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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Donnie Darko (Spoilers)

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07:12 / 26.07.04

Just had to do a paper on this film for an abnormal psych class and I've been checking out the Barbelith annotations.

Reading the NLP/Hypnotic section I was reminded of how I was strongly impacted by this film.

Around the time I saw the film our bathroom lightbulb had blown and due a combination of lazinness, no money and our light fitting being unusual we hadn't gotten around to getting a new bulb for a month (showers in the dark are fun!).
Anyhew, I became bizzarely fearful of looking in the bathroom mirror after seeing this film. The bit where Donnie is peering into his bathroom mirror in a half-light disturbingly similar to my bulbless bathroom scared the living fuck out of me. I would (ususally whilst inebriated) insist my partner accompany me if I had to go there and I'd scurry out afterwards with a prickling back of the neck irrational fear that I hadn't experienced since my childhood when "running from the toilet monsters after a nighttime pee" was a common terror.

What I'm now wondering is- was I reacting to something subliminal? Or is it purely conincidental?

08:19 / 26.07.04

Oh and does anyone have any clues as to the symbolism of Cherita Chen and her swan dance (other than the Martha Dumptruck reference)? It appeared terribly meaningful but I can't figure out why.

Please forgive me if this has already been covered in this thread but reading all ten of the previous pages is a little itimidating and reading all the annotations has worn me out

17:21 / 22.10.04

Okay, I can't decide if this is brilliant or bullshit—but here's a persuasive new essay on how all the time-travel malarkey is just a self-defensive delusion that Donnie creates to protect himself from having to acknowldge his incestuous desire for his older sister.

22:07 / 22.10.04

It's a smart enough essay, but It's the kind of movie you can read a thousand different ways. I thought that....

(Aside: on the original DVD commentary, director 1231">Richard Kelly remarks how special it was to have Jake's real-life sister in the role. Why? He doesn't say. But it does add a little extra-forbidden sexual tension to the film.)

....was quite telling. I think it's the author who gets the special tickle over sisters.
I'd like to read an essay on his pubertal fantasies first. Then we could get to the root of Donnie's.

Phex: Dorset Doom

18:38 / 23.10.04

Hmm... wonder if Jake's seen 'Secretary'...

03:56 / 18.02.05

Bump. I picked up the Ultimate-Uber-SuperDuper new-release Special Edition of Donnie tonite... and I almost wish I hadn't. Just because of the "#1 fan" and "Darko cult" specials on the 2nd disc. Brr. I hope to god that "#1 fan" thing was fake. Please, someone tell me that was faked.

"I made an airplane engine diorama to hand over my bed."

He had what must have been 25 or so copies of the movie in his room. Seemingly, not different copies. Not foreign editions, not bootleg releases, just... copies. *shiver intensifies*

lonely as a cloud...

07:31 / 18.02.05

Peter (lovely singing, btw), is it the original movie in your special edition box or the Director's Cut? I went to see the director's cut when it opened over here, and was thoroughly disappointed. No Killing Moon! Lots of completely out of place digital montage clips! Bah...

11:56 / 18.02.05

Peter (lovely singing, btw), is it the original movie in your special edition box or the Director's Cut? I went to see the director's cut when it opened over here, and was thoroughly disappointed. No Killing Moon! Lots of completely out of place digital montage clips! Bah...

Nope, no Killing Moon. I'm assuming the director's cut you saw had it replaced by INXS as well, yeah? I'd never seen the dir. cut before now.

With that in mind, I'll agree that those montage clips are more than a little jarring. Listening to the commentary, he says he had those in there to give the movie more of a comic book feel, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Comic books should not be intruding upon my reality...

I'm reminded of how much I like that intro. It feels to me like rather than some purposeful event, there was just some guy walking down the road with a camera and said, "Hey, why's this kid in the middle of the road? Let's see what he's doing." Kind of silly, I know.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:14 / 18.02.05

Yes, the Director's Cut managed to replace one of my favourite openings to a movie in years with a pretty duff one, purely by a change of music (and it's not just because I love the Bunnymen and hate INXS- the very sound of it, that chiming Will Sargent intro, just... fits. It's beautiful, sinister, and has a great sense of impending doom to it). And the montage stuff was... I believe the technical term is "bollocks". Some of the additional dialogue was beautiful, though- "I think we should buy him a car". I think MY ideal Donnie Darko lies somewhere between the two versions- with all the ambiguities and rough edges of the original release, but with some of the excised dialogue put back in.

lonely as a cloud...

12:21 / 18.02.05

To be honest, I didn't notice the extra dialog that much. But the montages were jarring - gud word, Stoatie - and I felt the excerpts from The Philosophy Of Time Travel were very patronising, like you were being spoon-fed. It would be very interesting to hear an opinion who saw the Director's Cut first, though...

05:11 / 20.02.05

Even worse for me than the 'Killing Moon' change was the loss of 'Under the Milky Way,' ironically to be replaced by 'Killing Moon' in a chain reaction of bad musical choices. The scene with Under the Milky Way where he sees the spheres at the party was my favorite in the whole film, and it's just not the same now. I don't want to jump on the old good, new bad bandwagon, but I really don't know what he was thinking with most of the changes made here. I did the like the deleted scenes that were reincluded, but other than that, the original is superior in pretty much every way.

I have the feeling more and more that Donnie Darko succeeded in spite of everything that Kelly was doing, rather than because of it. I don't really mind the Star Wars changes because other than maybe the Greedo thing, they don't alter the film's meaning or flow at all, these changes disrupted music, and scene flow. I think I'll be sticking to the original.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:27 / 20.02.05

and I felt the excerpts from The Philosophy Of Time Travel were very patronising, like you were being spoon-fed

As I was coming out of the cinema, I overheard someone saying "it was like a fucking PowerPoint presentation".

lonely as a cloud...

08:17 / 21.02.05

Behind the scenes look at the making of Donnie Darko - The Director's Cut...

17:41 / 21.02.05

INXS? Spoon-feeding? Bad re-edits? No Under the Milky Way?

Okay, so I thought DD was a beautiful, if flawed, movie, and that Kelly had the makings of a cracking director.
Like Patrick, I'm worried that I was wrong and that Darko succeeded despite Kelly's efforts.

Hope I'm wrong.

17:32 / 25.12.05

couldn't find the a bio for Sharita on the website, but found the two for monitoff and cunningham (and cunningham's fan). on the director's commentary it says she becomes a successdul career person.

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