Donnie Darko: One of Biggest Sundance Breakouts

"The Glee cast is getting freakier every day — Mark Salling — who plays tough guy Puck on the hit show — and Dianna Agron — who’s the pregnant cheerleader, Quinn — threw on masks and channeled their inner Donnie Darko.

“Just when I thought I couldn’t love Mark more, he put on a bunny mask,” Dianna, 23, wrote on her blog Jan. 25 about the photo. “I’m sure it is clear why I picked this one. Fun day today!”
Jake Gyllenhaal as the troubled teenager Donnie Darko.

Sure, we understand the reasoning behind the animal choices (clever, very clever), but why are these two Golden Globe and SAG-award-winning actors dressing up like characters from Jake Gyllenhaal’s 2001 sci-fi cult-classic? That’s still a mystery". Source: www.hollywoodlife.com


13. 'Donnie Darko' (2001). Richard Kelly's twisted enigma of a movie, about a haunted teen and his surreal visions, was the kind of bizarre, independent, personal dream project that Sundance has long made it a mission to nurture. It wasn't a hit out of the box, but its success on DVD helped make Jake Gyllenhaal a star, confirm Drew Barrymore's discerning taste as a producer, provide an image-altering late-career role for Patrick Swayze, and launch a million late-night college bull sessions about What Does It All Mean?
1. 'Reservoir Dogs' (1992). "In the middle of its Sundance premiere, the projector broke. In fact, indie-film history broke in half pretty much at that moment - B.Q. and A.Q. (Before Quentin and After Quentin). Tarantino's explosive heist-gone-wrong tale rewrote the rules for everyone -- for screenwriters (with its formal daring, poetic profanity, baroque violence and encyclopedic grasp of pop culture history), for aspiring directors (if a video store clerk with a dream could raise $1.5 million, put a script into Harvey Keitel's hand and make this movie, then anyone could), for distributors (the Sundance feeding frenzy that began with 'sex, lies, and videotape' suddenly kicked into high gear after 'Reservoir Dogs'), for studios (once-disreputable genre films became A-list projects, and everyone was greenlighting films about chatty gangsters) and for moviegoers (either you were hip to Tarantino or you were square). Tarantino remade Sundance and Hollywood in his own image, for better or worse, and it would be a long time before the film business (and Tarantino himself) would begin to climb out from under his shadow". Source: insidemovies.moviefone.com