Urban Fantasy class

After some early casualties, there are a dozen students in the class, though at least one blinks in and out of view like the words in Jeffrey Ford’s “The Weight of Words.” A most congenial group. We meet in a ginormous classroom with seating for a hundred. It’s like an AA group meeting in the corner of a church basement. The fluorescents could brown toast. The AV equipment is state-of-the-art and temperamental as hell. All part of the adventure. Today, the power was out completely in the building for a scheduled electrical overhaul. Nobody told me. Fortunately the film, Donnie Darko, is one most have seen before. The ending of that film is one of my all-time favorite endings. I was sad to hear there’s a sequel coming out that Richard Kelly has nothing to do with, called S Darko, about Samantha, the younger sister some years later. The same actress, of Sparkle Motion fame, reprises her role. She couldn’t say no? Some sequels just shouldn’t be made. Take Terminator 3, for example.

13 thoughts on “Urban Fantasy class

  1. Have you seen Richard Kelly’s second movie, Southland Tales? Any cash-in, straight-to-DVD sequel to Donnie Darko will be gold next to that aborted turkey.

  2. Ouch. I missed Southland Tales. Can’t say you’ve motivated me to correct that omission. I hear Kelly’s working on an adaptation of the Richard Matheson story “The Box,” famously adapted on the old Twilight Zone. Here’s hoping it doesn’t suck.

  3. Well, it’s in my Netflix queue now, so I can decide for myself. It did get some good reviews. It pleases me when any filmmaker attempts to do anything worthwhile in the genre that’s not another sequel or an opportunity to blow shit up.

  4. Consider it took him about four tries to get the movie right and he still couldn’t pull it off. Really, Dennis, it’s godawful.

  5. Southland Tales is worth a netflix but I bet you won’t make it through. It’s full of B+ list actors, which was surprising given the quality of the plot and script.

  6. The casting is an interesting experiment. Works sometimes. Falls flat in others. I think the major flaw with the film is that it’s something you’d expect out of an NYU film student who has done way too much ketamine (a friend of mine that fits this description loves this movie–if that’s any indication). It’s overly ambitious without the precision in skill or attention to “story” to really back it up. It’s an odd film. Very different from Donnie Darko.

  7. I win, Amy, I made it all the way through. I can’t say I’m better for the experience. The Rock’s twiddly finger thing was just too goofy. A flying ice cream truck blowing up a zeppelin, however—that was pretty cool. If I watched it twice, I’d have a better sense of what’s going on, but then I’d have to watch it twice… Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t. S Darko might be better.

  8. I want to remind you that I warned you, but I have watched and will watch plenty of awful movies, and no one can disuade me!!!

  9. @Robert

    I think that it’s important to watch awful movies. They not only remind us that the good ones are that much better. But that really, we’re all in the wrong business by not writing these screenplays.

    Besides, if not for bad movies, what would there be to bitch about? Politics just gets redundant after a while. But The Rock’s eyebrow-twitch? That’s always gold.

  10. The biz to be in is un-produced screenplays. The writer gets paid more than I do for a novel, and they don’t have any Rock-quality acting to live down.

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