Donnie Darko?

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.