donnie darko
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Your Film is Too Long: 11 Tips on How To Get Your Film to Its Correct Runtime
I know, it’s maddening. People watch 10-hour series that take five hours to get good, but your 101-minute comedy is too long. Michael Bay makes three-hour Transformers movies, but your 95-minute drama is too long. Critics love seven hours of Sátántangó, but your 18-minute short is too long. Sorry, but it’s probably true. I learned this the hard way on my first feature film, Jake. After our initial 118-minute cut, we proudly got it down to 104 minutes. We couldn’t cut a frame more! We locked picture and sent out our perfectly formed film to festivals. Final runtime? 88 minutes. […]
by Doug Dillaman on Dec 17, 2018 -
The Handmaid’s Tale, Donnie Darko and The Mephisto Waltz: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Last month saw the premiere of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel documenting a future America in which women are oppressed by religious fundamentalists. The series has been garnering a lot of attention and acclaim, but it isn’t the first time filmmakers have tried their hands at Atwood’s dystopian classic; German director Volker Schlöndorff, working from a script by Harold Pinter, brought the book to the screen in 1990. His version of the story was considerably less well received at the time than Hulu’s, but it’s a compelling, distinctive film – one in which […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 5, 2017 -
“It Was a Long Uphill Battle”: Richard Kelly on Donnie Darko
A midnight movie for those not old enough to stay up past midnight, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko was, for a great number of millennial teens and college students, the ultimate cult classic. Along with Larry Clark’s Kids and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, I remember Kelly’s film being shared on home video like the Holy Grail, a movie viewed over and over again in sheer shock, fascination, and debate. A director’s cut followed three years later and only further mystified the film’s elaborate puzzle; subsequent ephemera — an explanatory book and an unwarranted sequel — cashed in on the growing fanbase. In 1988, a troubled suburban teenager (played by then-newcomer Jake Gyllenhaal) […]
by Erik Luers on Mar 30, 2017 -
Listen: Donnie Darko DP Steven Poster on his Career
Best known as Richard Kelly’s go-to cinematographer for Donnie Darko, Southland Tales and The Box, cinematographer Steven Poster will conduct a masterclass on Saturday at the Made in NY Media Center, run by Filmmaker‘s parent organization IFP. The day begins with a Donnie Darko screening and includes lunch. Curious to know more about Poster’s career beforehand? This half-hour podcast is pretty comprehensive, covering the childhood moment Poster decided he wanted to spend his life working with photography, his learning experiences at his career’s start as part of the second unit on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, of course, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 12, 2014 -
The Blue Velvet Project, #62
Second #2914, 48:34 1. In the aftermath of the assault, Dorothy calls Jeffrey Don, her kidnapped husband’s name. Jeffrey tenderly corrects her. “No,” he says. She doesn’t seem to hear him: “Oh Don. Hold me.” Frank, Jeffrey, and Don, the three men circulating in Dorothy’s imagination. Don. Donny. “Little” Donny. The largely off-camera presence of the Donnys governs the logic of the film. 2. In David Mamet’s 1994 play The Cryptogram, Donny (“a woman in her late thirties”) has this exchange with Del (“a man of the same age”), in which she tells him that sometimes she wishes she was […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Jan 4, 2012 -
DARKO OBSESSION
Over at the music blog The Torture Garden (a website which appears to have little to do with Octave Mirbeau’s Sadeian 1899 novel), Daniel Hernandez has posted an obsessive listing of 88 Reasons to Watch Donnie Darko Again, catalogued by theme. Some excerpts: 01. [numbers] The movie takes place in 1988. Frank tells Donnie the world will end in 28 days, 06 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. If you add these numbers, the sum is 88. 08. [numbers] Donnie Darko was released on October 26, 2001. The Director’s Cut of the film was released on July 23, 2004, exactly […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 4, 2006
