Donnie Darko/S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale [2 Discs]

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 2
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Cinemascope)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Features:
  • cc
  • Donnie Darko:
  • Director and actors commentary
  • Deleted/extended scenes with optional director commentary
  • Featurettes
  • S. Darko - A Donnie Darko Tale:
  • Commentary with director Chris Fisher, writer Nathan Atkins, and cinematographer Martin V. Rush
  • Deleted scenes
  • The Making of S. Darko featurette

AWARDS

• Independent Spirit Awards

•     Nominated Best Actor - 2001 (Jake Gyllenhaal)
•     Nominated Best First Feature - 2001 (Richard Kelly)
•     Nominated Best First Screenplay - 2001 (Richard Kelly)

• Toronto Film Critics Association

•     Won Special Citation - 2002

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Jake Gyllenhaal - Donnie Darko
       Briana Evigan - Corey
       Jackson Rathbone
       Holmes Osborne - Eddie Darko
       Ed Westwick - Randy Holt
       Drew Barrymore - Karen Pomeroy
       Elizabeth Berkley - Trudy Potter
       Katharine Ross - Dr. Lillian Thurman
       James Duval - Frank
       Noah Wyle - Dr. Monnitoff
       Daveigh Chase - Samantha Darko
       Beth Grant - Kitty Farmer
       Arthur Taxier - Dr. Fisher
       Stuart Stone - Ronald Fisher
       Ashley Tisdale - Kim

• Director:

  Richard Kelly, Chris Fisher

• Producer:

  Adam Fields, Nancy Juvonen, Sean McKittrick, Ash R. Shah

• Screenwriter:

  Richard Kelly, Nathan Atkins

• Cinematographer:

  Steven Poster, Marvin Rush

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Manish Raval, Tom Wolfe

• Composer (Music Score):

  Michael Andrews

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Gerry Cueller, Greg Danylyshyn

• Composer (Music Score):

  Ed Harcourt

• Editor:

  Eric Strand, Sam Bauer, Kent Beyda

• Production Designer:

  Alec Hammond, Alfred Sole

• Co-producer:

  Jim Busfield, Jennifer Lane Connolly

• Executive Producer:

  Drew Barrymore, Hunt Lowry, Chris J. Ball, William Tyrer, Aaron Ryder, Casey La Scala, Sundip R. Shah

• Set Designer:

  Julia Levine

• Costume Designer:

  April Ferry

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Coleman Metts, Michael J. Payne

• First Assistant Director:

  Richard L. Fox

• Casting:

  Joseph Middleton, Michelle Morris, Sig De Miguel, Stephen Vincent

• Line Producer:

  M. Charles Cuddy

REVIEWS:

• One of the eeriest and most ambitious American independent films of the early 2000s, Richard Kelly's debut feature is an eclectic amalgam of science fiction, horror story, '80s nostalgia-fest, and teen movie. A child of the '80s, Kelly wears his formative influences on his sleeve: the movie invokes Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis among others, and the soundtrack boasts Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, and Tears for Fears. Unlike films that have trafficked in '80s nostalgia, Kelly's portrait is admirably restrained, mining the period for specific political and personal connotations (as opposed to cheap laughs and pandering irony). Despite being a period piece, the movie succeeds in conveying a sense of imminent doom. Anchored by Jake Gyllenhaal's nuanced performance as the eponymous hero and Steven Poster's tenebrous lighting, the movie is genuinely unsettling. Its denouement, set on a portentous Halloween night, evokes an unraveling world of lost kids and absent parents -- perhaps the closest thing to a definitive statement the movie makes about growing up during the Reagan years. With its intimations of apocalypse and visions of planes falling from the sky, the movie inadvertently gained added resonance in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. An unabashed popcorn movie at heart, Donnie Darko gets terrific mileage from Kelly's imaginative scenario and evocative direction. For all its splashy special effects and inspired casting, it's the movie's ominous and ultimately elegiac tone that stays with you. ~ Elbert Ventura, Rovi
• There was a reason Richard Kelly steered clear of the sequel to Donnie Darko, his head-tripping cult phenomenon. Nothing about that tightly resolved film indicated there was any need for another chapter. But where profit is possible, sequels are probable, so out came S. Darko, which follows Donnie's haunted younger sister, Samantha, on a cross-country road trip with a friend. Its straight-to-video status pretty much squashed those dreams of profit, but the film still had a chance to please fans. Plus, revisiting the visual iconography of Donnie Darko -- watery wormholes extending from character's chests, a demonic rabbit mask -- might have yielded results, on a good day. But the story they chose to tell is a confused mess. Samantha and her companion encounter a Gulf War vet, a posse of throwback hipster locals, a couple nutty religious figures, a shy kid being transformed by his contact with a meteorite, time travel, and quite possibly, the end of the world. Even repeat viewings won't shed much light on the interrelationship of these disparate elements. Donnie Darko didn't project as a conventional movie, either, but Kelly's vision, and the cast he assembled to execute it, brought it together marvelously. Here, Chris Fisher's pacing is slow and ponderous, and his preoccupation with flat visual metaphors seems amateurish. Plus, the acting drops off in a major way. Weakest is the only returning cast member, Daveigh Chase as Samantha. After a busy career as a child actress, she's now showing some seriously wooden tendencies. Then again, Chase didn't have much to work with. Her Samantha has no objective, and is written as a passive observer. When you don't even get to be the protagonist in your own story, it's hard to have much impact, let alone satisfy a built-in audience hoping for lightning to strike twice. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi