
Um, excuse me, that's my jaw you're standing on. Yes, right there. Thanks. Let me just dust that off and reattach it.
Andrew, you're brilliant!
Posted by: Dianna at September 14, 2004 01:08 PMAwww, thanks. I guess I was inspired by the muse Procrastinata.
Yep, I know that one. Better her than my personal muse, who is Errata.
Posted by: Dianna at September 14, 2004 01:55 PMmwahaha, i made you watch it again!
see, this is interesting. because i've only seen the director's cut i'm really intrigued by the different impression that might be given by the original theatrical version. as to emphasizing the scifi over the psychological - in the director's cut, did he cut back on some of the psychological stuff, or was adding more scifi elements maybe a gesture toward more "explanation" of the story's logic/mechanics?
i was raving about the movie to a friend the other day, and he mentioned that he'd been talking to a woman in one of his art classes who's a film major, and she said this was the first movie they watched in one of her film classes this quarter. i found myself wondering if they watched it with or without director's commentary - "how to inadvertently make a fucking brilliant film 101"?
Posted by: katie at September 14, 2004 11:22 PMwhat i meant was, i'm curious whether he added stuff or took stuff out. jeez, grad school has untrained me in writing decipherable sentences.
Posted by: katie at September 15, 2004 01:33 AMIncapable of commenting on the main thread of this conversation (having never seen __The Movie In Question__), I will instead comment on katie's indecipherable sentence(s): those kinds of sentences are the best, as they give the reader something active to do (i.e. decipher, translate, whatever).
(Reading that requires a replenishment of electrolytes at the end == the best kind of reading) evaluates to TRUE, as far as I am concerned.
Incidentally, I did understand what you wrote initially, a fact which will probably be bothering me for the rest of the day.
Posted by: Erik at September 15, 2004 07:59 AM