Darko's Second Dawn

[Note: I've meant to opine, over the last three days, about this thought-provoking editorial in Thursday's New York Times about the nature of recent job growth; today's utterly bizarre, ultimately frustrating, yet basically fun Phillies game; and Thomas Frank's interesting political hypothesis fleshed out in his new book What's the Matter With Kansas? and alluded to more briefly in this article. But if not having one's shit together is a lifestyle choice, as I'm increasingly coming to believe it is, the lack of detailed thoughts on any of these worthy subjects could be said to be a consequence of this choice of mine. So let's get to business.]

This weekend, the motion picture industry offers us the chance to collectively right a great market wrong... or more likely, just to get constructively freaked out all over again. Donnie Darko, the best movie of 2001 and one of the most intriguing, perplexing, moving and entertaining films in years, gets a theatrical re-release with 20 minutes of added footage and apparently spiffed-up special effects. (And another thing: try the link. The film's website is a trip unto itself.) If you've seen it before--I think I've watched it five times now--the thrill is going back to the big screen and the Echo & the Bunnymen, Church and Tears for Fears soundtrack cranked up in surround; if you haven't caught it yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Salon.com--which has my eternal gratitude for the rave review it offered up three years ago that compelled me to catch the movie in the first place--has an apparently detailed exegesis of the story, and a site devoted to director Richard Kelly--one of those wretches who have accomplished so much more than I have, at a younger age--offers a more traditional fanboy (or fangirl) experience.