#thats all i do but me just retelling comics its so funny. like we meet up in the living room

[xxplastic-cubexx]

hey hey just wanted to say love your art. I monch on it like a lifeline

and also every time I see your reactions to comic panels in my timeline it makes me giggle a lot lolol

hello hello !!! thank you for loving my art, i hope to make more delicious art for you to enjoy soon :]] !!!

and Double Thank You for enjoyin my comic reaction rambles !! i (unfortunately) have many thoughts all the time and i have no impulse control and no filter so im glad my prattling is enjoyable (●ˇ∀ˇ●)

[ectonurites]

for the character headcannons ask game, jason and cass?

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT im putting this one under a cut because it got SUPER long bc i cant shut up ever

lets start w jason

A (realistic headcanon): 

ok using the ‘realistic’ category here loosely but GOD i love the idea of Damian & Jason having interacted while Jason was staying with the League before getting dunked in the Lazarus Pit. like. this obviously would need to be set more in preboot and following the Lost Days & Batman Annual 25 version of Jason’s resurrection, but god the idea of it just makes me scream in a good way. Like... these are things Jason likely doesn’t remember very clearly once he’s brought back to life more fully by the pit because he was uh pretty catatonic, but Damian being a little kid and knowing about the boy that his mother keeps around the base, that she’s trying to help bring back to health. Damian not even knowing that’s his big brother, just that he’s a presence that shares his mother’s attention. Jason again being unresponsive but like, ok god you know that part of lost days where Talia shows the others observing him that he only fights back at those he perceives as genuine threats trying to hurt him, 

Because Jason can perceive that she’s safe, she’s not actually trying to hurt him, he trusts her because she saved him? thinking about lil child Damian who is ya know already being trained in fighting stuff and like the idea of him trying to provoke Jason just to see what happens but Jason not fighting back because on some level be it his connection to Talia or even little baby Damian visually reminding him of Bruce, he knows that Damian is safe too 🥺 

and then when Jason and Damian meet again in Gotham as Red Hood & Robin respectively, Jason not really remembering because there was so much going on back then for him, but Damian realizing that oh... that was Him

B (hilarious): 

alright so if we are looking at comics currently, in modern stuff jason is what, like 22? hes old enough to drink in the US but still definitely early 20s so around my around my age, thats what im using as a basis here. if we adjust timeline and still consider his death having happened when he was 15, that puts it around 2013. and then coming back to like interacting with people about three years later if we still kinda base things off of the preboot timeframe (since we never got a super solid retelling of the timeline of death -> resurrection -> training -> tries to get revenge aside from knowing he went to the all-caste instead of the lost days version of the story) making him reenter the regular world and stuff around age 18 in 2016. meaning a solid three years of pop culture that he was entirely missing, and like im sorry but he really doesn’t strike me as the type to bother looking into what he missed, he’s kinda busy focusing on other stuff. lets take a quick look at some major things from those years. 2013 gave us ‘what does the fox say’ and ‘the harlem shake’ . 2014 had that time U2 just put a fuckin album on everyone’s phones, The Fault In Our Stars movie came out. 2015 introduced the phrase ‘Netflix and Chill’ and the whole blue & black vs gold & white dress debate happened. imagine any of the other batkids (or even arguably roy during rhato stuff) bringing these things up and jason’s ensuing confusion. thank you for your time

C (heart-crushing): 

so. there are two specific instances from rebirth era Jason i want to bring up here and much like a lot of these it’s less a headcanon and more of an inference based on observations, but i wanna take a sec to discuss Jason’s relationship with other people’s death. early in rebirth, Tim ‘dies’ from that whole thing in detective comics. he didn’t actually die, we as readers know, but in-universe they all very much so thought he was dead. frustratingly a lot of the batfam wasn’t really shown mourning him aside from in the Detective Comics Rebirth title itself (which just. when a major character dies even if its temporary- that should have a ripple effect) BUT an exception to that is in RHATO 2016, where we get this offhanded comment in Jason’s internal monologuing

similarly later when Roy, who like, had an incredibly close relationship w Jason that had just gotten mended before Heroes in Crisis, gets fuckin murdered in that whole thing... Jason doesn’t go to his funeral either. He leaves a dramatic voice mail and then visits the grave on his own later, choosing to instead keep working on the mission they’d started rather than going and taking the time to mourn properly.

Jason’s relationship with death is incredibly complicated, obviously. He has died, he has come back, and he now is willing to cross the line most other bats won’t and will kill people when he deems it necessary. I think thats something important though- he doesn’t just like... go around killing for fun (usually, some writers preboot made him a little murder happy but even then usually this still was vaguely followed) he kills people he thinks deserved it. Like, even looking back at the mess of Morrison’s Jason during Batman & Robin 2009, Jason was still trying to bring a sense of justice with who he was killing (”punishment that fits the crime”), it wasn’t killing for the sake of killing. He sees things in this kind of almost black and white ‘people who deserve it’ and ‘people who don’t’ way, and he has no problem dealing with death when it’s with the people he thinks deserve it. 

but when someone who doesn’t in his mind ‘deserve it’ gets killed? i think he just goes into total avoidance mode. throws himself into other things he’s doing, tries not to dwell on it too much no matter how much he still thinks about it (this is especially evident in him consistently telling people “i’m fine!” after what happened to Roy, despite bringing Roy up literally like every few issues for a WHILE after he died and very clearly still struggling with it, Artemis is the only one who gets through to him on it a little bit) 

but yeah, I just think that from Jason’s relatively unique situation of having been murdered, he knows what it’s like and he is perfectly fine wishing that on people he thinks are bad and deserve it, but it crushes him to imagine the people he loves and cares about having to experience something as painful as what he went through. not to mention the whole “I came back, why do I get a second chance at all this when they, who are a much better person than I am, probably won’t” mindset we get some implications of him having 

D (canon is a coward and won’t) 

hello DC i am once again insisting a batfam member is bisexual

CASS TIME

A (realistic headcanon): 

ok so we know cass likes ballet. thats canon. however i think we also should in general explore cass experiencing other types of dance/performance as well, be it herself as a performer or even just watching. like... god imagine her & like my brain just automatically for group activities puts her with tim steph and duke but also for this in particular I feel would be a Jason embraced activity, but like them going to see a broadway show or some other professional theatre or something, and her just being enthralled by the reading of body language of the performers! like again by any point in current stuff cass does have like, the ability to speak fine (reading still hard tho) but even so I think like. okay im a theatre kid if that’s not obvious from the Everything About Me but one thing I always do after seeing a show is ya know spend dinner afterwards discussing it with whoever i saw it with.

I just think that like, bringing those people i just mentioned to the table to discuss seeing a show after would be so FASCINATING because cass would bring this whole perspective of critiquing their acting on a whole different level- not based on how well they delivered lines out loud, but by what their body language was saying as they moved on stage. like im very amused by the idea of cass getting a totally different picture in her mind about what a character’s motivations were because she was paying way more attention to what their physicality was saying vs the words that were written and how they were delivered. i think the debates her and the others would have would be EPIC there. jason defending the text as it was written adamantly and cass being like ‘ok yeah sure but thats not what they did’

B (hilarious): 

cass having no concept of money because why would she bother? is SO funny to me. like it’s not that she couldn’t be reasonable if she wanted to, but like, she knows that the Waynes are well off so it’s not something she actually needs to be concerned about, so she just goes hog wild. takes steph out to fancy dinners and makes steph order for them since cass ya know doesn’t really read the menus, and steph’s like ‘jesus christ this costs-” “don’t worry about it” “but cass-” and she just holds up one of bruce’s credit cards and steph’s still like “but you don’t even know the range-” “it is fine”

bruce does not have the heart to tell her to stop

C (heart-crushing): 

i mean this is pretty much canon but especially now after death metal where she’s remembering, not just being told by a guy using weird alternate timeline technology, that she used to be an adopted member of the Wayne family... like that hurts so bad. To look at these people who have ya know been kind to her, Bruce has still been a father-like figure to her (i mean literally from the moment they met in New 52 canon during the flashback in Batman & Robin Eternal, where he’s telling her that she’s not a monster just because of what people forced her to do.... that she’s a hero... that hug.... dad behavior), and they do to some extent treat her as family... But to then really know, to feel and remember that she was actually adopted! She was a part of their family. To look at how she’s been calling herself Orphan while working with them this whole time... that’s so heartbreaking! I have cried about this idea so much! I want so badly a conversation between her and Bruce now where he offers to officially adopt her again, I need it so bad and if it doesn’t happen at some point in the next year or two I will be so distraught.

D (canon is a coward and won’t) 

i want an in-depth exploration of cass’ relationship to her own gender. being raised without language and you know with so much of her life being independent (remember: CASS RAN AWAY AROUND THE WORLD WITHOUT REALLY KNOWING ANY SPOKEN LANGUAGE) and outside of an organized society impressing too much of gender expectations on her, i feel like the way she experiences it would be very unique! like sure she’s so far been fine with being assigned ‘girl’ (ya know that comes with batgirl, and how people just automatically treated her based on how she looks) but in terms of gender expression and like her actual relationship with ‘traditional femininity’ etc like... because of how she was raised I just think she’d have a really different perspective on it that could be cool to explore, and I think she’d fall outside of the binary after she really thinks about how she identifies.

tldr on that: she/they nb cass is what i’m getting at here

[topsolarpanels]

Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films need is high time to marinate’

The director of the cult favorite Donnie Darko was once hailed as the next David Lynch. Now, as fans rediscover his 2007 flop Southland Tales, he explains why patience is still a virtue and Trumps victory was a grotesque inevitability

Talking with the writer and director Richard Kelly, its easy to steer the conversation toward the end of the world. After all, Kelly developed a fervent cult following( and alienated it) through tales of prophesied apocalypse 2001 s cult curio Donnie Darko and 2007 s cult-classic-in-the-making Southland Tales. But its not the collapsing buildings or rivers of blood that fascinate Kelly; its what comes right before. The sneaking anxiety. The normalizing of madnes. The casual disregard for your neighbor. The glob in your throat that signifies your newfound understanding that this was inevitable.

If those impressions sounds familiar in our current Trump-addled dystopia, that was not Kellys intention. Southland Tales, a post-9/ 11 satire melded with a retelling of the Book of Revelation that also includes a complex theory of hour traveling, was never meant to feel like a pre-game show for the next decade of global misery.

The sprawling narrative set in an alternative 2008 in which a nuclear attack on Abilene, Texas, triggers a third world war revolves around an amnesiac action starring named Boxer Santaros( played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson) who falls in love with a porn starring/ talkshow host/ entrepreneur/ pop superstar/ psychic who goes by the professional name Krysta Now( Sarah Michelle Gellar ), who has written a screenplay about the end times.

Oh, and theres also a government agency dedicated to spying on Americans, an underground neo-Marxist cult, alternative solutions energy source that might be ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, a United States military been supported by Hustler and Bud Light, and a mind-altering medication that keeps American soldiers docile and dependent. Jon Lovitz plays a racist cop, Seann William Scott plays identical twin police officers, Amy Poehler shows up as an anarchist improv comic, Justin Timberlake plays a drug-addled war veteran and Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride fame is the antichrist( or a reasonable fax ).

Its overwhelming to process, and reflects so much of the nervousnes of our age, even if it isnt always pleasant to watch. I actually wanted it to be something that you would get lost in and that would sustain multiple viewings, Kelly tells me over dinner in Los Angeles. When discussing the movie, his eyes widen and he projects an impish yet tentative enthusiasm as though hes feeling out whether youre going to receive his ideas without judgment. Now, that ambition can be a self-defeating prophecy, as we watched clearly.

Kelly seems wistful about the experience of making and releasing the film, which, after a disastrous Cannes screening at which the movie was booed heavily, virtually lost theatrical distribution. We were in Boston, in pre-production on[ his Southland Tales follow-up] The Box, the weekend Southland Tales opened in 50 -some theaters. The upcoming Monday was our first day of principal photography. We were scrambling for our first day. We had done the AFI Fest premiere and they rushed me back to Boston. And then, I remember that morning, were shooting Cameron[ Diaz] and Frank Langella, this really emotional scene in the Boston Public Library. Someone comes up to me and tells me per-screen medians on Southland Tales. It was such a bummer. A screening Kelly attended with the actor James Marsden was attended by only four other people. Roger Ebert likened the cinema to the third day of a pitch session on velocity. One of the rare positive reviews of the movie came from the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, who called it funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired.

I definitely remain proud of the ambition of it. I feel like sometimes things just require is high time to marinate, he says. The cinema has started to find a new audience. At the time of our meeting, hes in between hosting screenings of Southland Tales thanks to a roadshow tour of the film sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse chain of arthouse theaters. The newfound appreciation for Southland Tales by both audiences and emerging pockets of critics hasnt yet translated to tangible opportunities for Kelly. I dont ever want to feel defeated or that Ive let the system defeat me, he says.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Southland Tales. Photograph: Publicity image from cinema company

Southland Tales discovering an audience nearly 10 years later would not mark the first time one of Kellys cinemas gained esteem upon second( or third) glance. Donnie Darko grossed a scant $517,375 when it was released a month after 9/11. When it observed a huge audience on video and DVD, Kelly became a hot commodity, an heir apparent to the surrealist tradition of directors like David Lynch. Sometimes, the wind is at your back. Sometimes, its at your front, Kelly says about the ups and downs of his career. Darko remains his greatest up, a cinema thats become a touchstone work for the generation that grew up with it. Darko was a disaster at Sundance too, he tells me. No one remembers that, but it was. Im grateful for any rosy light of hindsight. I remember it took us virtually six months to sell the movie. It nearly ran immediately to the Starz network. We had to beg them to put it in theaters. Christopher Nolan stepped in and persuaded Newmarket to put it in theaters.

After those issues, Kelly could have gone the expected route and taken on a big-budget studio tentpole. He could have directed the sequel, which he declined to do( it aimed up being terrible and running straight-out to DVD ). Instead, he choice this peculiar, dense story about the decline of American power.

President-elect Donald Trump was merely a reality show curiosity when Southland Tales was released, but his mixture of profane and pious could easily have constructed him a character in the film. I think that Donald Trump is this grotesque inevitability that has gotten this far because there was something really, really dangerous concealing beneath the surface, that has been concealing beneath the surface for many, many years. The Republican Kelly imagined in Southland Tales were the neocon religious zealots that seem almost quaint to modern eyes. They seemed like the ultimate boogeymen in 2007, but as Kelly points out , no one in the Bush family would even show up at the RNC[ Republican national convention ].

What Southland Tales conveyed better than most politically charged films of the Bush era was the sentiment that it would get worse, that something had been unleashed that could not be put back. At the time that we were building Southland Tales, it was Iraq war and Britney Spears. That dichotomy on your Tv screen. The branding and everything was happening. It seemed inevitable that everyone would start to co-opt branding. Social media hadnt actually exploded yet. To watch legislators running after each other on Twitter, its bizarre. To insure Elizabeth Warren quoting the monorail on the Simpsons. To see legislators co-opting this millennial social media branding, its a blur of the lines.

Each of his three cinemas reflects that sheepish rebellion that is part of his personality. Donnie Darko was a mostly passive protagonist struggling against both the oppressive system of high school and the levers of fate that he could only pull at the cinemas climax. Boxer Santaros is a pawn in a conflict between fascism and socialism, religion and science, and love and demise. Eventually, those characters succumb to a power greater than any on Earth, something unknowable. So does Kelly think all this is down to higher power pulling the strings?

I dont believe any of this happened by accident. Thats just depressing and absurd, in my opinion, he answers. I do think theres a design to things, and we can never hope to know it in any of our lifetimes. Proportion of the challenge is trying to make sense of it. Thats whats cathartic for me as an artist, to try to make sense of it.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films need is high time to marinate’ appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

from Top Rated Solar Panels http://ift.tt/2wUh3Mh via IFTTT

[topsolarpanels]

Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films need is high time to marinate’

The director of the cult favorite Donnie Darko was once hailed as the next David Lynch. Now, as fans rediscover his 2007 flop Southland Tales, he explains why patience remains of virtue and Trumps victory was a grotesque inevitability

Talking with the writer and director Richard Kelly, its easy to steer the conversation toward the end of the world. After all, Kelly developed a fervent cult following( and alienated it) through tales of prophesied apocalypse 2001 s cult curio Donnie Darko and 2007 s cult-classic-in-the-making Southland Tales. But its not the collapsing houses or rivers of blood that fascinate Kelly; its what comes right before. The creeping anxiety. The normalizing of madnes. The casual disregard for your neighbour. The glob in your throat that signifies your newfound understanding that this was inevitable.

If those impressions audios familiar in our present Trump-addled dystopia, that was not Kellys intention. Southland Tales, a post-9/ 11 irony melded with a retelling of the Book of Revelation that also includes a complex hypothesi of time traveling, was never meant to feel like a pre-game show for the next decade of global misery.

The sprawling narrative set in alternative solutions 2008 in which a nuclear attack on Abilene, Texas, triggers a third world war revolves around an amnesiac action starring named Boxer Santaros( played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson) who falls in love with a porn superstar/ talkshow host/ entrepreneur/ pop star/ clairvoyant who goes by the professional name Krysta Now( Sarah Michelle Gellar ), who has written a screenplay about the end times.

Oh, and theres also a government agency dedicated to spying on Americans, an underground neo-Marxist cult, an alternative energy source that might be ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, a United States military sponsored by Hustler and Bud Light, and a mind-altering medication that keeps American soldiers docile and dependent. Jon Lovitz plays a racist policeman, Seann William Scott plays identical twin police officers, Amy Poehler shows up as an anarchist improv comic, Justin Timberlake plays a drug-addled war veteran and Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride fame is the antichrist( or a reasonable facsimile ).

Its overwhelming to process, and reflects so much of the nervousnes of our age, even if it isnt always pleasant to watch. I genuinely wanted it to be something that you would get lost in and that would sustain multiple viewings, Kelly tells me over dinner in Los Angeles. When discussing the film, his eyes widen and he projects an impish yet tentative enthusiasm as though hes feeling out whether youre going to receive his ideas without decision. Now, that aspiration can be a self-defeating prophecy, as we considered clearly.

Kelly seems wistful about the experience of making and releasing the movie, which, after a disastrous Cannes screening at which the movie was booed heavily, virtually lost theatrical distribution. We were in Boston, in pre-production on[ his Southland Tales follow-up] The Box, the weekend Southland Tales opened in 50 -some theaters. The upcoming Monday was our first day of principal photography. We were scrambling for our first day. We had done the AFI Fest premiere and they rushed me back to Boston. And then, I remember that morning, were shooting Cameron[ Diaz] and Frank Langella, that is something that emotional scene in the Boston Public Library. Someone comes up to me and tells me per-screen averages on Southland Tales. It was such a bummer. A screening Kelly attended with the actor James Marsden were engaged in only four other people. Roger Ebert likened the cinema to the third day of a pitching session on speed. One of the rare positive reviews of the film came from the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, who called it funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired.

I definitely remain proud of the ambition of it. I feel like sometimes things just require time to marinate, he says. The cinema has started to find a new audience. At the time of our meeting, hes in between hosting screenings of Southland Tales thanks to a roadshow tour of the cinema sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse chain of arthouse theaters. The newfound expressed appreciation for Southland Tales by both audiences and emerging pockets of critics hasnt yet translated to tangible a chance for Kelly. I dont ever want to feel defeated or that Ive let the organizations of the system defeat me, he says.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Southland Tales. Photograph: Publicity image from cinema company

Southland Tales observing an audience almost 10 year later would not mark the first time one of Kellys movies gained esteem upon second( or third) glance. Donnie Darko grossed a scant $517,375 when it was released a month after 9/11. When it observed a huge audience on video and DVD, Kelly became a hot commodity, an heir apparent to the surrealist tradition of directors like David Lynch. Sometimes, the wind is at your back. Sometimes, its at your front, Kelly says about the ups and downs of his career. Darko remains his greatest up, a cinema thats become a touchstone work for the generation that grew up with it. Darko was a disaster at Sundance too, he tells me. No one remembers that, but it was. Im grateful for any rosy glow of hindsight. I remember it took us almost six months to sell the movie. It almost went immediately to the Starz network. We had to beg them to put it in theaters. Christopher Nolan stepped in and persuaded Newmarket to set it in theaters.

After those issues, Kelly could have gone the expected route and taken on a big-budget studio tentpole. He could have directed the sequel, which he declined to do( it ended up being terrible and running straight to DVD ). Instead, he choice this peculiar, dense story about the decline of American power.

President-elect Donald Trump was only a reality show curiosity when Southland Tales was released, but his mix of profane and pious could easily have attained him a character in the film. I think that Donald Trump is this grotesque inevitability that has get this far because there was something actually, really dangerous concealing beneath the surface, that has been hiding beneath the surface for many, many years. The Republicans Kelly imagined in Southland Tales were the neocon religious zealots that seem virtually quaint to modern eyes. They seemed like the ultimate boogeymen in 2007, but as Kelly points out , no one in the Bush family would even show up at the RNC[ Republican national convention ].

What Southland Tales expressed better than most politically charged cinemas of the Bush era was the sentiment that it would get worse, that something had been unleashed that could not be put back. At the time that we were attaining Southland Tales, it was Iraq war and Britney Spears. That dichotomy on your TV screen. The branding and everything was happening. It seemed inevitable that everyone would start to co-opt branding. Social media hadnt really exploded yet. To assure legislators going after one another on Twitter, its bizarre. To see Elizabeth Warren quoting the monorail on the Simpsons. To ensure legislators co-opting this millennial social media branding, its a blurring of the lines.

Each of his three films reflects that sheepish rebellion that is part of his personality. Donnie Darko was a largely passive protagonist struggling against both the oppressive system of high school and the levers of fate that he could only pull at the films climax. Boxer Santaros is a pawn in a conflict between fascism and socialism, religion and science, and love and demise. Eventually, those characters succumb to a power greater than any on Ground, something unknowable. So does Kelly suppose all this is down to higher power pulling the strings?

I dont guess any of this passed by accident. Thats just depressing and absurd, in my opinion, he answers. I do think theres a design to things, and we can never hope to know it in any of our lifetimes. Part of current challenges is trying to make sense of it. Thats whats cathartic for me as an artist, to try to make sense of it.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films need is high time to marinate’ appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

from Top Rated Solar Panels http://ift.tt/2wMkEvN via IFTTT

[topsolarpanels]

Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films require time to marinate’

The director of the cult favorite Donnie Darko was once hailed as the next David Lynch. Now, as fans rediscover his 2007 flop Southland Tales, he explains why patience is still a virtue and Trumps victory was a grotesque inevitability

Talking with the writer and director Richard Kelly, its easy to steer the conversation toward the end of the world. After all, Kelly developed a fervent cult following (and alienated it) through tales of prophesied apocalypse 2001s cult curio Donnie Darko and 2007s cult-classic-in-the-making Southland Tales. But its not the collapsing buildings or rivers of blood that fascinate Kelly; its what comes right before. The creeping panic. The normalizing of insanity. The casual disregard for your neighbor. The lump in your throat that signifies your newfound understanding that this was inevitable.

If those feelings sounds familiar in our current Trump-addled dystopia, that was not Kellys intention. Southland Tales, a post-9/11 satire melded with a retelling of the Book of Revelation that also includes a complex theory of time travel, was never meant to feel like a pre-game show for the next decade of global misery.

The sprawling narrative set in an alternative 2008 in which a nuclear attack on Abilene, Texas, triggers a third world war revolves around an amnesiac action star named Boxer Santaros (played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson) who falls in love with a porn star/talkshow host/entrepreneur/pop star/psychic who goes by the professional name Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who has written a screenplay about the end times.

Oh, and theres also a government agency dedicated to spying on Americans, an underground neo-Marxist cult, an alternative energy source that might be ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, a United States military sponsored by Hustler and Bud Light, and a mind-altering drug that keeps American soldiers docile and dependent. Jon Lovitz plays a racist cop, Seann William Scott plays identical twin police officers, Amy Poehler shows up as an anarchist improv comic, Justin Timberlake plays a drug-addled war veteran and Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride fame is the antichrist (or a reasonable facsimile).

Its overwhelming to process, and reflects so much of the anxiety of our age, even if it isnt always pleasant to watch. I really wanted it to be something that you would get lost in and that would sustain multiple viewings, Kelly tells me over dinner in Los Angeles. When discussing the film, his eyes widen and he projects an impish yet tentative enthusiasm as though hes feeling out whether youre going to receive his ideas without judgment. Now, that ambition can be a self-defeating prophecy, as we saw clearly.

Kelly seems wistful about the experience of making and releasing the film, which, after a disastrous Cannes screening at which the film was booed heavily, almost lost theatrical distribution. We were in Boston, in pre-production on [his Southland Tales follow-up] The Box, the weekend Southland Tales opened in 50-some theaters. The upcoming Monday was our first day of principal photography. We were scrambling for our first day. We had done the AFI Fest premiere and they rushed me back to Boston. And then, I remember that morning, were shooting Cameron [Diaz] and Frank Langella, this really emotional scene in the Boston Public Library. Someone comes up to me and tells me per-screen averages on Southland Tales. It was such a bummer. A screening Kelly attended with the actor James Marsden was attended by only four other people. Roger Ebert likened the film to the third day of a pitch session on speed. One of the rare positive reviews of the film came from the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, who called it funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired.

I definitely remain proud of the ambition of it. I feel like sometimes things just need time to marinate, he says. The film has started to find a new audience. At the time of our meeting, hes in between hosting screenings of Southland Tales thanks to a roadshow tour of the film sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse chain of arthouse theaters. The newfound appreciation for Southland Tales by both audiences and emerging pockets of critics hasnt yet translated to tangible opportunities for Kelly. I dont ever want to feel defeated or that Ive let the system defeat me, he says.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Southland Tales. Photograph: Publicity image from film company

Southland Tales finding an audience almost 10 years later would not mark the first time one of Kellys films gained esteem upon second (or third) glance. Donnie Darko grossed a scant $517,375 when it was released a month after 9/11. When it found a huge audience on video and DVD, Kelly became a hot commodity, an heir apparent to the surrealist tradition of directors like David Lynch. Sometimes, the wind is at your back. Sometimes, its at your front, Kelly says about the ups and downs of his career. Darko remains his greatest up, a film thats become a touchstone work for the generation that grew up with it. Darko was a disaster at Sundance too, he tells me. No one remembers that, but it was. Im grateful for any rosy glow of hindsight. I remember it took us almost six months to sell the movie. It almost went directly to the Starz network. We had to beg them to put it in theaters. Christopher Nolan stepped in and convinced Newmarket to put it in theaters.

After those issues, Kelly could have gone the expected route and taken on a big-budget studio tentpole. He could have directed the sequel, which he declined to do (it ended up being terrible and going straight to DVD). Instead, he chose this peculiar, dense story about the decline of American power.

President-elect Donald Trump was only a reality show curiosity when Southland Tales was released, but his mix of profane and pious could easily have made him a character in the film. I think that Donald Trump is this grotesque inevitability that has gotten this far because there was something really, really dangerous hiding beneath the surface, that has been hiding beneath the surface for many, many years. The Republicans Kelly imagined in Southland Tales were the neocon religious zealots that seem almost quaint to modern eyes. They seemed like the ultimate boogeymen in 2007, but as Kelly points out, no one in the Bush family would even show up at the RNC [Republican national convention].

What Southland Tales expressed better than most politically charged films of the Bush era was the sentiment that it would get worse, that something had been unleashed that could not be put back. At the time that we were making Southland Tales, it was Iraq war and Britney Spears. That dichotomy on your TV screen. The branding and everything was happening. It seemed inevitable that everyone would start to co-opt branding. Social media hadnt really exploded yet. To see politicians going after each other on Twitter, its bizarre. To see Elizabeth Warren quoting the monorail on the Simpsons. To see politicians co-opting this millennial social media branding, its a blurring of the lines.

Each of his three films reflects that sheepish rebellion that is part of his personality. Donnie Darko was a mostly passive protagonist struggling against both the oppressive system of high school and the levers of fate that he could only pull at the films climax. Boxer Santaros is a pawn in a conflict between fascism and socialism, religion and science, and love and death. Eventually, those characters succumb to a power greater than any on Earth, something unknowable. So does Kelly think all this is down to higher power pulling the strings?

I dont think any of this happened by accident. Thats just depressing and absurd, in my opinion, he answers. I do think theres a design to things, and we can never hope to know it in any of our lifetimes. Part of the challenge is trying to make sense of it. Thats whats cathartic for me as an artist, to try to make sense of it.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films require time to marinate’ appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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[topsolarpanels]

Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films require time to marinate’

The director of the cult favorite Donnie Darko was once hailed as the next David Lynch. Now, as fans rediscover his 2007 flop Southland Tales, he explains why patience is still a virtue and Trumps victory was a grotesque inevitability

Talking with the writer and director Richard Kelly, its easy to steer the conversation toward the end of the world. After all, Kelly developed a fervent cult following( and alienated it) through narratives of prophesied apocalypse 2001 s cult curio Donnie Darko and 2007 s cult-classic-in-the-making Southland Tales. But its not the collapsing buildings or rivers of blood that fascinate Kelly; its what goes right before. The creeping anxiety. The normalizing of insanity. The casual disregard for your neighbor. The hunk in your throat that signifies your newfound understanding that this was inevitable.

If those feelings sounds familiar in our present Trump-addled dystopia, that was not Kellys intention. Southland Tales, a post-9/ 11 satire melded with a retelling of the Book of Revelation that also includes a complex theory of time travel, was never meant to feel like a pre-game show for the next decade of global misery.

The sprawling narrative set in an alternative 2008 in which a nuclear attack on Abilene, Texas, triggers a third world war revolves around an amnesiac action star named Boxer Santaros( played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson) who falls in love with a porn starring/ talkshow host/ entrepreneur/ pop star/ psychic who goes by the professional name Krysta Now( Sarah Michelle Gellar ), who has written a screenplay about the end times.

Oh, and theres also a government agency dedicated to spying on Americans, an underground neo-Marxist cult, alternative solutions energy source that might be ripping a pit in the space-time continuum, a United States military sponsored by Hustler and Bud Light, and a mind-altering medication that maintains American soldiers docile and dependent. Jon Lovitz plays a racist cop, Seann William Scott plays identical twin police officer, Amy Poehler shows up as an anarchist improv comic, Justin Timberlake plays a drug-addled war veteran and Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride fame is the antichrist( or a reasonable facsimile ).

Its overwhelming to process, and reflects so much of the nervousnes of our age, even if it isnt always pleasant to watch. I genuinely wanted it to be something that you would get lost in and that would sustain multiple viewings, Kelly tells me over dinner in Los Angeles. When discussing the movie, his eyes widen and he projects an impish yet tentative enthusiasm as though hes feeling out whether youre going to receive his ideas without judgment. Now, that ambition can be a self-defeating prophecy, as we saw clearly.

Kelly seems wistful about the experience of making and releasing the cinema, which, after a disastrous Cannes screening at which the film was booed heavily, virtually lost theatrical distribution. We were in Boston, in pre-production on[ his Southland Tales follow-up] The Box, the weekend Southland Tales opened in 50 -some theaters. The upcoming Monday was our first day of principal photography. We were scrambling for our first day. We had done the AFI Fest premiere and they rushed me back to Boston. And then, I remember that morning, were shooting Cameron[ Diaz] and Frank Langella, that is something that emotional scene in the Boston Public Library. Someone comes up to me and tells me per-screen medians on Southland Tales. It was such a bummer. A screening Kelly attended with the actor James Marsden was attended by only four other people. Roger Ebert likened the movie to the third day of a pitching session on speed. One of the rare positive reviews of the film came from the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, who called it funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired.

I definitely remain proud of the ambition of it. I feel like sometimes things just require time to marinade, he says. The cinema has started to find a new audience. At the time of our meeting, hes in between hosting screenings of Southland Tales thanks to a roadshow tour of the movie sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse chain of arthouse theaters. The newfound appreciation for Southland Tales by both audiences and emerging pockets of critics hasnt yet translated to tangible opportunities for Kelly. I dont ever want to feel defeated or that Ive let the organizations of the system defeat me, he tells.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Southland Tales. Photo: Publicity image from movie company

Southland Tales seeing an audience virtually 10 years later would not mark the first time one of Kellys cinemas gained esteem upon second( or third) glance. Donnie Darko grossed a scant $517,375 when it was released a month after 9/11. When it observed a huge audience on video and DVD, Kelly became a hot commodity, an heir apparent to the surrealist tradition of directors like David Lynch. Sometimes, the wind is at your back. Sometimes, its at your front, Kelly tells about the ups and downs of his career. Darko remains his greatest up, a cinema thats become a touchstone work for the generation that grew up with it. Darko was a disaster at Sundance too, he tells me. No one remembers that, but it was. Im grateful for any rosy light of hindsight. I remember it took us almost six months to sell the movie. It almost ran immediately to the Starz network. We had to beg them to set it in theaters. Christopher Nolan stepped in and convinced Newmarket to set it in theaters.

After those issues, Kelly could have gone the expected road and taken on a big-budget studio tentpole. He could have directed the sequel, which he declined to do( it aimed up being terrible and running straight-out to DVD ). Instead, he preferred this peculiar, dense narrative about the decline of American power.

President-elect Donald Trump was only a reality show curiosity when Southland Tales was released, but his mixture of profane and pious could easily have constructed him a character in the film. I think that Donald Trump is this grotesque inevitability that has get this far because there was something really, really dangerous hiding beneath the surface, that has been hiding beneath the surface for many, many years. The Republicans Kelly imagined in Southland Tales were the neocon religion zealots that seem nearly quaint to modern eyes. They seemed like the ultimate boogeymen in 2007, but as Kelly points out , no one in the Bush family would even show up at the RNC[ Republican national convention ].

What Southland Tales expressed better than most politically charged films of the Bush era was the sentiment that it would get worse, that something had been unleashed that could not be put back. At the time that we were making Southland Tales, it was Iraq war and Britney Spears. That dichotomy on your Tv screen. The branding and everything was happening. It seemed inevitable that all individuals would start to co-opt branding. Social media hadnt really explosion yet. To see politicians going after one another on Twitter, its bizarre. To consider Elizabeth Warren quoting the monorail on the Simpsons. To ensure legislators co-opting this millennial social media branding, its a blur of the lines.

Each of his three cinemas reflects that sheepish rebellion that is part of his personality. Donnie Darko was a mostly passive protagonist struggling against both the oppressive system of high school and the levers of fate that he could only pull at the films climax. Boxer Santaros is a pawn in a conflict between fascism and socialism, religion and science, and love and demise. Eventually, those characters succumb to a power greater than any on Ground, something unknowable. So does Kelly guess all this is down to higher power pulling the strings?

I dont suppose any of this happened by collision. Thats just depressing and absurd, in my opinion, he answers. I do think theres a design to things, and we can never hope to know it in any of our lifetimes. Portion of current challenges is trying to make sense of it. Thats whats cathartic for me as an artist, to try to make sense of it.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes films require time to marinate’ appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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[topsolarpanels]

Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes movies need time to marinate’

The director of the cult favorite Donnie Darko was once hailed as the next David Lynch. Now, as fans rediscover his 2007 flop Southland Tales, he explains why patience is still a virtue and Trumps victory was a grotesque inevitability

Talking with the writer and director Richard Kelly, its easy to steer the conversation toward the end of the world. After all, Kelly developed a fervent cult following( and alienated it) through narratives of prophesied apocalypse 2001 s cult curio Donnie Darko and 2007 s cult-classic-in-the-making Southland Tales. But its not the collapsing builds or rivers of blood that fascinate Kelly; its what comes right before. The creeping panic. The normalizing of madnes. The casual neglect for your neighbour. The clod in your throat that signifies your newfound understanding that this was inevitable.

If those impressions audios familiar in our current Trump-addled dystopia, that was not Kellys intention. Southland Tales, a post-9/ 11 satire melded with a retelling of the Book of Revelation that also includes a complex theory of day travel, was never meant to feel like a pre-game show for the next decade of global misery.

The sprawling narrative set in an alternative 2008 in which a nuclear attack on Abilene, Texas, triggers a third world war is organized around an amnesiac action star named Boxer Santaros( played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson) who falls in love with a porn star/ talkshow host/ entrepreneur/ pop star/ clairvoyant who goes by the professional name Krysta Now( Sarah Michelle Gellar ), who has written a screenplay about the end times.

Oh, and theres also a government agency dedicated to spying on Americans, an underground neo-Marxist cult, an alternative energy source that might be rending a pit in the space-time continuum, a United States military sponsored by Hustler and Bud Light, and a mind-altering drug that maintains American soldiers docile and dependent. Jon Lovitz plays a racist cop, Seann William Scott plays identical twin police officers, Amy Poehler shows up as an anarchist improv comic, Justin Timberlake plays a drug-addled war veteran and Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride fame is the antichrist( or a reasonable fax ).

Its overwhelming to process, and reflects so much of the anxiety of our age, even if it isnt always pleasant to watch. I truly wanted it to be something that you would get lost in and that would sustain multiple viewings, Kelly tells me over dinner in Los Angeles. When discussing the movie, his eyes widen and he projects an impish yet tentative exuberance as though hes feeling out whether youre going to receive his ideas without judgment. Now, that aspiration can be a self-defeating prophecy, as we assured clearly.

Kelly seems wistful about the experience of making and releasing the movie, which, after a disastrous Cannes screening at which the movie was booed heavily, almost lost theatrical distribution. We were in Boston, in pre-production on[ his Southland Tales follow-up] The Box, the weekend Southland Tales opened in 50 -some theaters. The upcoming Monday was our first day of principal photography. We were scrambling for our first day. We had done the AFI Fest premiere and they rushed me back to Boston. And then, I remember that morning, were shooting Cameron[ Diaz] and Frank Langella, that is something that emotional scene in the Boston Public Library. Someone comes up to me and tells me per-screen medians on Southland Tales. It was such a bummer. A screening Kelly attended with the actor James Marsden was attended by only four other people. Roger Ebert likened the movie to the third day of a pitch conference on velocity. One of the rare positive reviews of the movie came from the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, who called it funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired.

I definitely remain proud of the aspiration of it. I feel like sometimes things merely need time to marinate, he says. The movie has started to find a new audience. At the time of our meeting, hes in between hosting screenings of Southland Tales thanks to a roadshow tour of the movie sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse chain of arthouse theaters. The newfound expressed appreciation for Southland Tales by both audiences and emerging pockets of critics hasnt yet translated to tangible opportunities for Kelly. I dont ever want to feel defeated or that Ive let the organizations of the system defeat me, he says.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Southland Tales. Photo: Publicity image from movie company

Southland Tales finding an audience almost 10 year later would not mark the first time one of Kellys cinemas gained esteem upon second( or third) glance. Donnie Darko grossed a scant $517,375 when it was released a month after 9/11. When it found a huge audience on video and DVD, Kelly became a hot commodity, an heir apparent to the surrealist tradition of directors like David Lynch. Sometimes, the wind is at your back. Sometimes, its at your front, Kelly says about the ups and downs of his career. Darko remains his greatest up, a movie thats become a touchstone work for the generation that grew up with it. Darko was a disaster at Sundance too, he tells me. No one remembers that, but it was. Im grateful for any rosy light of hindsight. I remember it took us almost six months to sell the movie. It almost went immediately to the Starz network. We had to beg them to set it in theaters. Christopher Nolan stepped in and convinced Newmarket to set it in theaters.

After those issues, Kelly could have gone the expected road and taken on a big-budget studio tentpole. He could have directed the sequel, which he declined to do( it objective up being terrible and going straight-out to DVD ). Instead, he choice this peculiar, dense tale about the decline of American power.

President-elect Donald Trump was only a reality show curiosity when Southland Tales was released, but his mixture of profane and pious could easily have attained him a character in the film. I think that Donald Trump is this grotesque inevitability that has get this far because there was something truly, really dangerous concealing beneath the surface, that has been concealing beneath the surface for many, many years. The Republicans Kelly imagined in Southland Tales were the neocon religious zealots that seem almost quaint to modern eyes. They seemed like the ultimate boogeymen in 2007, but as Kelly points out , no one in the Bush family would even show up at the RNC[ Republican national convention ].

What Southland Tales expressed better than most politically charged cinemas of the Bush era was the sentiment that it would get worse, that something had been unleashed that could not be put back. At the time that we were stimulating Southland Tales, it was Iraq war and Britney Spears. That dichotomy on your Tv screen. The branding and everything was happening. It seemed inevitable that everyone would start to co-opt branding. Social media hadnt truly exploded yet. To find politicians going after each other on Twitter, its bizarre. To find Elizabeth Warren quoting the monorail on the Simpsons. To find politicians co-opting this millennial social media branding, its a blurring of the lines.

Each of his three cinemas reflects that sheepish rebellion that is part of his personality. Donnie Darko was a mostly passive protagonist fighting against both the oppressive system of high school and the levers of fate that he could only pull at the cinemas climax. Boxer Santaros is a pawn in a conflict between fascism and socialism, religion and science, and love and demise. Eventually, those characters succumb to a power greater than any on Ground, something unknowable. So does Kelly believe all this is down to higher power pulling the strings?

I dont believe any of this happened by accident. Thats just depressing and absurd, in my opinion, he answers. I do think theres a design to things, and we can never hope to know it in any of our lifetimes. Component of the challenge is trying to make sense of it. Thats whats cathartic for me as an artist, to try to make sense of it.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes movies need time to marinate’ appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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