|
Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
|
I just added it to my list of things to do since it's now playing here in NYC 
Quote:
'Donnie Darko' in a new light
John Anderson
June 13, 2004
'King of the Hill." "Local Hero." "Empire Records." "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." "A Little Princess." "Wonder Boys." "Gummo."
Roger Ebert's bedtime viewing? No, just a few items in the movie Lost & Found - films that were more or less ignored by the public on their original (or non-) release, only to be later embraced by a devoted, even feverish, fan base.
We're not talking about cult movies that got that way because they're bad ("Plan 9 From Outer Space") or are really lost (the 42 original reels of "Greed") or are squirreled away out of embarrassment (Jerry Lewis' notorious Holocaust film, "The Day the Clown Cried"). We're talking movies that were made for a mass audience, came out, died and were reborn.
The thanks goes to the VHS and DVD revolution of the past two decades, which has given such movies a second chance - an opportunity for rediscovery, reassessment and sometimes passionate appreciation (of the type the movie nut reserves only for those films that he or she believes only he or she has sense enough to love). And most of the opportunity for these people eventually finding each other has been the rise of the Internet chat room.
Or...the Seattle Film Festival, which ends Sunday (and is perhaps the best event of its kind in the country) and presented, two weeks ago, the restored, 2 1/2-hour "director's cut" of "Donnie Darko." As a few of us observed, it was good that some of the people in attendance had the film to obsess about, because it kept them off rooftops with rifles. But the passion was palpable - one guy claimed to have driven 14 straight hours from California to see the new version and wangled his way into shaking director Richard Kelly's hand and stealing a squeeze off stars Mary McDonnell and Jena Malone (who seems to be the official dream girl of committed Darko-philes).
Newmarket's Bob Berney, the man behind the gargantuan releases of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "The Passion of the Christ" (now there's a double bill), is rereleasing "Donnie Darko" beginning July 23 in New York and figured Seattle would be a good spot for a test run: Audiences there are young and enthusiastic and they go to the festival. The reaction, predictably, was "fantastic."
"It's evolved over the past six months," Berney said of the new "Darko," which also stars Drew Barrymore (one of its bigger supporters) and Jake Gyllenhaal in the title role. "I always felt the audience sort of missed out on the film. It opened right after 9/11, so the timing was not good for this movie. [A key scene involves a jet engine crashing into a house.] But the subsequent DVD sales were through the roof. I felt that the audience was definitely there."
Critical reaction to the film was strong in 2001, even in the aftermath of Sept. 11, but it took the Internet and the DVD to set it on fire. The story of a suburban high school student whose mental health is in question (among his visions is the signature Rabbit from Hell, which was impersonated by several people in the Seattle audience), "Darko" was the first and, thus far, only film by Kelly, who spoke to the festival audience after the screening with the intention of clearing up "misperceptions." He only made things murkier.
"Donnie" is not about mental illness, Kelly said (although when he added that "mentally ill people see things the rest of us can't," he got worrisome applause from certain sections of the audience). But if not, then what? Donnie Darko is a classic hero of alienation - a Holden Caulfield, let's say, for the "Friends" generation. Holden was on a psychiatrist's couch at the beginning of "The Catcher in the Rye." It doesn't diminish his story.
But Kelly's the one who created the film, and with Berney's help got it to a "finished" state. (A fellow sitting next to me filled me in on all the new aspects, which include title pages from Roberta Sparrow's time-travel book, hallucinatory eyeballs and some family scenes that didn't make the initial cut.) Also, Berney certainly knows what he's doing.
"I don't want to take away from the original theatrical version," he said, "but I feel the additions completed it in terms of storytelling." If it opens even more questions, or makes it more confusing, he said, "I think that's perfect for this film."
|
link
__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.
|