Donnie Darko?

is that the version that shows Donnie impaled?

that's Donkey Darko, different movie

overdosed on the original back then, to the point where now I don't think I could bare to watch again. Not seen the cut, what's the deal?

film kinda lost a little for me hwen I read the linear explanations by director of what happened in the end sequence.

iir (almost 20 years ago, details could be sketchy here) the dvd extras had the director explaining along the lines of Donnie being some kind of comic book hero. Which just didn't do it for me at all.

Can't remember details (easily looked up) apart from the opening song being different, but I (like many I guess) felt the DC was a big ol' let down and diminished what was intriguing and affecting about the film.

overdosed on the original back then, to the point where now I don't think I could bare to watch again. Not seen the cut, what's the deal?

― Chicks and Ducks and Geese better scurry (Ste), Tuesday, November 2, 2021 2:12 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I only saw it once and I was really excited, but basically all it does is add in a lot of unnecessary expository scenes which spelled-out a lot of the more mysterious stuff. Plus they swapped around a lot of the music so the awesome "Head Over Heels" opening sequence was soundtracked by a different song and it just didn't work.

what song was it? "My Ding a Ling"?

IIRC it was "Mad World" but it didn't work anywhere as close to as well as "Head Over Heels". That tracking shot was for a long time one of my favourite bits of any film because the music and the camera matched up so nicely. Opening the film with "Mad World" set a completely different tone for the movie.

They used "Mad World" a second time in the director's cut? In the original, the "Head Over Heels" sequence near the start--the camera snaking through the halls of the school, with stop-motion speeding up and slowing down at intervals--is great, but so is "Mad World" at the end, the montage after the explosion. I wouldn't want to mess with either.

The ease with which this can be discovered is going to make us look silly but I think the opener on initial release was The Killing Moon. That was swapped out for INXS - Never Tear Us Apart which was supposedly the original first choice.

I quite like The Killing Moon and Head Over Heals but the film made me a bigger fan of both.

Wasn't the opening credits song swap "The Killing Moon" (theatrical cut) for "Never Tear Us Apart?" I initially took "The Killing Moon" as a gag (Bunnymen--get it?), but Kelly claims that he had always wanted the INXS song for the opening. Really, the DC is just a bunch of examples of how Kelly didn't really seem to understand what it was that worked about his own film.

"The Killing Moon"--not a fan, but it worked fine--did open the original. INXS would be a terrible trade for almost anything.

I sure hope they didn't mess with Sparkle Motion and "Notorious," in which case I'd have to doubt their commitment.

(By the way--I think any teacher who's sat through a couple of dozen school talent shows will understand the genius of Sparkle Motion. And they're like the ultimate time capsule. I think the first year I taught, we had two or three Spice Girls routines; midway, it'd be Katy Perry; by the time I finished, Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande.)

dance routines are a huge step up from the school talent show performances I remember. it was all lip syncing. watching some poor schmuck mouth like a robot to Weird Al's "yoda", holding a yoda doll and body otherwise completely still. i've a clear and horrible memory of one kid wearing a hawaiian shirt, holding a pineapple, and singing a song that went "oh mama, let me taste the mango. oh mama, let me taste the mango. oh mama, let me taste the mango. i like to eat sweet juicy fruit."

The ease with which this can be discovered is going to make us look silly but I think the opener on initial release was The Killing Moon. That was swapped out for INXS - Never Tear Us Apart which was supposedly the original first choice.

― Noel Emits, Tuesday, November 2, 2021 3:52 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah yes, my bad. You are correct.