*Kaylee*

i never saw the movie. Whos in it? what's it about?

pixiedude

I saw the director's cut yesterday afternoon. I'd never seen the original. I saw it because The Stranger (Seattle weekly freebie) gave it a good review, and because I recognized Jake Gyllenhall's name from having seen The Day After Tomorrow last week.

I really liked it, and the best thing was JG's performance. No matter how bombastic the movie got, he stayed believable.

I did some Google-ing about the film last night, and found a couple of links that may explain some things:

Donny Darko Theories and Explanations

http://www.tonystuff.co.uk/darko-spoilers.htm

Includes a link to a page with all the text from Roberta Sparrow's time travel book, which was on the DVD, but not in the original release. It has been added to the Director's Cut.

Barbelith Underground

http://www.barbelith.com/topic/3817/from/105

Scroll down to Chubby P's post to see a list of purported 'cheats' to read the background info on writer/director Richard Kelly's official website, www.donniedarko.com. I haven't tried them out. I couldn't get past the third frame when I tried just pointing and clicking like a normal site. Maybe it works better with IE? (I'm using Safari).

According to the pages from Roberta Sparrow's book, the Living Receiver of the Artifact (which would be Donnie) is granted special powers in the Tangent Universe that he needs to fix the rift . Frank and Gretchen are able to act in both universes, and in the future, because they both died in the Tangent Universe. Or something like that.

~*Dancer in the Dark*~

Hi everyone, I'm Cait. well i thought i should post here considering that Donnie Darko is one of my favourite movies
I've gotta be honest that when I first saw the movie I didn't fully understand, I still loved it but i came out the cinema thinking what the...?
But when I got the dvd and listen to the director's commentary I got a different perspective on the film. One of the things that I love the most about this movie is the ensemble cast: this was prob. one of the first movies I saw Jake Gyllenhaal in (i dont have a clue how to spell his last name) but after Donnie darko i was obsessed with him. he wasn't like the usual actors i liked.. he's not really one of those posterboy actors cause he can actually "act". I loved Jena Malone in this movie, her and jake have great chemistry. and Beth Grant was great... besides the fact that she was playing annoying Kitty. she did have some hilarious lines to say in the movie. Drew Barrymore and Mary Mcdonnell were also one of my favourites.
I heard about the director's cut. hopefully it's coming out here in Australia. does anyone know if it will be re-released on dvd? cause that will be annoying if it does, seeing as i've already bought the first one.
and does anyone know if Richard Kelly (i think thats his name) is making anymore movies right now?

pixiedude: thanks for those websites.. i think i might check them out!

QueenBitch

I still havent listened to the directors commentary, is it good?

tragedy

I love this movie. It's so deliciously strange. I remember when I watched it for the first time I thought it was crap lol. Then I decided to give it another chance after having read up more about it on the internet. After watching it again I started to see its brilliance. Then I bought the tape & the rest is history. You definitely pick up more after numerous viewings. Now that I have a dvd player I definitely think I need to invest in the dvd, when I bought the tape I didn't have a dvd player.

pixiedude

Here's a link I found to an interview with Richard Kelly on About.com:

http://romanticmovies.about.com/cs/d.../rkellyint.htm

where he talks about the other movies he's working on.

I'm fortunate that I live in Seattle, which is a testbed for arty movies. The director's cut opened here Friday, at ten theatres, as an experiment. If it does "enough" business, Newmarket will put it into wider release.

I didn't see the original release. From what I've read on the web, the 20 minutes of new material was already on the original DVD, among the rest of the cut scenes. Somewhere, I read that Newmarket was not planning to release a separate Director's Cut DVD.

ImmortallyUsed

this is deifenlty my favourite jake performance

this movie was brillant i loved it he came across so messed up it was great

you can get donnie darko stuff from www.hottopic.com

~*Dancer in the Dark*~

yeh definately..after listening to it you pick up on a lot of things that you missed in the movie. jake gyllenhaal is also in the director's commentary. he does the most freaky impersonation of Christopher walken

~*Dancer in the Dark*~

thanks for the link I'm glad they are not re-releasing the dvd.. i don't think it would sell very well anyway because most fans have already bought the first dvd.
i'm pretty sure that Richard Kelly will include the deleted scene with donnie and his dad because I listened to the director's commentary of that scene and richard said this was the hardest scene to take out of the film. i hope they don't add the last deleted scene to the movie where donnie is dead.. that freaked the crap out of me.

mukooh

'donnie darko'...... the director's cut....the movie.....

QueenBitch

It seems like it's on HBO a lot, or I rent it. But I have to go get the DVD. It seemes like a good investment. Coming from someone who buys really awful DVDs. All the time.

pixiedude

1) I saw an ad for a satire set in a Christian high school called "Saved" today. It's opening in Seattle tomorrow. I don't know if this is the nationwide release date. Anyway, it stars Jena Malone, who played Gretchen.

2) CUT SCENES SPOILERS (?)

I don't know if a spoiler alert is still relevant. What follows is info about some scenes in the D.C. that I gather from reviews and comments here may have been added back to the original. The Seattle Weekly said that some "family-bonding" scenes had been put back in.

There is a scene in the second half where Donnie's dad gives him a supportive speech about standing up to the conspiracy of bull****.

Later, when his mom is about to drive to the airport with the Sparkle Motion troupe, he hugs her and tells her there isn't something broken in his brain. She hugs him back and says she knows.

On the way to his last trip to Carpathian Ridge, with Gretchen's body in the car, he stops at home, and kisses his older sister's hair as she sleeps in a chair in the living room.


The movie ends with a plastic-covered body being rolled out of the house on a gurney as the NTSB guys go in. It's morning, Donnie's family are crying in the yard as a crane hoists the jet engine. Gretchen rides down the street on her bike. She stops across the street, and asks a little boy what happened. As he tells her, she looks at the house and people as though with a sense of deja vu, and makes eye contact with Donnie's mother. They wave at each other.

As far as "family bonding" scenes, there is the funny potty-mouth contest at the dinner table in the beginning, but I can't imagine the rest of the film without that, so I figure it must have been in the original release.

When I went to see it Sunday, at a theater near the University of Washington, I realized it was rated R, because a group of teenagers in line ahead of me wanted to buy tickets, but the cashier said they were too young. That is really a shame. There are so many dumb movies about teenagers. Here is a *smart* movie about teenagers for a change, and teenagers aren't even allowed to see it.

The song playing when Donnie dies, Mad World, has stayed with me all week. I looked it up in Google a few days ago, and read that it was the number one song in Great Britain in Dec 2003. Which surprised me quite a bit. First, because it was a cover of a song from over a decade ago, but also because it is so pessimistic. Chart toppers in the US more often express aggression, or seduction, perhaps sometimes dissapointment in love, but not the global sadness of Mad World. Perhaps this sheds light on some important difference between the US and the UK. In US pop culture, the "manly" way to handle sorrow is to substitute anger in its place.

capesidefan

the trailer for the directors cut is awesome, the directors cut is going to be great

sumiregusa

I've never seen this one, but I've heard such good things about it, and I usually like dark movies like this. Plus, I love the song by Gary Jules -- it's so haunting and honest. Gives me chills.

QueenBitch

They wouldn't let people in to see it? I'm 15, and they let me in to R movies.