It's not my fault; I watched Lost before writing this...

I'm a little frazzled after pulling an all-nighter to wrap up school jazz, and while I'm not really happy with the "why is this on Blu Ray" piece, I'm also not in the mood for some revisionist blogging.

As promised, s. Darko arrived yesterday, and it's taking considerable effort not to follow common sense and mail that sucker back. It's even harder since the other movies that arrived with it are the Luc Besson produced Taken (with Liam Neeson) and The Hit, an early Stephen Frears (Dirty Pretty Things, High Fidelity) crime film starring Terence Stamp, John Hurt, and Tim Roth.

I'd love to watch either of those movies first, but I have promised to do so that you won't have to. I really feel like I should watch Donnie Darko again first, just so that I can distinguish misappropriated time travel logic from the original film. And I do mean the original, theatrical, film, not the over-explaining-hit-you-over-the-head Director's Cut. What I enjoyed about Donnie Darko the first time that I saw it was the film had just enough suggestion of logic behind what was happening to Donnie but not enough to do all of the work for you. Not knowing everything about Roberta Sparrow's book or how the "manipulated dead" meet "living receivers" yadda yadda actually makes working out the Frank / Donnie dynamic more interesting, at least to me.

Sadly, s. Darko sounds like more jargon and less suggestion, to the point reviews have openly recommended forgetting the sequel even exists. Why anyone would shell out 27.99 at Best Buy for this, I don't know, but I bet someone did.

Anyway, that's a preamble for tomorrow's rant. Or - who knows - I could love it. Yeah, and I could give Southland Tales a second chance. Hah!

---

I wish I had something substantive to add today, but instead I have some pictures. It's one thing to say that Short Circuit looks better than it deserves to; it's another entirely to show you. Mind you, this is a picture of a tv screen, so there's some resolution lost in translation, but I think you'll get the idea.

They should all be clickable for (much) larger versions.






---

Really, wouldn't you all rather read a review of Taken tomorrow? Or The Hit?

No! I must soldier on so that others need not suffer from ignorance.