Come anticipate Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" with me

the cast is fucking horrendous.

The Rock .... Boxer Santaros/Jericho Kane
Seann William Scott .... Roland Taverner/Ronald Taverner
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Krysta Kapowsky/Krysta Now
Mandy Moore
Miranda Richardson
Kevin Smith .... Simon Thiery

KEVIN SMITH?!?

you don't really need to see Domino. It's pretty bad, and I usually like Tony Scott movies.

Also, the government is OUT TO GET HIM:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives/2006/05/southland_tales.php

More news, not encouraging.

just imagine it - a porn star! who is popular in pop culture! it's like our wildest science fiction is coming true!

"I think you will see Justin do extraordinary work in the rest of his career as an actor," said Kelly, who said Timberlake's character was the "spiritual centre of the film".

Good lord.

xpost
People who don't watch porn can't name a single contemporary porn star. Me, f'rinstance.

I don't particularly see anything in that story that makes ST seem like a surefire disaster, or any more ludicrous than a PT Anderson film.

then there is still time, time to reverse course before this futuristic nightmare world of famous porn stars comes to pass

I'm deeply skeptical about this film. (PT Anderson comparison seems on point - especially considering I hate all of his movies except the big hit).

Ron Jeremy is a contemporary porn star? My eyes!

Renard is like the teenager on ILM who refused to believe Stephin Merritt wasn't sure who Jessica Simpson is.

WOW that is such a crrrrrrrraaaaazy idea

that could NEVER HAPPEN

J Hoberman sez Southland is visionary, and "There hasn't been anything comparable in American movies since Mulholland Drive."

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0621,hoberman,73309,20.html

Karl Marx (and his family) keep surfacing in various guises, including the last remnant of the Democratic Party.

just for gabbneb!

"A black comedy about Dystopia, America, 'Southland Tales' opens with a line from T. S. Eliot's poem 'The Hollow Man' ('This is the way the world ends') and a nuclear bomb exploding above a Fourth of July gathering. What follows is a sprawling, periodically dazzling, often funny pop-and-politics mash-up that finds a porn star (Ms. Gellar's character) united with an action star (Mr. Johnson's) to save a country awash in celebrity culture and neo-conservatism.

At the news conference, sitting next to the stars and his longtime producer, Sean McKittrick, an unsmiling Mr. Kelly seemed painfully aware of the critical reception, even going so far as to hope aloud that the film would not 'bomb.'

Given the critical reaction and the lack of an American distributor so far, this worry may be premature.

'It's a very sad situation we've found ourselves in as a country,' Mr. Kelly said at one point. I'm not sure he was only speaking politically."

not bad for a guy on his second film.

Jeez, Zelda Rubinstein, Miranda Richardson, Christopher Lambert, John Larroquette, Wallace Shawn AND Curtis Armstrong are in it!

"I think I have no choice in the matter because I want this movie to be seen," he says. "But I want to make sure that we can hold on to the complicated structure because it's very, very thought-out. We spent years designing it, and I think upon first viewing it rushes over you and leaves you in a daze."

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0622,peranson,73376,20.html

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news06/060829b.php

You'd think he would've heard before of a little thing called the Director's Cut DVD...

After Donnie Darko he should be used to it.

I would be on the director's side, but I'm not sure the world needs Donnie Darko II: Political Allegory.

We need do to retire the word "pretentious" for a few years though at least; it's taken on an unintended life of its own. Every artistic act in history is pretentious or indulgent on some level.

Essentially, Southland Tales is a big-budget, widescreen underground movie. ("Star-Spangled to Death," one colleague commented as we left the screening.) Filled with throwaway gags and trippy special effects, it's a comedy as well. Philip K. Dick is the presiding deity—the movie is thick with drugs, paranoia, and time-travel metaphysics—although Karl Marx (and his family) keep surfacing in various guises, including the last remnant of the Democratic Party. The film is a mishmash of literary citations, interpolated music videos (mainly with Justin Timberlake), and movie references—most obviously to Robert Aldrich's apocalyptic noir Kiss Me Deadly—but it's even more concerned with evoking the ubiquitous media texture of contemporary American life. The film is a mishmash of literary citations, interpolated music videos, and movie references—most obviously to Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly—but it's even more concerned with evoking the ubiquitous media texture of contemporary American life.

The film is a mishmash of literary citations, interpolated music videos, and movie references—most obviously to Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly—but it's even more concerned with evoking the ubiquitous media texture of contemporary American life.

Sounds like the world's worst MFA thesis film.

"Worst M.F.A thesis film evah!"-Richard Roeper. Forunately my M.F.A thesis film is very good. The best one I've seen at least.

The problem came in defending the film by characterizing it as some underground avant-garde strike against the vapid conformity of Hollywood... when it's neither underground nor avant-garde, and was made by the Hollywood director of the biggest hipster cult movie of this century.

Avant-garde films that get made by major studios under genre camouflage are even MORE subversive! (ie, the best of Hitchcock)

Finally due (in some form) for release on Nov. 9.

Roughly one American per year makes a feature film with avant-garde gestures and people get angry because it exists.

well said.

Finally due (in some form) for release on Nov. 9.

They should have timed it for Turkey Day. Oh!

I can't wait to see this.

morbius, do you support this film?

support? I'm curious to see it.

Morbs has no party affiliation.

I would have assumed you hated Richard Kelly, Morbs.

becuz...?

u r a h8tr

exactly

what the fuck morbs, acting all surprised because i'm surprised you like richard kelly

JT in Southland Tales:

http://z.about.com/d/movies/1/0/t/t/8/southlandtalestimberlake1.jpg

The auteur himself (and kinda cute):

http://www.cinemablend.com/images/news_img/2898/2898.jpg

Actually, I thought most of ILX hated Richard Kelly, ergo Morbs should be expected to love him.

zackly!

Not as hot in this one:

<img src="http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/32/01/78f.jpg";>

you get the idea.

http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/32/01/78f.jpg

I am curious to see this but its troubles do not bode well

you know there's a history of films now regarded as classics generating hatred and walkouts when they were unveiled, yes?

TRY AND NAME ONE

yeah I meant more the fact that its taken so long, casting is terrible, sounds like its gone through numerous cuts, etc.

(x-post_

poster:

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/09/11/exclusive-final-one-sheet-for-richard-kellys-southland-tales/

I am definitely interested in seeing this, but that poster is heinous. The tribal tattoo font, the flag motif, the waxy faces, all of it.

Is this a poster for Crash?

I'll be in Philadelphia on Nov. 9. Do limited releases open there? Or just in NY and LA?

Why does JT look like George Strombolopolous?

Variety is reporting that he has joined his producing partner Sean McKittrick and financier Ted Hamm to form his own production company -- Darko Entertainment. The company plans to back "modestly-budgeted, director-driven films."

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/09/17/richard-kelly-launches-darko-entertainment/

His next is a psychological thriller that stars Cameron Diaz.

I assume (without actually following your link) that the psychological thriller is "The Box" - which is the "would you pick up a box filled with a million dollars if some person you've never met, deep within China, were to die as a result?" story. I'm totally hazy on the details, but I think it might either have been "inspired by" an unproduced (or produced?) Twilight Zone script, or a Richard Matheson story?

I could be throwing fistfuls of bullshit here, but I think that's the deal.

Pasted cuz I suspected it's not linkable.

Richard Kelly resurrects 'Southland'
'Donnie Darko' director knows from experience that a film can overcome a poor showing at Cannes.

By Mark Olsen, Special to The LA Times

September 18, 2007

TORONTO -- It was an offer he couldn't refuse. The Cannes Film Festival invited writer-director Richard Kelly to screen his second feature as part of its prestigious competition section. So Kelly took his "Southland Tales" to France in 2006, even though there was work still to be done on it.

The response? Disastrous. A "career killer," according to more than one industry watcher. Variety's review called it "pretentious, overreaching and fatally unfocused." The Village Voice said it was "a high-voltage farrago of unsynopsizable plots and counterplots" -- and that was one of the kind notices.

"Even with all that happened, I don't regret it," Kelly said recently of the experience. "Now that all the dust has settled, the movie is actually better off because of it. Honestly, it is. The hope is we can still somehow recover and the movie can find an audience."

Kelly will soon find out. He and his team, including producing partner Sean McKittrick, have been hard at work on revising the film nearly nonstop since that awful summer. "Southland Tales," which will be released Nov. 9, has been trimmed by approximately 20 minutes since Cannes and now has about 600 visual-effects shots, of which at least 100 are completely new.

"One of the biggest knocks on the movie was that it was too long," Kelly said. "I knew it was too long. But it's like a really elaborate puzzle. Like Jenga, you pull out enough blocks and it's still structurally sound; you pull out too many and it starts to collapse."

The now 2-hour, 24-minute story is purposefully byzantine for even the most attentive of viewers. Characters have multiple names and identities, plot strands ebb, flow and intersect. Add to that Kelly's casting choices -- drawing together such pop figureheads as Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake and Mandy Moore into a kaleidoscopic swirl -- and the experience of simply taking it all in, and it's pretty overwhelming.

The film is broken into three chapters, IV, V and VI. The first three chapters came out as graphic novels after Cannes, and Kelly admits they were the key, even for himself, for getting a handle on what was happening to the characters on screen.

"I couldn't get to a place, emotionally, as an artist, where I really felt I could finish this movie properly until I had the books done," he said. "I was a nervous wreck and I was depressed. I tried to do too much, and I failed. I felt I wasn't going to fulfill this movie, how great I had it in my mind. But once I finished the books, a big monkey was lifted off my back. I could really figure out how to solve the puzzle of the film. When we went to Cannes I hadn't finished with the books yet."

To that end, Kelly seriously revamped the first reel of the movie to include background information from the graphic novels and give the audience more of a running start on the film's densely packed narrative. Following the same opening scene, a Texas house party on July 4, 2005, that ends with mushroom clouds in the distance, the film now shifts into a dizzying animated sequence, referred to as the Doomsday Scenario Interface, which draws imagery from the graphic novels. Torrents of information are quickly revealed regarding the three years that follow, in which multiple wars are waged, an intense culture of government surveillance is created, alternative fuel sources are explored and Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for president on a ticket with Joe Lieberman. The world seems truly off its axis.

Kelly also re-recorded Timberlake's voice-over narration that runs throughout the film. Where the voice-over on the Cannes cut was more biting and sardonic, Kelly instructed Timberlake to watch "Apocalypse Now," so the voice-over now has the flat, hollowed-out lack of affect of Martin Sheen.

In trying to downplay their concerns over what might be called "the Cannes effect," McKittrick and Kelly are quick to point out that Kelly's first feature, "Donnie Darko," premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to similarly mixed results. After that film's initially disappointing theatrical release in fall of 2001, it went on to build an international cult following. Kelly and McKittrick are in no small part depending on that fan base, which Kelly has nurtured in the interim with regular MySpace posts, to turn out for "Southland Tales," regardless of what may have happened at Cannes.

"At the heart of it, our audience doesn't care," McKittrick said. "They panned us just as hard on 'Darko,' and our core audience knows that. And I think the general public isn't going to pay attention too much to Cannes reviews; that's more of an industry thing. I think it can actually fuel a fire, to be honest with you. It can get people excited to see it and make seeing it more rebellious in a way."

"The movie was made primarily for a younger audience," Kelly added, "people who watch 'South Park,' read the Onion, watch 'The Daily Show,' 'The Simpsons,' read graphic novels. And we were taking it to the toughest audience in the world, much older and kind of snobbier. But it was an honor to be there, to be included, so with the honor you take the punches to the face."

The rebooting of "Southland Tales" has given Kelly a clear-eyed perspective on what happened at Cannes and on himself as a filmmaker. The elongated journey to theaters now seems oddly appropriate for a film of such consciously unwieldy ambition and scope.

Finishing a recent late breakfast, Kelly stares at a half-eaten plate of food and absent-mindedly notes, "I always order more than I can eat." Immediately realizing the tantalizingly obvious metaphor, he hastens to add, "But I will finish it if you just give me time. I swear."

I will see this probably against my better judgment. I just can't get over how uniformly horrible the cast is.

You don't want to see The Rock in a kaleidoscopic swirl?

I can't get over the uniformly silly expressions of STUNNED CONCERN on all the stars' faces in the poster

metaphor for all of US

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809233751/video/4164037/20070920/150/4164037-1000-flash-s.44247659-,4164037-1000-wmv-s.44247604-,4164037-300-wmv-s.44247594-,4164037-300-flash-s.44247613-,4164037-700-flash-s.44247646-,4164037-100-flash-s.44247608-,4164037-700-wmv-s.44247599-,4164037-100-wmv-s.44247575-,4164036-10300-qtv-s.44247706-,4164036-6800-qtv-s.44247686-,4164036-2700-qtv-s.44247679-

yay Wallace Shawn someone I can actually stomach watching

God, that trailer is a mess. 2 hours and 41 minutes of that?

I think over the last year I have officially burned out on sci-fi dystopia/end-of-the world storytelling. Not that I didn't enjoy Children of Men or what have you, just that I find the total lack of any kind of optimistic or inspiring visions of the future utterly depressing.

it's 2:24

SOOOOO FUCKING EXCITED FOR THIS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKING EXCITED

BLEACH BLOND JON LOVITZ AND SO, SO MUCH MORE

Most objectionable part of that trailer: "Music by Moby."

OBJECTION OVERRULED!

This movie needs Moby to shoot out of a cannon while singing "We Are All Made Of Stars" and holding a keytar.

xp

yeah, esp when you look at Eric's playlists.

And King of Comedy gets pushed back another few months.

http://www.wvvh.com/images/350_IMG_2935.JPG

so not gonna happen

THIS WILL BE AWESOME.

elbow in the trailer? weird

from Sunday's NY Times feature (addressing cutty and Shakey's "horrendous cast" comments):

“American pop culture is certainly embedded in the DNA of this film,” Mr. Kelly said. In casting the ensemble, which also includes Seann William Scott and Mandy Moore, he undertook a kind of Warholian experiment. “I wanted to utilize not just the talent of the actors but their pop value,” he said, likening the strategy to how Warhol “took the image of celebrity and corrupted it.”

but don't those actors need to actually be fairly famous for that to work? As in not C-listers?

The trailer was so bizarre I ended up thinking it will at least be a fantastic disaster, if it is bad.

I hear that Justin Timberlake and The Rock are famous.

The Rock is famous? I forgot Justin Timberlake was in it (and since he is wtf are they using MANDY MOORE as the example there)/??

jessie what planet are you from where not every person between the ages 18 and 28 knows who seann william scott and mandy moore and the rock are?

more importantly, is it a planet with space lesbians on it?

hasn't The Rock had the #1 movie 2 or 3 weeks running? That cute-kid-and-football-player thing?

also "pop value" doesnt necessarily mean "most recognized/most famous"

(jessie, the quote is from the middle of the article, they'd already cited the other stars)

I find your unswerving enthusiasm for this film sorta befuddling Morbz... did you really like Donnie Darko THAT much? what's the appeal here exactly?

(fwiw I DID like Donnie Darko that much, the original release anyway)

he isn't called 'the rock' in the trailer. he's called 'dwayne johnson' or some bullshit. i'm seeing this tomorrow. am fairly neutral but fuck reading a bunch of comic books before i can "get it", leave that to the tourists.

sarah michelle gellar is fairly famous, people. timberlake too, though he'll suck. mandy moore was in 'entourage' and acquitted herself pretty well.

"I wanted to utilize not just the talent of the actors but their pop value,” he said, likening the strategy to how Warhol “took the image of celebrity and corrupted it.”

yeah right. the fuck does this even mean?

"I'm covering my ass by referencing a much more famous and clever artist" is what it means

he's a total jackass

but yeah how was the image of celebrity "corrupted" by Warhol (like prior to Warhol it was somehow all innocent and pure wtf...?)

x-post

"I wanted to utilize not just the talent of the actors but their pop value”

you may as well bring in the producer to say "casting mandy moore and JT will bring us a large tweener/teen audience; casting SMG will bring in the doritos-fingered set". it's pretty basic calculation.

i dont get why thats a problem

it's not, but neither is it 'warholian'. it's just bidness.

he looked hawt in the mug the NYT ran.

there are ppl who would argue that ignoring (or at least willfully flauting) the "business/art" line is totally "warholian"

all major motion pictures = warholian

http://www.vanguardcinema.com/misscastaway/misscastaway_lrg.jpg

i guess the subtext of my post was that warhol -- if he ever was interesting -- isn't now, and being 'warholian' in 2007 is pretty weak.

but what the fuck, it's not like warhol made films with famous people, his thing was treating (mostly) nobodies as if they were filmstars (and i guess vice versa in the 'screen tests' but i don't think they even got screened in new york at the time...). if warhol means anything as a filmmaker, his biggest achievement was to break minimalism out of the underground.

how is it warholian to make a big-budget, effects-filled film about the end of the world, packed with famous names chosen not for talent but for their pop iconicity?

in other words

all major motion pictures = warholian

-- chaki, Monday, October 29, 2007 9:35 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

otm

jena malone out of 'donnie darko' seems kind of funny. she did a crazy voiceover on this film by that d-bag who directed 'lilya 4-eva' "as herself".

hey, leave the attacks on moodysson aside.

i kind of liked her v/o; the film itself was pretty boring.

COUNTING THE DAYS TILL I CAN KISS THIS MOVIE ALL OVER

hey morbs, do you like kevin smith? he, he

can we rate what level "stifler" from american pie is on the celebrity scale?

bigger than Jesus

yeah i can agree that all hollywood films are "warholian"

assholian

i am warholio

stifler was also in 'without a paddle', that one trailer with billy bob thornton, and 'ninja monk' or whatever. you have to salute his tanacity. or, you know, not.

this is also stifler's second movie with the rock, for those of you keeping track at home

Casey Kasem ovah heah

I liked Darko fine w/out loving it, Shakey, but I am fascinated by films maudit, which invariably turn out to be greater achievements than widely acclaimed, play-it-safe dreck.

don't get me wrong morbs, i will definitely see this in the theater

ok this film

the irony is, it sort of does end with a whimper.

Hoberman: "rich, strange, and very funny... a gloriously sprawling and enjoyably unsynopsizeable spectacle."

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0745,hoberman,78254,20.html

"Indeed, as demonstrated by the Donnie Darko director's cut, Kelly is actually better when his cosmology remains obscure."

is one of the things i said in my review wot i filed yesterday. though it won't appear till january ffs.

he's right on the whole. (but you can't really overlook how TERRIBLE the rock is. the smg satire stuff is a bit weak too.)

unsynopsizable is right: i had to provide a straight synopsis and it just can't be done.

i think the cannes audience thought it was unintentionally funny, where it's pretty obviously campy. that doesn't make all of it funny though.

the first scene brings to mind 'cloverfield' oddly.

I just can't get over having to watch so many actors I hate

well i've never seen Buffy, The Rock, or Justin in anything, so I'll let you know how that plays

wood harris is funny, mandy moore is funny.

The trailer is repugnant on every level. We'll see.

However: Music videos insinuate themselves into the flux, most elaborately when an artfully scarred Fallujah survivor (Justin Timberlake) lip-syncs the Killer's "All These Things That I've Done" in a pinball arcade populated by a chorus line of vinyl-clad babes

yeah I saw an ad last night. not pretty

i don't see how that's a 'however'! i hate the killers but that scene is kelly's equivalent of the start of 'apocalypse now'.

it is not really a pleasant watch in the way 'donnie darko' was, and j-ho is right re. information overload. i think he said there or in his cannes review that it apes the texture of modern tv, which is about right.

but... I hate modern TV. why ruin films by turning them into television (cue Morbz joke about Clooney/Haggis/Facts of Life)

Dargis in NYT (otm on academicism -- love for Hist of Violence, for a diff example):

American cinema is in the grip of a kind of moribund academicism, which helps explain why a fastidiously polished film like No Country for Old Men can receive such gushing praise from critics. Southland Tales isn't as smooth and tightly tuned as No Country, a film I admire with few reservations. Even so, I would rather watch a young filmmaker like Kelly reach beyond the obvious, push past his and the audience's comfort zones, than follow the example of the Coens and elegantly art-direct yet one more murder for your viewing pleasure and mine. Certainly Southland Tales has more ideas, visual and intellectual, in a single scene than most American independent films have in their entirety, though that perhaps goes without saying.

This movie was really disappointing. Great cast, but AGAIN he reveals how mundane his insights about culture are by using them simply to pepper a rumination on THE FOURTH DIMENSION.

Talk about a split:

http://nsfc.zap2it.com/nsfc/cda/index.jsp?p_state=7&FilmId=41114&ts=1195092901662

Hey I really wish more directors from my generation would try to make epics about 00s america with a bunch of SNL vets and pop icons, I just wish even more that Richard Kelly could tell the difference between surrealism and bad sci-fi.

I could name about 50 video directors who could have done the JT-Killers sequence better, though if it was a new Bud ad it would be MIND-BLOWING.

croup panning it gives me more hope than the Hoberman-Dargis praise.

who is croup?

new jay-z alter ego

^da c^

boy, it's early in Mpls.

have you seen it yet, Morbs?

never mind, I guess you haven't.

Oh, duh...

Still, that's mean.

oh, you Paulettes.

this film is very filmic, Morbz. Enjoy!

but does it rise to the heights of "trash"?

it't not meant to be 'surrealism'. it's kind of meant to be bad sci fi.

oh, well then I was wrong to be disappointed by that.

we must live within the realm of presumed directorial intent or else it wouldn't be fair.

but does it rise to the heights of "trash"?

oh, it's trash.

Kael loves it from the grave, then.

we must live within the realm of presumed directorial intent or else it wouldn't be fair.

-- da croupier, Thursday, November 15, 2007 3:08 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

that's exactly what i said, well done.

SO EXCITED

this was tons of fun. i laffed lots. and it's not a "rumination on the 4th dimension" ffs, it's a sort of freeform pop satire of the bush years. (the same way, and obviously with some of the same m.o., that donnie darko was a coded history of the reagan years.) plenty of dead spots but i thought the cast was mostly good with the deadpan cliche dialogue, and the gazillion quotes from other movies were fun in a sort of plunderphonics way. (the whole movie reminded me of plunderphonics.)

it did lose its oomph toward the end but i still admire the chutzpah of commingling the hindenberg, 9/11 and repo man. smart guy, funny movie.

(also imdb claims janeane garofalo is in this. i guess she mustve got cut.)

her face is in the lower right corner during some of the final shots. its pretty blink-if-you-miss-it, and yeah, I'm guessing they cut other scenes.

well i guess there's always the director's cut.

(and apparently i don't know how to spell hindenburg)

and i really wish it was a freeform satire

what on earth else could you possibly think it was?

dude, it HAD a plot. A plot about government experiments involving drugging soldiers and breaking the fourth dimension. The part where you said it was losing "oomph"? That's when the secrets of Liquid Karma and the time travellers were being revealed. Don't flip through any of the graphic novels if you want to keep thinking its just some randomass culture jollies. As with Donnie Darko, you prolly don't want a director's cut, as it would include more expository dialogue upping the plotted sci-fi and watering down the culture riffs, which I don't even think are particularly well-done.

A+ for bringing us folks like John Laroquette, though.

It's perfectly fine for people to ignore the plot and just get off on the ephemera, it's pretty healthy, actually. But let's not pretend Richard Kelly doesn't want this to all make sense.

i've actually read one of the comix. it was ok. nothing like the movie. but if that was his way into it, that's fine.

this thing is not remotely about its plot. any more than lynch's last two movies were. (not to make too much of the lynch connection, lynch is just one of his touchstones, rebekah del rio notwithstanding.) the movie's a satirical pop-culture collage, and from scanning the befuddled and vituperative reviews i think it's running into the same problem that lynch and todd haynes and assorted other contemporaries do who manage to get basically "experimental" movies shown in cineplexes -- which is that a lot of people who are perfectly comfortable with modernism and postmodernism and post-post-whatever on a museum wall (or in a book -- that calvino, all those plots full of holes) still have a reflexive tendency to give primacy to "narrative" when something's on a movie screen.

anyway. i was well entertained.

still have a reflexive tendency to give primacy to "narrative" when something's narrative's on a movie screen.

my complaint is that the movie WASN'T more surreal and freeform, dude.

if narrative wasn't the point of the film, then why does Kelly always get forced to cut out talky sci-fi exposition? dude barely more "experimental" than george lucas.

dude IS barely

i think kelly wants it to make "sense," but not in the way you seem to mean. the plot could not possibly be any more deliberately ridiculous. it is a structure cobbled together out of sort of the found art of his surroundings (which happens to be i guess movies, tv, music videos, the internet, pop junk in general), which provides a foundation for him to string together his riffs on politics, history, sex, violence, environmentalism, celebrity, consumerism, race, etc etc etc. i'm not saying the story such as it is doesn't matter on some level to him, because artists get caught up in the worlds they make, but i don't see how you could watch this movie and think its "story" was what it was about.

(and i don't think it's surrealist. i guess formally you'd have to call it postmodernist, but mostly i think satirical covers it. "postmodern satire," to give it a filing drawer.)

i think you mean no one could watch this movie and think its "story" was worth paying any attention to. if politics, history, sex, violence, environmentalism, celebrity, consumerism, race, etc etc mattered most to Kelly, he wouldn't END with straight-up sci-fi about time travel (in BOTH movies!).

x-post I didn't say it right upthread (nrq called me out on it) but my point is that experimentalism/surrealism would be a better platform for his post-modern satire than the sci-fi he probably grew up on and is unwilling to relinquish.

I have a feeling Harold & Kumar 2's gonna do a better job at everything this movie went for.

i think he's using forms he's familiar with and invested in, and mining them for his own purposes. (again, lots of artists in other forms do this, and people "get it" because it's on a gallery wall or a museum wall and not just down the hallway from the popcorn stand.) and i think you have to go a long way around the actual content of both his movies to call them "straight-up sci-fi about time travel." that kurt vonnegut, with his straight-up sci-fi about the firebombing of dresden.

but anyway, i like richard kelly. i think he's smart and weird and also a nifty visual stylist. for people who don't like him, god knows there are plenty of other filmmakers who are not like him at all.

I love the idea that I wouldn't wish he was smarter & weirder if it was on a museum wall rather than by the popcorn stand.

well as long as you're pretending kelly has made two "straight-up sci-fi time travel" movies i don't really know what to say.

I said the endings were straight-up sci-fi time travel (guess you missed the word in all caps). All the culture riffs fade away and we get some messiah figure tearfully deciding whether to make all the chaos and carnage go away by entering the fourth dimension. reviews rarely talk about this element, cuz frankly its boring and makes for worse copy than sparkle motion and justin miming to the killers.

the ending of southland tales is more ambiguous, i think, but in any case worrying about the endings doesn't make any more sense to me than worrying about the rest of the plot points. it's not what they're about. donnie darko is a cultural history of the 1980s, southland tales is a cultural history of the '00s, and i can't really imagine talking or thinking about them in any other terms, at least not usefully. you can argue about how well or badly or superficially or insightfully they do that job, but talking about their plots, to me, is sort of like just not speaking their language at all.

(plus also of course i think both movies are basically entertaining, nothing else works without that.)

Someone should Kelly what his movies are really about so he can stop putting so much effort into those plots. Dude had to re-record Timberlake's narration after Cannes, evidently for nothing as far as those who "get it" are concerned.

should TELL Kelly

i thought timberlake's rerecordings were to make the narration less sardonic, more blank? had to do with tone more than plot. i guess they added in some pre-story at the beginning, but that seems more like a concession to the demands of the narrative-obsessed than kelly spending so much time worrying about his plot. he obviously didn't have it there to start with. maybe because he didn't think it was that important? (or he thought people could pick up whatever was needed as they went along, who knows. i didn't mind the the prologue, would have been fine without it, but it seemed mostly there as a star wars joke so he could start the movie with a big IV, which ok, i thought was kind of funny.)

also in re harold and kumar's 2, i think this is probably more like charlie's angels 2. which i also thought was pretty funny.

(rosenbaum's thumbs-down review sez "you can't be both political and incoherent," which i think is all sorts of wrong)

I have a feeling Harold & Kumar 2's gonna do a better job at everything this movie went for.

-- da croupier, Saturday, November 17, 2007 7:50 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

i have a feeling you're right

the reviews coming in are lolz

the reviews are pretty funny; lots of clueless outrage, "if it doesn't make sense to me it must not make sense!" (the smartest negative review i've seen is this one, which i think gets the movie right but just didn't enjoy it as much as i did.)

nobody's mentioned snow crash as far as i've seen, which seems like more of a touchstone in some ways than philip k. dick, who does get mentioned in a lot of reviews. there is a "flow my tears" joke in the movie, but kelly's riffs seem for better or worse more cyberpunky than dick-y. and lynch comparisons are inevitable, not least because of the direct lynch references, but the only lynch film it makes me think of at all is wild at heart. (which i know some people hate, but i also like.)

it doesn't make sense! that's not the whole point.

but srsly if you're going to defend it (which i do) you have to concede it doesn't make any sense.

i'm pretty sure that stifler is supposed to 'be' the creepy german dude as well as his twin brother, right? and jesus.

may be seeing tom'w night, but w/ a group of ppl who've already decided it's terrible, so maybe not.

yes it doesn't make sense. but lots of things don't. (like wild at heart for example.) which comes back to my thing about even art-literate people holding movies to standards of narrative coherence that they don't demand of other forms (or even of matthew barney or stan brakhage movies, because those get shown in museums instead of at the amc empire 25). and ok kelly's not as radical as brakhage or anything, nor trying to be, but i think the only sensible way to approach something like southland tales is as a sort of pop-culture collage, not as a narrative. (for that matter snow crash isn't about its narrative either; it's pop-meta-fiction, which is also what kelly is.)

(whether or not it's good pop-metafiction, or entertaining, is totally up for grabs, obv. i thought it was pretty good, and fairly entertaining.)

ppl don't drop the coherence standard unless it's Barton Fink.

A fair share of art-literate people don't WANT movies to be art, unless it's the kind they can bond with Mom over after Thanksgiving. Unless it's Spielberg, then the hell with him if it's not Indiana Jones.

wowowowowowowowowow

this is probably the greatest movie ive seen all year and also totally indefensible

the minute you try to be like "no, you just didnt GET it, its actually about X" the thing loses all its force and power

which is probably because theres nothing TO get.

highlights incl. avon barksdale in a prosthetic nose and the line "get in the car. we're taking the atm to mexico."

also the wannabe-vangelis w/ tribal drums soundtrack was greatttt

i wish he had actually had timberlake sing the killers song instead of just lip-synching it

which is probably because theres nothing TO get.

mmm. that's too easy and not fair to kelly. he didn't make the movie by accident or anything. i agree that it's fun, which is what makes it work to whatever degree it does. if it wasn't fun, nothing else would matter. but it being fun doesn't mean there's nothing to get.

sorry i was being glib--i just mean that the reason (for me) that the movie "succeeded" was because it didnt take itself seriously at all. the minute something like it takes itself seriously, or is taken seriously, i think it becomes sort of insufferable. it needs to be really light for it to carry half the weight that it puts on its shoulders.

Wait a sec -- I didn't hate ALL of this, but soooo much of it is NOT FUN. And it DOES take itself seriously, just not solemnly (except when it does).

I'll have more to say later, but a lot of the villainy in particular reminded me of Dune with slapstick added.

My overall reaction is not GOOD or AWFUL, but amazement that this reached the screen.

Tons of people I didn't recognize (Christopher Lambert, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Smith) and others I've never heard of (Bai Ling?, everyone who's been on SNL since I stopped watching).

dude you gotta get down with bai ling.

soooo disappointed Morbz...?

I may see this this weekend, the wife has ruled out No Country For Old Men

I wasn't expecting enough to be disappointed. I did think Seann W Scott gave a halfway touching performance, and makes a hot cop.

what are the direct Lynch references besides the Mulholland Dr singer (who I also didn't recognize)?

i agree with max

how can you possibly say it's not self-serious? Given all the Iraq-Book of Revelation-America-existential themes that try to provoke and really end up not saying much of anything?

the last line firmly establishes how! tbh i let the actual words of the revelations readings wash over me because they're bollocks innit. kelly is kind of a savant -- on the commentary track for 'donnie darko' he talks about the "time travel theory" stuff, and basically admits he doesn't really understand it, it just sort of makes the film 'go'. i think that's true of the revelations stuff here.

the iraq stuff is serious, for sure, but not in a robert redford way. i actually foundd it kind of touching, even, the guy that fires the stinger.

what are the direct Lynch references besides the Mulholland Dr singer (who I also didn't recognize)?

i thought smg arriving at the mansion was a nod to patricia arquette arriving at the mansion in lost highway, and something (but i don't remember what) struck me as a blue velvet moment. (but in a movie like this, it's easy to start seeing everything as a rip from something.) ok so i will list some of the things i liked: (semi-SPOILERS, i guess):

-- pretty much all the musical numbers (jt, "teen horniness," the gasmask dance at the end)
-- the chattering porn stars
-- the extended soap-opera send-up in the mansion (including the side riff on "cockchuggin")
-- cheri oteri and nora dunn
-- the repo man rip in the climax
-- the oddly dreamy atmospherics, which are for the most part directly at odds with what seems like should be a manic story. i like kelly's odd dreaminess.

xpost:
the iraq stuff is serious, for sure, but not in a robert redford way. i actually foundd it kind of touching, even, the guy that fires the stinger.

otm

also i think that for all the lightness that the movie (more or less successfully) maintains, there's an underpinning anguish. it's not so much zany as bugged out.

It's about as light as a cement truck and definitely not zany. The 'funny' stuff would have to provoke laughter to do that, and little of it does. The biggest laff is early on in Timbo's narration when the 'Neo-Marxists' are referred to as "radical liberals"!

Kelly's casting shows him to be a real Child of the '80s ... I wondered who the deadly terror-chick was and see in the credits CHERI OTERI? Who made absolutely no impression on me in her SNL stint aside from the rhyming name.

So what were the Neo-Marxists, after all? I stopped caring. Was Wallace Shawn for or against the ruling regime?

(whether or not it's good pop-metafiction, or entertaining, is totally up for grabs, obv. i thought it was pretty good, and fairly entertaining.)

Stephenson writes the first four-fifths of a novel as well as anyone.

So what were the Neo-Marxists, after all? I stopped caring.

A more honest reaction than "the movie doesn't TRY to make sense."

I actually would write out the entire plot to reaffirm that it DOES make sense (even if its full of contrivances, like how the two guys who were in the time rift got wrapped in the neo-marxists plans when the neo-marxists weren't aware of the time rift - even if its just that the Rock is related by marriage to a powerful political family and Scott is a war vet cop, they wouldn't share in Scott's belief that the two versions of himself are twins), but then boosters would jump from "its not TRYING to make sense" to "the plot isn't the point."

Spoilers, but then the plot isn't the point.

Thank fucking god his next movie is UNDENIABLY contrived sci-fi no one is gonna be able to pretend is "experimental" in nature, with a less interesting cast, cuz I'd hate to have to go through this again.

Stephenson writes the first four-fifths of a novel as well as anyone.

Hahaha, so OTM it hurts.

I also have no memory of what the last line is. Did this film have the most utterances of "bitch" of any I've seen in awhile? (missed Alpha Dog)

While CLINTON LIEBERMAN 08 is a grim joke, it really doesn't help you root for the good guys (I think Joe L wd be on board with most of the post-nuke security measures).

fwiw i more or less agree with all of the criticism and i really want to avoid the whole "its not trying to make sense" and "you just didnt get it" line of argument--i think my enjoyment of this movie comes from a general affection i have for its total semi-earnest goofiness and general willingness to put itself out there. you can say a lot of things about it but you cant say that its "safe" or "obvious" (tho im sure anthony is going to disagree and say its safe and obvious). i will say this: i wish it was funnier. the jokes in donnie darko worked a lot better.

actually I'm cool with that take except that the jokes worked better in darko. I wish it was wilder, that he was truly Warhol-meets-Dick as he claims and not Warhol-meets-Lucas but I don't consider it safe and obvious. It's not that its wrong to like this movie, I just hate people patting themselves on the back for "getting" his movies when all they did was ignore the stuff that unquestionably sucked.

and actually, using old icons isn't warhol so much as zucker.

also, tipsy, if you're gonna say the reasons you liked the movie are:

-- pretty much all the musical numbers (jt, "teen horniness," the gasmask dance at the end)
-- the chattering porn stars
-- the extended soap-opera send-up in the mansion (including the side riff on "cockchuggin")
-- cheri oteri and nora dunn
-- the repo man rip in the climax
-- the oddly dreamy atmospherics, which are for the most part directly at odds with what seems like should be a manic story. i like kelly's odd dreaminess.

people abandon the idea that people would be more apt to "get" this movie if it was in a museum.

PLEASE abandon, i mean.

in the absence of a "real" warholian dick, ill take the fake one

mm also i want to make it clear that i think the movie does take itself seriously, its just that the seriousness is tempered by a general self-awareness

(such as the scene toward the end where the rock and mandy moore and smg are all dancing, and frost goes "what the hell is going on?" or something to that effect)

i'll take my zucker straight, thank you.

you guys should see Scary Movie 3 if you want to see what a free-form satire that doesn't take itself seriously looks like.

airplane is better than southland tales no duh but airplane is better that 95% of movies made in the last 100 years

or Wet Hot American Summer! Advance tickets to Harold & Kumar 2!

x-post then why are we praising the guy who sci-fi geeks this kind of shit up?

cause were sci-fi geeks?

i mean lol im allowed to praise a movie thats not as good as airplane! right?

as i said, your take makes a lot more sense to me than most

I just hate people patting themselves on the back for "getting" his movies when all they did was ignore the stuff that unquestionably sucked.

-- da croupier, Thursday, 22 November 2007 17:49 (22 minutes ago) Link

worst thing is, the straw goes everywhere when they do this.

i think the film is more like 'jay and silent bob strike back' than zucker. but tbh thank GOD it's not warhol, ffs.

haha i was gonna say

yeah warhol meets dick would actually really blow, though I'd take it over Zucker-meets-lucas if not Zucker

i dont know that i actually have a "take" on this movie other than "wtf/awesome"

i think the film is more like 'jay and silent bob strike back' than zucker.

this is probably harsher than anything i've said all thread.

i hate my generation.

sarah michelle gellar and her gang = shannon elizabeth and her gang

why are you bashing a major film artist like Warhol? cuz he didn't use "icons" like the guy from Night Court?

The footage of Kiss Me Deadly broke the rule that you never show clips of a film the audience would rather be watching.

Never having seen The Rock or "Buffy" before, I spent the first 45 minutes wondering if either of them could read a line.

this movie was some serious art school fag shit

please abandon the idea that people would be more apt to "get" this movie if it was in a museum.

haha. i wasn't saying this movie should be in a museum, jesus. i'm not a big fan of seeing anything in museums. my point was only that absent the comforting signifiers of gallery walls, a lot of people who presumably "get" art and don't have a problem with the last 100 years of modernism/abstraction/postmodernism/etc seem to get their signals crossed when those things show up in movies -- at least movies that don't announce themselves as 'OMG ART'.

it's one thing to take the morbius perspective that this is a leaden piece of failed pop art. (my only real basis for disagreeing is that i laughed a lot and didn't get bored.) it's another thing to say it's not even an attempted piece of pop art. of course it's "experimental," and allegorical, wtf else is it besides experimental and allegorical? it can be a failed experiment, or a failed allegory, or boring as hell, but it's still experimental and allegorical. pretending that it's just some messy glop kelly accidentally cobbled together while trying to make an episode of veronica mars or something is silly.

xpost: this movie was some serious art school fag shit

ok that's more fair.

Ebert said he should cut it down into a ukelele pick, which is at least funnier than all but 3 of ST's jokes.

I actually related to the downing of the Megazeppelin more than anything, possibly due to my post-9/11 fantasies that the WTC had been filled with all the major politicians of the previous 20 years.

and croupier i wouldn't bang on about not getting it if you hadn't come in on this note:

AGAIN he reveals how mundane his insights about culture are by using them simply to pepper a rumination on THE FOURTH DIMENSION.

i mean, huh?

maybe if you hadn't already stated its not worth thinking about the ending then you wouldn't say "huh?" to a complaint about the last part of the film.

a lot of people who presumably "get" art and don't have a problem with the last 100 years of modernism/abstraction/postmodernism/etc seem to get their signals crossed when those things show up in movies -- at least movies that don't announce themselves as 'OMG ART'.

There are plenty of comedies that have the qualities you described as being good about this movie (except perhaps "oddly dreamy atmospherics") that do a better job of not announcing themselves as 'OMG ART' than Southland Tales.

And would you please describe what exactly is experimental about this film? Not even sure how it's "allegorical," as the dystopia it describes is pretty DIRECTLY based on reality, only slightly surrealized. Iraq can't be an allegory for Iraq.

haha

if you think "art school fag shit" is a fair complaint about this shit, then why do you think it doesn't announce itself as "OMG ART"?

i agree with you1!! i was laughing (genuinely) about "Iraq can't be an allegory for Iraq." SHEESH

this thing has OMG THIS IS ART CANT YOO SEEEEE all over it like a poop stain

I was talking to Tipsy, Chaki.

oh oops

i said it's a fair complaint, not that i agree with it. i.e., i understand thinking it's a shitty art movie, even if i think it's an entertaining art movie. i don't understand thinking it's a movie about the 4th dimension, or "straight-up sci-fi" or whatever else. (and the zucker reference is apt too obviously, which also again makes me think of wild at heart, which i always thought of as lynch's airplane!.)

this thing has OMG THIS IS ART CANT YOO SEEEEE all over it like a poop stain

-- chaki, Thursday, November 22, 2007 7:38 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

waht?! i thought it announced itself as a 'one for the fans' thing.

so you don't get people who didn't see it was an "OMG art" film, tipsy?

again, can you please explain to me what was experimental or allegorical about this film?

at this stage i have no idea what experimental is. the fx in 'transformers' are experimental. this film was not.

It was a convoluted dystopian sci-fi story riddled with pop culture jokes. You know, like Idiocracy.

Idiocracy probably could have used some oddly dreamy atmospherics. Might be why I prefered this!

worst thing is, the straw goes everywhere when they do this.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, November 22, 2007 6:14 PM

well done

actually I prefered this to Idiocracy cause the cast was a hell of a lot better. next movie has Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, which would be intriguing if its meant to be comedic, but I think he's playing the Matheson story straight.

i thought the whole movie was "experimental," in the literal sense that he was throwing a bunch of things together to see what he could make from them. which among other things runs the risk of not knowing what the hell you're doing, or not knowing how it's all going to add up, but has the upside of possibly producing interesting stuff.

what's it an allegory of? um. pop eating itself.

i thought the whole movie was "experimental," in the literal sense that he was throwing a bunch of things together to see what he could make from them. which among other things runs the risk of not knowing what the hell you're doing, or not knowing how it's all going to add up, but has the upside of possibly producing interesting stuff.

in this case, either all movies are experimental or there's nothing wrong with considering it a messy glop Kelly cobbled together.

isnt that whats makes a good film maker though? the majik of throwing a bunch of shit on the wall, seeing what sticks and making it work. im not sure this works.

in this case, either all movies are experimental or there's nothing wrong with considering it a messy glop Kelly cobbled together.

yes all movies are exactly the same.

isnt that whats makes a good film maker though? the majik of throwing a bunch of shit on the wall, seeing what sticks and making it work. im not sure this works.

yeah of course. i don't think this works completely, it's not genius, but what can i say? i thought enough of it worked. i thought it was messy but smart and funny.

yes all movies are exactly the same.

oh that's clearly not what he's saying stop it

clearly.

you should check those last two pirates of the carribean movies if you wanna see some more experimental films, dude. those cats were throwing EVERYTHING at the wall, kinda messy but hoping it would make some interesting stuff. Some folks might tell you there was a convoluted plot but mmaaaaaan they just don't GET it.

good comparison.

admittedly you get like five guy's experimental visions in those and only one in Southland Tales.

i think it's a bit messy but not that messy, that he uses scifi tropes more to convey an end-times feeling than to tell a coherent story.

if that's not getting it vs it's not meant to make sense TOO BAD. also the messiness is part of the joke? like when SMG and the rock pitch their story it's like loool shitty film, and then this film turns into it? JUST LIKE ADAPTATION, ADD THAT TO THE ALLUSION POOL.

i guess i don't get the hang-up with "experimental" as an adjective. is inland empire experimental? or el topo, or daisies or gummo? it doesn't mean any of them are good, it's just sort of acknowledging where they're starting from.

anyway. i had fun at this movie sorry if you didn't.

is inland empire experimental? or el topo, or daisies or gummo? it doesn't mean any of them are good, it's just sort of acknowledging where they're starting from.

actually, you're acknowledging where they end up. its the final product that inspires you to use the term to describe the movie. Lots of directors, Spike Lee, PT Anderson, start their movies with fragments, bits and pieces, but nobody called Do The Right Thing or Magnolia experimental.

i ddon't think this was experimental, but it's not a simple descriptive term, it's tied down to hoary theories dragged in from other art-forms and it's not very useful.

agreed

waht. "experimental" isn't like some wonky academic speak. is it? you can't call movies "experimental"? baffled.

Lots of directors, Spike Lee, PT Anderson, start their movies with fragments, bits and pieces, but nobody called Do The Right Thing or Magnolia experimental.

magnolia is mildly experimental.

why do people have problem with this word?

because its sadly used as shorthand for "its not SUPPOSED to make sense." using it for an unwieldly debacle like this just because the director uses "atmospherics" and acts the auteur is an insult to folks who actually broke cinematic norms.

magnolia is not experimental -- that doesn't make it bad, but it isn't.

reason the term is loaded is: technical experiment vs aesthetic experiment. personally i think the difference is overstated.

but 'southland tales' isn't experimental in either of these ways -- maybe its narrative, being pretty much impossible to follow, is experimental?

i don't think lynch has been experimental since 'elephant man' though, so i'm not the dude to ask.

and as most concepts like "dream logic" now have loads of precedent in film, they're not really experimental, leaving the term as a catch-all for films that satisfy those looking for naked eccentricity.

x-post the narrative can be followed (as i said, i'll draw the map if people honestly want it), it's just convoluted and unrewarding enough few are gonna bother.

that kelly left holes in the story doesn't mean he didn't want you to bsaically follow it anymore than Tim Burton did in Batman.

the narrative can be followed (as i said, i'll draw the map if people honestly want it), it's just convoluted and unrewarding enough few are gonna bother.

i dunno, maybe. how many times have you seen it!? i saw it once and had to write everything down and produce a synopsis, and i'm still a bit "???" re. the german guy and his weyrd ladies and bai ling. and if the german guy is, like, jesus.

i saw it once, too. the tiny bits i'm ??? of the plot can basically be reduced to plausible plotholes and contrivances. It doesn't seem willfully inscrutable by any stretch of the imagination. It coheres no less than most other sci-fi movies (which always require a stretch of logic), and a bit more than some.

magnolia is not experimental -- that doesn't make it bad, but it isn't.

well i said "mildly," and i think it is. but i'm already trying to defend southland tales here, i don't need to get roped into defending magnolia on top of it.

because its sadly used as shorthand for "its not SUPPOSED to make sense." using it for an unwieldly debacle like this just because the director uses "atmospherics" and acts the auteur is an insult to folks who actually broke cinematic norms.

i don't think experimental = not supposed to make sense. and i've already said i think southland tales makes a fair amount of sense, so in any case i don't mean it that way here. and i don't even know what "acts the auteur" means, i think he just made a movie he wanted to make. maybe he should apologize to all the real artists he's insulted.

or i guess i should apologize to real artists for calling richard kelly experimental. sorry, real artists. you know i love you.

actually, he probably should apologize for the way he shamelessly drops big names when he describes what he's doing.

lol from wikipedia

Writer-director Richard Kelly wrote Southland Tales shortly before the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the original script involved blackmail, a porn star, and two cops. Since the attacks, Kelly revised the script. He described the update, "The original script was more about making fun of Hollywood. But now it's about, I hope, creating a piece of science fiction that's about a really important problem we're facing, about civil liberties and homeland security and needing to sustain both those things and balance them."

srsly, nobody should call their own work a "strange hybrid of the sensibilities of Andy Warhol and Philip K. Dick".

"The original script was more about making fun of Hollywood. But now it's about, I hope, creating a piece of science fiction that's about a really important problem we're facing, about civil liberties and homeland security and needing to sustain both those things and balance them."

for emphasis.

i get that you don't like richard kelly.

do you get what this film was about now, though?

i think it's ok for kelly to do that because i don't think dick and warhol are such Big Names that you can't be chummy about them.

they both inspired some pretty good rock, though. kelly's just gonna wind up inspiring some emo song about jenna malone.

do you get what this film was about now, though?

it is a biopic of the 4th dimsenion, who had huge hit with "age of aquarius."

hey, don't get cranky with me just cuz Kelly can't do "a piece of science fiction" without incorporating time travel.

kelly and time travel is your hangup. time travel is about the 11th thing i'd mention talking about his movies.

they both inspired some pretty good rock, though. kelly's just gonna wind up inspiring some emo song about jenna malone.

-- da croupier, Thursday, November 22, 2007 9:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

i don't even credit them with that! VU and all their shitty imitators... would smash jena m tho.

the cast is fucking horrendous.

-- cutty (mcutt), Thursday, April 20, 2006 3:58 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

i was wrong. the cast was the best thing about this movie. i swear i saw taylor negron for a second in one scene.

what's all this talk about taverner being wallace shawn? i didn't get that impression at all.

i thought thumbsucker kid was a nice touch

also i'm surprised no one has mentioned godard (specifically "pierrot le fou") as a comparison here

anthony u know that you can dislike richard kelly and still like this movie, right?

max u know that i can mock richard kelly's pretensions (and point out that tipsy's contradictory statements about the movie's status as EXPERIMENTAL ART and what's its ABOUT fly directly in opposition to kelly's own statements) without that meaning I don't see how one could get off on the movie and not think richard kelly is a genius? it had neat actors doing goofy shit, more than enough reason for someone to dig it. I've already said I get where you're coming from, max. twice.

Given that "Richard Kelly," unless you know him personally, equals the sum total of TWO feature films, I don't understand max's last post.

i thought it announced itself as a 'one for the fans' thing.

Where? And that would be an arrogant thing to do with your SECOND (and first big-budget) film, especially when 90% of your first film's cult doesn't pay to see films in a theater.

well my first post about this movie said it was "lotsa fun," which is still my basic feeling about it. of course it's experimental and of course it's not "about" time travel and like i said above you have to be really going out of your way to make some kind of kelly-bashing point to insist on those things. i don't really care, i just think those are either clueless or dishonest critiques. i also think it's weird to call something like this arrogant, but then i might feel like that too if i hadn't enjoyed it (the same way i think terence malick's movies are arrogant, because i don't enjoy them).

what kelly himself says about anything doesn't seem too important. i have no idea how a director would try to sensibly explain this film. it'd be hard to say anything about it without sounding stupid. as i've demonstrated on this thread. it would be way more fun to be mean about the movie, but the problem is that i liked it.

"i thought it announced itself as a 'one for the fans' thing."

Where? And that would be an arrogant thing to do with your SECOND (and first big-budget) film, especially when 90% of your first film's cult doesn't pay to see films in a theater.

-- Dr Morbius, Friday, November 23, 2007 7:23 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

srsly -- in uk 'empire' or maybe 'total film' magazine in the summer, he said that the main reason he gets funding is because his dvd sales on 'darko' were huge, and i'd guess they anticipate same on this one. exactly the same thing is true of kevin smith. that makes it *less* arrogant in a way.

when i say 'one for the fans', i kind of mean *all* films with this low a budget (only like $20m i think -- bigger than 'darko' but still low) are pretty well niche-targeted. i don't think it's an unusual move for modern-day quasi-indie directors, going back to tarantino at least.

this even ended like a PKD novel. totally incomprehensible but still enjoyable. it'll be interesting to view it a second time, i think.

I have never read any cyberfiction cuz I was afraid it would be exactly like this.

pkd is not "cyberfiction," whatever the fuck that is

i think pkd was an influence on cyberpunk (along with, i dunno, stanislaw lem and a bunch of other people). but he was a lot more than that.

but southland tales seems pretty cyberpunky.

the basic story is very similar to "flow my tears the policeman said" if you think about it. and he even put those words in jon lovitz's mouth!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_My_Tears,_The_Policeman_Said

yeah even i groaned at that line. i suppose i could spin something about how it's a commentary on the hollywood appropriation of dick, but it felt more fanboy-ish.

one of the film's rare fanboy moments.

lol

Still intend to see this. And American Gangster. And Control. And I'm Not There. God I'm behind on my movies.

the janes addiction thing is a bit fanboyish

Wow, this one left Minneapolis theaters fast.

a week?
It won't last much longer elsewhere, but will be dorm room fodder for 5-10 years.

max, I doidn't say PKD was cyberfic, but don't give such a fuck.

So, after all that bad faith in the Kelly generation mistaken for anticipation, it turned out to be the shitty movie you knew it would be, Morbs?

no, I don't antici-piss like that very often, honestly. Except for, you know.

I'm just sort of embarrassed that it took me as long as it did to figure out that one of the reasons you were likely excited for it is that the entire thing looked like it might cast everything about the last 15 years of pop culture in the most conspicuously unflattering light.

I bet it sucks, but the joint enthusiasm of even an admittedly reactionary alt-press minority (Nathan Lee, in particular) still has me slightly intrigued.

I did spend a fair amount of it on the edge of my seat, slackjawed, wanting to be amazed.

My morbid curiosity is overwhelming. At this point I need to gawk at the wreakage. The last time this happened was Brown Bunny, which I then found to be reasonably hypnotic, so who knows.

Hurry then. Second weekend b.o. stats:

$1,288 per screen, 29 screens, MINUS 70% change

domestic total as of Nov. 25, 2007: $227,365

reported production budget: $15 million

kind of a lot to make up in overseas and dvd sales.

reported production budget: $15 million

Really? That puts the movie well outside the territory of "megaton folly," especially these days.

Isn't that about $37 per cast member?

Yeah, it sunk like a stone around here. Probably out of theaters next week.

I will still unabashedly proclaim my love for Kelly, who, unlike 98% of American film directors, is actually trying stuff. As a film this is a noble failure at best, but damned if it wasn't entertaining to watch someone with a lot of interesting ideas try to get them all to hang together.

Seems like everyone is too overloaded to talk about Kelly's near-future. What really stuck out to me was the v. casual killing of civilians by the gov't.

a lot of interesting ideas

Aside from a pornstar chat show being mainstream, damn few.

You know how directors often say they keep the cameras rolling after the scene's proper end, just in case the actors do something amazing? For quite awhile, I will think of the downside of that situation as "Justin Timberlake pours a Budweiser on himself."

ok well to revisit this because why not (all i risk is da croup telling me aaron spelling and darren star already did all that, man), i think kelly is something of a new kind of filmmaker. or maybe he's an old kind of filmmaker -- a collagist, or something -- working with new materials. but anyway i think he works with cinematic and cultural ideas as rfound objects, and part of what he does with them is try to figure out what they mean. (i think todd haynes does somewhat the same thing, but in a way more obviously -- he even has a degree! -- and even though i'm not there is a better movie than southland tales, whatever objections i have to it have to do with its conceptual neatness, which at least is not something you can accuse kelly of.)

i think kelly is experimenting (yes!) with cinematic language. he doesn't have total control of it yet, and who knows how he'll develop from here, but i think he's interesting.

"rfound objects" -- see he's so mysterious i have to invent words to make sense of him

when Norman Lloyd last night at the Film Forum quoted Hitchcock saying audiences like mystery, not being mystified, I thought of RK. Sure he's the product of a more nonlinear commercial 'art film' narrative possibilities that Hitchcock preceded, but amping up the clarity would be fruitful next time (and it sounds like he may).

this is his brewster mccloud

i like this review.

http://zeonmusic.blogspot.com/2007/11/sarah-michelle-gellar-raised-her-voice.html

how is nathan lee reactionary?

off the top of my head: he liked I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

he defended it, using rational argument and whatnot.

Well, at this point, liking Southland Tales seems a pretty reactionary pose.

I'll admit I haven't read his review yet so I can't say to what extent it's a salvage job on the film's reputation.

Well, at this point, liking Southland Tales seems a pretty reactionary pose.

-- Eric H., Wednesday, November 28, 2007 3:28 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

like, politically reactionary? what?

No not like politically reactionary. Like going against a strong critical tide reactionary.

Atkinson would back me up on that one, I think.

that's good-reactionary! the best kind! reacting to the press-release-regurgitating group-thinking horde, maaaaan.

tho with nathan lee, j-ho, and amy t, and britain's plucky sight and sound behind it, is that reaction or consensus?

Depends on the context. If Southland Tales shows up towards the top of that Indiewire critics poll, than it's the latter, I guess.

Taubin wrote in FC that someone at Cannes thought only Voice / ex-Voice ppl liked Southland cuz they'd dropped enough acid.

haha

i think kelly is experimenting (yes!) with cinematic language.

example?

Middle school science fair shit aside

milhouse-slinky.jpg

well, you know. there's nothing i can say about the movie that you won't come back with "THEY DID THAT ON THREE'S COMPANY OMG JOHN RITTER WAS ACTUALLY JOHN CAGE." i do sort of understand your point of view on this, i just don't share it. i've tried to say what i think, i've linked a few reviews that i think more or less "get" the movie, what else do you want?

an example of what you're commending him for

if its obvious that a movie is nothing BUT experimental, surely you can give an example of something noteworthily experimental rather than "i liked cheri oteri."

i'm "commending" him because i enjoyed the movie. i like movies that ... i enjoy.

but ok to circle back to what i said about the repo man rip in the climax. the truck levitating and glowing and hovering over los angeles. ok, so that's just a quote. but it's a quote of a movie that was already full of quotes, and that among other things directly referenced kiss me deadly, which of course is among the many things that southland tales references too. ok, so a movie that's already quoting a movie then quotes another movie that quotes the same movie. so? so, well, first it's establishing a sort of interesting continuum of catastrophic anxiety, from the red-scare 50s to the reagan 80s to the bush '00s, all circling around southern california (our national landscape of catastrophe, the part of the country that's always either on fire -- which it also is in southland tales obviously -- or in danger of falling into the ocean, which it also may be in southland tales). but kelly recasts the earlier fears of nuclear apocalypse in light of the twin catastrophic fears of the current decade, terrorism (represented by the kid with the rocket) and environmental disaster (the "rip in the 4th dimension" created by the alternative-energy source). but ok so he's not even saying something like "gee we used to be scared of nukes and now we're scared of terrorists and fuel consumption and environmental damage," it's more an agglomeration of cross-referenced images revolving around the ways that cultural fears and anxieties manifest themselves in cultural symbolism, and then the ways that symbolism (the twin towers falling, the hindenburg burning) itself becomes powerful and can be used and manipulated. and i don't mean that's what kelly sat down and plotted out to do, i mean he intuitively -- artistically, you could say -- made connections between existing cultural reference points in ways that made sense to him (because of what those reference points themselves refer to), and let them play out against each other in search of a symbolic effect.

in other words, your basic episode of seinfeld.

i'm "commending" him because i enjoyed the movie.

so any movie you enjoy is experimental? if you're gonna keep coming back with "i think kelly is experimenting (yes!) with cinematic language." don't get coy and "hey I LIKED it, whaddya want" when someone asks for an example.

i think he did a good job of giving an example! (after that sentence)

"inspiring conjecture about subtext by jacking a shot from repo man" != "experimenting (yes!) with cinematic language."

don't say i didn't try. if you don't think it's there how i'm supposed to convince you?for me, i liked the movie because i thought it was doing interesting things in entertaining ways, and when i sit down to try puzzle out what it's partly doing, that's what i get. you didn't find it interesting or entertaining and so are not inclined to think there's anything there to bother puzzling out. ok. i think different.

anthony, what movies do you think of as experimental?

i don't think its really a worthwhile term, for reasons listed a while back on this thread, but Orpheus and Eraserhead are films I really adore that I'd be less likely to hound fans of if they referred to them as "experimental." They're a lot further from standard narrative than this film (which again, doesn't mean experimental, but at least fits the "experimental" tag for most arthouses), which is basically just symbol-heavy sci-fi.

i think this is a lot less of a "standard narrative" than orpheus (which i love lots). the orpheus narrative isn't just standard, it's 2,500 years old.

but i don't have this hangup with the adjective "experimental", so i don't know. i definitely wouldn't have a problem calling cocteau and lynch experimental filmmakers.

it refs the 2,500 years old narrative but it definitely doesn't follow ite clarity, say, Black Orpheus does.

I just think experimental is too much of a meaningless catch-all. Surreal, dream-logic, abstract work better for many the films that usually get the tag. They're more descriptive. 'Experimental,' if its being used for indulgent convoluted sci-fi like Southland Tales, just means crazyweirdcool.

ite= "it with the"

also, the term "experimental" tends to reward people who make their films seem haphazard, like they didn't know what worked or not. I'm more impressed by directors who take chances but have the ability to tell what was successful. There are a lot of films that advanced film language and tried new techniques but aren't called experimental because they never made the audience go "wtf was that about?." You didn't have to "puzzle it out," cuz it worked.

like eraserhead

haha

the best line was totally (paraphrasing) "and when we found that rip in the space-time continuum, you know what we did?...we sent MONKEYS INTO IT!"

^well, that kinda made sense cuz that's what we did w/ outer space.

Maybe the most thoughtful pan I've seen yet, no surprise coming from him. (Tho I still have no idea what all this Timberlake love is about.)

I forgot I had to go out tonight (and tomorrow) and then I'm on holiday for a fortnight. Given the reception this is getting, I have my doubts whether it will still be waiting for me in Glasgow cinemas when I return. Curses.

My decition to see KM 31 and The Killing Of John Lennon yesterday was predicated on being able to see Southland Tales tonight. I HAVE TOTALLY FOULED UP MY CINEMAGOING SCHEDULE.

xpost...yeah, not that it didnt make sense, more for the wallace shawn delivery & then the rock's response of but EVERYONE KNOWS monkeys cant handle time travel cuz they dont have souls, etc etc...lol, i wish the rest of the dialogue was a fraction as great basically

argh this has already disappeared from local theaters

You know, even SF & NY exhibitors are not immune to horrid reviews and poor box office.

I know, and I only had a brief window of opportunity to see it (during which I chose to see I'm Not There and No Country For Old Men instead)

U MADE THE RIGHT CALL

This film had in it a good bit where they did slow motion and played a song by the pixies. it was nearly as good as that bit in that wes anderson film what was in slow motion and had a song by the kinks. i think slow motion and good songs are all films need to be. do you get slow motion adn good songs with JUDD APATOW. no. no you don't. i wish michael bay had a better soundtrack. i wish someone made a scene in a film with "southern mark smith" by the jazz butcher and some dude doing something in slow motion. that would be great. but blur at the end did not work for Mr kelly. they / he didn't make enough of PLANET TELEXX either. fools. should have had something by THE AUTEURS huh. also this film reminded me strongly of that FATHER TED Xmas special where they gut stuck in the lingerie department.

CLASSIC

i'm trying to watch this movie now. i need a break.

But the deep meaning.

is it out on dvd? i wanna see it again.

(i was thinking about it during the oscars, when the rock was presenting something or other.)

that would really be the only reason to think about this movie during the oscars.

did you download it, s1ocki, or are there dvds around?

review copy. you can borrow it if you want!

that would really be the only reason to think about this movie during the oscars.

seann william scott was robbed.

loved it!

repo man angle seems apt, and i was thinking 'o goody - i LUV SKIDOO' at parts (q: timberlake -> groucho OR timberlake -> channing? UNDECIDED). what it really reminded me of (good and bad) was wild palms? anyone remember that thing? similar trying really really really hard at 'lynch + portent + Satire' and not really pulling any of it off (o i forgot PLUS BAD SNL CASTMEMBERS), but somehow lurching into something fun anyhow. was wallace shawn in wild palms? anyhow sorry noone here "dug" it, have fun w/ atonement or that john adams miniseries or whatever.

if you felt more secure about liking this that parting shot wouldn't have been necessary.

busted!

john larroquette > john adams

you know this to be true s1ocki

this thing had highlander in it, john adams has laura linney, atonement has keira knightly, this thing has highlander. all you need to know. and stifler.

it seems appropriate that "balls" like this movie.

alright i'm out again. same as it ever was!

i love laroquette!

did you know he is a rare book collector?

Whoa.

I watched this last night, and it was truly terrible.

"We're going to take the ATM with us to Mexico."
"Zero-zero-zero. Zero-zero Zero-Zero. Six. Miles per hour."
"I'm a pimp. And pimps don't commit suicide."
"What? You won't take a personal check?"

A pretty lousy movie (though I laughed every time the Rock flickered his fingers), but so damn quotable.

I went into this with an open mind last night. And I was sorely disappointed.

I like all kinds of crap. But not this kind.

I just gave this a positive review in the high school paper...but as i said, it's more a film to appreciate than one to enjoy (i mean, who the hell is his audience???)

My friends and I enjoyed it. We went in preparing to see the worst film ever and prepared adequately. It was HYSTERICAL.

I prepared adequately. Baz Luhrmann it's not.

did you know he is a rare book collector?

-- s1ocki, Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:32 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

wonder if he has a copy of

http://www.sizemore.co.uk/pics/necronomicon-evildead.jpg

Rented this...surprisingly did not hate it. And I went in totally expecting to hate it. Wanting to hate it, even.

I mean, it is totally an indulgent mess and everything, and a lot of the story threads go nowhere, but there were a lot of scenes I really liked on their own, for reasons I can't explain. I found the Justin Timberlake musical sequence strangely thrilling, for example. And I really liked the Rock in this movie.

Well, he is a pimp

...And pimps do not commit suicide!

It was HYSTERICAL.

Not being a dick here, but can you name a couple of the hysterical moments?

(as someone who thinks it's one of the worst movies he's ever seen, which I say free of any hyperbole or reaction-to-hype/etc.)

My favorite part - aside from setting the "subversive/underground" in Venice/Westside and the elite bourgies in downtown - is the surreal slow dance Sarah Michelle Gellar and Mandy Moore do towards the end. That muted absurdity sealed the tone

But a lot of it was just unwatchable

wow watching this right now - seems like it was made by someone whos never seen a movie before - truly unengaging - and i love pretty much any distopian futurescape

i never even heard about this movie until two days ago when adam told me he watched it and thought it was the worst film he'd seen in many many years.

Enjoyed boggling at the shittiness of it all, but also genuinely liked some of it. Rock was engaging, Timberlake's dance number ruled, some of the throwaway gags were great ("why is it so foggy here?"). Overall, much more watchable/enjoyable than I expected, but no less terrible. Worst part were the less-casual jokes ("nobody rocks the cock like Krysta Now"). On that level, one of the least funny comedies I've ever seen.

If you want to see an even more mirthless anti-Bush satire, don't miss John Cusack in War, Inc.

I think I'll wait for Oliver Stone's devastating W.

but by his own admission it's not going to be a satire. He thinks.

i think i fell asleep what happens at the end?

i remember the evil geniuses revealing rocks screenplay as truth then...

The 2 Seann W Scotts met in some kind of cataclysm, I've blotted the rest out.

wow this movie

seems like it was made by someone whos never seen a movie before

so true

i think it's more like it was made by somebody who has done nothing but watch movies.

but i'm a little afraid of seeing it again and discovering it's actually as terrible as everyone says.

it was made by somebody who saw too much '80s TV

its just such a bizarre combination of over-budget design/effects, non-existent characters played by shitty actors (seriously what was up with the preponderance of third-string SNL players?), high-concept sci-fi satire, terrible editing, a complete lack of pacing... one of the weirdest disasters I've ever seen come out of Hollywood.

Its funny how Donnie Darko has a similar kind of impenetrable incoherency at work in it, and yet it works so much better.

its like he wanted it to be on a Bladerunner-Total Recall-Starship Troopers level but then forgot to write an actual story that could hold it all together.

Couldn't finish this one.

Morbz I know you wanna blame Facts of Life and George Clooney for all of Hollywood's shitty output, but come on this didn't look like any 80s TV show I could think of, with the possible exception of "V" (which was actually a lot better than this piece of shit)

yeah this a was weird film

main problem with this movie is that its never clear why any of the characters do any of the things they do and the audience isn't given any reason to care, either.

i'm not sure you could reduce anything in this film to the "main problem"

I'm pretty sure you can.

love this! yeah, it's a train wreck. watch it again in 10 years.

uh, wtf: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1231277/

I kinda liked it but I am basically a Richard Kelly apologist at this point.

I'm in love with this beautiful mess!

but.... why?

I saw this recently without knowing a single thing about it and was shocked that such a horrible movie could be made.

I was very disappointed to find out that Richard Kelly made it as I liked Donnie Darko quite a bit.

There really is nothing good about this film:
It tries to be funny and fails, it tries to make a serious point about our world and fails at that too. I think there was some kind of sci-fi plot in there too, but that just didn't make any sense whatsoever.

The special effects looked cheap, there was some scene with some really weak computer animation of two SUVs mating with each other that was really wrong and pointless. And there was a really bad sequence of Justin Timberlake singing and dancing to The Killers, for no apparent reason.

This had some of the most atrocious casting for any film ever. Some folks make bad casting choices, but there were so many bad actors in inappropriate roles in this movie that it just boggles the mind.

xpost Cuz it's a beautiful mess. I adore every frame of this film.

i want to see the director's cut

Me 2!!!!

you guys aren't giving a really spirited defense here... or is this just one of those camp things like Battlefield Earth

i gave the best defense i could upthread a ways, a year ago. it did not prove terribly persuasive to the legions of haters. my fallback position is that i enjoyed the movie, was entertained by it, sometimes surprised by it, not except fleetingly bored by it.

It's not a camp thing (at least not for me). And I wouldn't go out of my way to defend it because by most common criteria it's a bad movie, but my overwhelming feeling when I left the theater was that at least Kelly was trying something, although something that ultimately failed. A lot of it was seeing to what extent you can get away with dropping people into the middle of a complex story without much in the way of explanation or context, while also providing some of that stuff in other media (which I admittedly didn't pay any attention to). Taken as a very small piece of a much larger puzzle (a puzzle that you're never going to fully realize, or one that you'll have to imagine on your own time), there's something about it that very nearly works. That plus some truly weird, beautiful individual scenes was enough for me to enjoy it, and I still think between this and Donnie Darko Kelly is one of the best around at creating very vivid, full-immersion environments onscreen. Both films are versions of the real world but there's something really offbeat and magical about them.

this movie.

honestly once the thematic stuff starts to come together it actually gets LESS interesting (as with Donnie Darko, I guess).

it's just so laborious and overplayed. overcooked. if it was more slapdash, more thrown together, it might actually be fun. but it's actually so carefully constructed and not so much a mess at all. instead its clausterphobic. joyless and fussed over. a satire without any real rage (or humor) it seems.

Not to say I wasn't intermittently fascinated!

there is humor in this movie. but it's always awkward.

On the (otherwise boring) commentary track Kelly reveals what's inside the suitcase in Pulp Fiction!

Wow, I can't believe I haven't done director's commentary yet!

who told Kelly what's in the suitcase?

Synecdoche NY is this year's version of this movie, but only in the last third, and real actors > '80s TV stars.

synecdoche is a better movie in all kinds of ways, but i enjoyed southland tales more.

On the (otherwise boring) commentary track Kelly reveals what's inside the suitcase in Pulp Fiction!

megalolz

I saw this and Teeth in the same week and I've never had a greater WTF 2-in-a-row.

Synecdoche isn't half as balls out confused as this thing is; it's just misguided.

I saw this on the basis of Videogum's Search For the Worst Movie Ever review and I enjoyed the hell out of it and promptly showed it to several friends. Diminishing returns overall but it will always be a confusing and shiny mess.

I have no idea what to make of this movie. So all over the place. The acting is so embarrassingly bad that you have to wonder if it was intentional (JT's performance is almost baffling awful.) I wasn't bored though which is more than I can say for Inland Empire, I guess.

Also most distracting title's font maybe ever?

Sort of wondering why he didn't just do an adaptation of Flow My Tears The Policeman Said (which has its stamp all over this movie, not just via the Lovitz line)?

I want the time I spent watching this back!

Well I was going to watch Money Train otherwise so it was going to be wasted regardless.

I think I fast-forwarded through like the last 20 minutes of this where the truck is rising through the air and the Rock is doing his musical number...

You missed Janeane Garofalo raving with Justin Timberlake then.

oh I got the gist of what was happening I just didn't want to actually sit through anymore awful dialogue, it was kinda too painful to experience in real time... such a mess, a wonder it ever got made really.

Yeah I really wonder what the original script was like. Or whether anyone who wasn't Kelly watched the dailies and was just like "uh oh shit this is going bomb."

p. 53

SUVs have sex

**cut to***

John Lovitz interrogating porn star

Kind of hard to believe it only cost $15M too actually (not that the effects were good).

I think I'd rather watch Waterworld than this movie.

I thought it was kind of fascinating to watch actually. Like a 145 minute train-wreck might be.

Like what the hell was Kiss Me Deadly doing playing on the TV screens?

I feel sort of bad for Kelly with this movie, like I can kinda tell what he was going for but then it just fails in every respect - he wants it to do so much, and it ends up doing nothing particularly well

this film has a lot going for it, and the first twenty minutes set it up to be the film I'd been waiting for, a dystopian take on the war on terror coming home to the US. then you realize the film actually has no interest in exploring any of those ideas, just wants to riff with that using a police state as an incidental backdrop to a loony cast of characters, then the recycled screenplay starts taking its toll, then at the end... friendly fire redemption? that's the resolution? this film isn't even a reference to other films, it's about NOTHING and it makes the disappointment even more severe

on the other hand, maybe that's the film we deserve to sum up the last eight years, there was no resistance, no one did anything, everyone just wandered around confused as the headlines bounced between Fallujah and Britney and this film does capture that kind of feeling. but it doesn't illuminate it or focus anything, it just kicks back in the pool with it, they're settling for disorientation. we all did. it makes me feel even worse about the state of things, if this film is the best anyone could come up with for a dystopian critique this time around, then we're in rough shape

I thought it was worth seeing but this movie did hurt my feelings

I thought it was worth seeing but this movie did hurt my feelings

lol

"just wants to riff with that using a police state as an incidental backdrop to a loony cast of characters"

To be fair this description could be used to describe quite a few Dick novels (although the loony cast of characters feel a lot more personal with them.)

yeah Dick managed to invest a lot of emotion and realism to the way his characters operated and interacted with each other - I think he's great with sympathetic protagonists. But no one in Southland Tales is even trying to be remotely believable or empathetic - partially because all the actors are uniformly terrible but also because Kelly doesn't seem to be at all invested in the idea that his characters need to be believable in order for his film to work.

and the film didn't work.

totally forgot Kevin Smith was in this!

Man if they really joined forces Kelly and Smith could conceivably make the Shittiest Movie of All Time

it's true, though yes Dick writes real characters you can care about, which makes the fact that they are incidentally living in a police state a real concern. as opposed to this MESS where you're supposed to be laughing at how 'stupid' these characters are. which doesn't work when the film itself is dumber than any of the non-characters it presents. (cut to, the director mumbling 'but that's what I was trying to say...')

the one spin I did like: in the 90's we started getting dystopian films that were set in the _immediate_ future, not just twenty years out, but five, where the world was already almost unrecognizably more violent, like Predator 2 (guilty pleasure) or Strange Days (good film which could have been great). I haven't seen either since they came out, but they really worked at the time. this film's premise of being an alternate timeline set in the immediate past is incredibly disorienting -- part of me wants to write it off as a total copout, 'don't worry it didn't happen', but it kept tugging at me and did seem like the one interesting idea the film was playing with, even if it didn't really seem to be towards any specific point

This movie was like post-apocalyptic sci-fi version of Dogma actually. It was slightly funnier than Dogma too.

Predator 2 is actually quite underrated. Better than the original if you ask me.

fuckin voodoo magic, mon

I liked the original but yeah Predator 2 is very underrated, good science fiction

this film did remind me of Strange Days in many respects -- set in LA, police state, immediate future, and most importantly the true hidden sentimental romantic theme of the entire film braining you at the end out of nowhere. though in Strange Days, the WTF happy ending was working for me before I'd left the theatre ('oh yeah, I guess that was the real point of the entire movie') and in Southland Tales... if his redemption was supposed to be a quick cut to an emotional core to ground the film, it was a botch. after a whole film of non-sequiturs, if the resonant ending feels like one as well, then... my god, ok I'm stepping away from the keyboard now don't worry

When was Strange Days set? I thought of that as being part and parcel of that 90s wave of cyberpunk movies (Johnny Mnemonic, Virtuousity, et all).

Now I want to watch Predator 2 - I got the s.o. the Alien vs. Predator boxset for Christmas so that can be easily accomplished.

fuckin voodoo magic, mon vs. she said the jungle just came alive and took him

I think Strange Days set on new year's eve 1999, haven't seen this since it came out though.

strange days was set in 1999. i thought it was pretty excellent and really well-directed, and has one of michael wincott's great slimy villain roles.

I mostly remember the 1st person POV rape/murder (and Angela Bassett's arms.) Pretty unpleasant stuff (not the arms.)

I was not into Strange Days but I can't remember why

if his redemption was supposed to be a quick cut to an emotional core to ground the film, it was a botch. after a whole film of non-sequiturs, if the resonant ending feels like one as well, then...

yeah I think this is a major problem, film tries to have it both ways at every turn. If yr gonna make a non-sequitur satire/pastiche then don't bother trying to inject any actual emotional impact into the plot. And if you want your story to actually affect the audience emotionally then you have to give the characters' have to be written such that the audience can identify with/invest in them. But you can't really have it both ways, it just doesn't work on a formal level.

strange days is fricken awesome. ralph fiennes, richard edson, michael wincott!

sorry for convoluted wording there argh

x-post

to be fair to kelly, the movie was edited to shit before it came out. not like another 90 minutes would have saved this film.

anyway, i'm of the camp that says it's a mess, but a beautiful one. and i'm sure it will resonate more in 10+ years when we have some context.

in 10+ years this film will rate with Waterworld - in the "so bad it's half off" section of video stores ...that is if there are video stores in 10+ years ...

friends of mine went to the downtown LA rave they threw to film the Strange Days New Years Eve scene. they didn't realize the tickets had disclosure forms and that they'd all end up being extras for the final scene of a dystopian SF film, and that downtown LA would be roped off and surrounded by tanks, turrets pointing inward at the dancers, and that there'd be extras in riot police gear and fake guns walking around everywhere. where is the PLUR?

Strange Days has some problems. It's got some very grisly themes at its core, but it also tries to be a big fun action movie, so when it arrives at the VR snuff scenes it almost seems tastelessly sadistic, you could mistake it for incoherent direction. but then you boil it down, and the film had some amazing things to say about people becoming their own media, stuck in themselves, against the backdrop of the LA riots, and you realize the film does have a heart (and a point, unlike Southland Tales)

If I'm still working at a music and dvd store in 10 years' time, I promise you, I will beachcomb the shelves for Waterworld, buy it, watch it, and then build a recreation of the set in my back yard

yeah i appreciate it now more than when i saw it, even. maybe because of its pretty interesting depiction of the addiction of this unreal cyberlife, which seems kinda prescient w/the internet (don't think we're getting that headgear with nerve sensors anytime soon)

i think this was aight, probably argued the toss at the time.

friends of mine went to the downtown LA rave they threw to film the Strange Days New Years Eve scene.

Starring Deee-Lite and Aphex. I forget, did they actually show them in the movie?

And there was a really bad sequence of Justin Timberlake singing and dancing to The Killers, for no apparent reason.

lol I actually love that scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v9utOMX4hU&feature=related

^ best moment in the movie

That scene perfectly captures its middle-of-last-decade datedness forever:

-- the Donnie Darko guy could get a movie made
-- the Killers were seen as a universal reference point
-- Timberlake was singing instead of acting

what the fuck did I just watch?

I've refrained from rewatching this on the grounds that it might damage my affections for it.

you should have watched this instead:

http://cf1.imgobject.com/posters/d81/4bc96275017a3c57fe02cd81/miracle-mile-original.jpg

x-post

I watched this again and it's doubly hilarious

Dude should just give up films and have a nice long career filming commercials.

he should revive those starburst ads where people are immersed in watery flavor portals

sort of interesting interview with Kelly: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/southland-tales-richard-kelly

watching this, i couldn't tell with certainty whether it was just horrible or if i was having an actual psychotic breakdown

it's still a very bad movie--this revisionism is misguided. Kelly's movies basically exist to justify the cliche of "less than sum of its parts." There's really no mystery in them, just withholding information from the audience, which strikes me as a very different thing.

It's not a good movie but it does capture something, a crazy apocalyptic mood or a vibe, that no other movie has. That's gotta be worth something.

The movie throws so much shit at the wall that some of it is bound to stick

In other words: it's bad but it's interesting bad.

I think I still like it, but I haven't seen it again since my first round of vigorously defending it on this thread.

hmm, i dunno... mysteries are often built around the withholding of information, whether we're talking about david lynch or agatha christie. it's an interesting question though.

and yeah, it's a bad movie. a fascinating and uniquely bad movie. that seems the appeal.

= latebloomer otm

mysteries are often built around the withholding of information, whether we're talking about david lynch or agatha christie

you're right. i was appropriating "mystery" to mean not it's normal meaning but more like an aesthetic experience or fascination which doesn't boil down to what Kelly seems to think it does--which for him is basically connecting all the dots.

i think there's something important about the different experiences that Donnie Darko and the DD Director's Cut have to offer, in other words. (not that the original cut is some masterpiece, but it's so far superior to the turgid director's cut.)

it's not even that Kelly has an "explanation" for everything--it's that the explanations are uniformly stupid! and all that stuff still circles around a void where you'd hope to find some kernel of an idea or feeling.

i wonder if anyone else in Kelly's "generation" - he's not even 40 - will ever get to make an uncommercial star-studded mega-movie like this again

i was appropriating "mystery" to mean not it's normal meaning but more like an aesthetic experience or fascination which doesn't boil down to what Kelly seems to think it does--which for him is basically connecting all the dots.

― ryan, Monday, July 8, 2013 10:35 AM (3 minutes ago)

yeah, i agree. it's as though his process is to cobble together a big, confused tangle of half-formed ideas, some intriguing and some trite. he then goes through and obfuscates the lamest bits, resulting in work that initially suggests mysterious complexity & depth but doesn't reward close examination.

I still think DD (original cut) is fantastic, and The Box is underrated. But ST is just exquisitely elaborate garbage. According to imdb his next movie is meant to star Edgar Ramirez, who is waaaay overdue a serious role after Carlos (whether or not this will qualify).

He's also partially responsible for getting I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell made, let's not forget.

if you dig this movie on any level, you really should see The Box, where Kelly embellishes the original story with...dun dun duhhh...exposition and time portals

lol xpost

Sometimes I watch the timberlake singing scene for no real reason. It just makes me happy.

The Box had some nice atmosphere. Who knows, Kelly is so young he may still make some great movies.

I still think DD (original cut) is fantastic, and The Box is underrated.

^ how i break it down

audience was cracking up at the atmosphere something fierce when marsden was running through the library and everybody in the carrels were staring at him all ooky-spooky and started marching after him

god i love so much that the dude was like "i know what this story needs, an elaborate explanation of why and how the box works and a dude staring at himself through a watery time portal" because apparently that's what all movies need

Everyone goes on about how weird ST is, but I kind of love the way The Box takes a simple, seemingly un-fuckwithable high-concept premise and some reliable, cozy stars and still finds ways to Richard Kelly the shit out of the whole thing.

haaaa xp

Me in 2007: it's a sort of freeform pop satire of the bush years

Richard Kelly in 2013: The whole film was my long-simmering response to 9/11 and response to the anxiety of terror and the terrorist threat and trying to make a big piece of satire that would be comfort food in light of the terrorist threat.

I understand you, Richard Kelly!

I wish him luck w/ a freeform satire of the Obama years.

^ posts v. much in character

Starring Lindsay Lohan as porn star Tea Party activist Bettsi Ross and Jason Statham as JP Morgan Chase. Tyler the Creator wanders in periodically making jokes about parts of his anatomy that are too big to fail.

:( I loved and love Southland Tales. They greenlit a nerdy teen's fantasy movie. Probably my favourite "cult" film, it's so visually fecund, lousy with ideas. I never developed an interest in "figuring it out", though

never realized it only played on so few theaters. i remember going to see it the friday it opened and the theater hadn't gotten the print yet so we had to come back the next day

i kind of loved southland tales, but a big part of that appreciation was based on the parade of mind-boggling awfulness. amid flashes of real brilliance.

it's been forever, so my memory is imprecise, but i do remember that there was often a lot of fog drifting about during the more mysterious scenes. it was often incongruous, but i didn't take much notice at first. movies are often full of incongruous (but photogenic) vapors. eventually, dwayne "the rock" johnson is seen to investigate a modest suburban home in broad daylight. though it had been clear out on the street only moments before, his approach up the path to the front door is swaddled in dense & drifting mist. at this point, my willing suspension of disbelief ruptured. i laughed. what's with all the fucking fog? just then, the rock points his meaty finger up at a swirling tendril. "anyone else notice this?" he says, or words to that effect. loved that.

Fascinating albeit very difficult to rate... I agree with everyone who already said the equivalent of this.

Well, this is fucking insane so far. (Can be rented via iTunes now.)

It is insane but it gets pretty tiresome

Somehow not batshit enough by the end - like, everything I'd read lead me to expect that it'd be crazier.

Sad Richard Kelly hasn't released a fourth movie with a dude in a watery time portal yet

In retrospect I really appreciate The Box for its very personal take on a hoary old high-concept idea

Jesus. What a mess. Never seen the likes of this

we watched this recently. obviously great.

On Mubi US for another few days. Watched a little bit and am intrigued.

I love that literally everybody is in this movie

The wiki doesn't even mention Wallace Shawn, Christopher Lambert, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri (no mention at all and she's such big role!), Will Sasso (same!!!!)

I didn’t know there were any other Will Sasso fans around here. Somebody upthread was surprised to find out later that was Cheri Oteri afterwards.

the best movie ever made

it felt both prophetic of the current state of the world and utterly of its time as well

fgti did you see this before agreeing to work on the box lol

I just watched The Box last week, enjoyed it

Southland Tales was chaotic and was too long but it was brilliant and memorable I thought...”some strange flip side of teen-targeted Hollywood pop cinema”.

the film style of The Box didn’t feel as innovative, but it was an interesting story and was more coherent

where did Richard Kelly go? He hasn’t made a film in 11 years

kept thinking of Southland Tales while I was watching Under the Silver Lake earlier this year

kept thinking of Southland Tales while I was watching Under the Silver Lake earlier this year

also really liked Under the Silver Lake

right now though I keep going back to stare at the photo of Richard Kelly on IMDb

Just gave this a shot on mubi, somehow managed 43 minutes but enough was enough

@ imago yes of course I love this movie and told the director as such, one of my favourites

My character...his name... is Jericho Kane.

About 30-40 minutes into “Under the Silver Lake” I mentioned to my spouse that this seems like the kind of movie someone who grew up in the 90s would make. One of the last generations somewhat aware of old Hollywood, had seen The Big Lebowski, Mulholland Drive and but also thought Donnie Darko was revelatory.

And then the underground dance scene to “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” came and that sealed the deal.

There’s a film that deserves it’s own thread.

Loved under the silver lake too. Feels like a mid point between the more gonzo Southland Tales and the lower key charms of Lodge 49. Inherent Vice fits in this club too but I'd need to rewatch it to say more.

want to rewatch both Under the Silver Lake and Inherent Vice

My friends just got me the most amazing, batshit Cameo I've ever seen. Just absolutely speechless right now. pic.twitter.com/qP4E08B8RX

— Zach Heltzel (@zachheltzel) February 23, 2021

lmao

lololol he said the line!!

Has anyone seen the Cannes cut yet? It's been MANY years since I've been this excited to see a movie

still wondering, where did richard kelly go

At some point John Larroquette says a phone number. The first time I saw this, I paused the movie and called it out of curiosity. It went to voicemail and the message was "hi this is John Larroquette, please leave a message." I doubt the number still works.

It's possible I left a message too but I don't remember lol

brad I ended up quoting that jon lovitz cameo in my empty man piece so thank you for linking it

Watched the Cannes cut yesterday. Had never seen the original version so I'm curious how it compares. I guess it says something that I was rarely bored over the course of nearly three hours, but it was def incoherent (narratively and politically). But also understandable as a response to living through the GWB administration.

Were there multiple mentions in the original version to the manipulation of the ocean's tides slowly driving everyone insane? Feel like that information is key to understanding this movie on at least some level.

i still haven't seen this. i own the dvd! i don't know why i am so hesitant. i mean, i'll watch pretty much anything. i keep staring at the dvd...

Watch it now!

see, that's the inspiration i need.

According to imdb he has a new film in pre-production titled Corpus Christi.

We'll see. It's been 14 years since we've heard anything from him

It might not hurt if you’re a wee bit altered.

It's terrible but needs watching.

oh noes do i do theatrical cut or cannes cut??? cannes must be fancier, right?

i'll flip a coin.

Theatrical cut!

i confuse "southland tales" with "southlander". and "under the silver lake" with "on the silver globe".

https://reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/3157/southland_tales_again

Just had the pleasure of rewatching this, showing it to the bf, he’s as entranced as I ever was. I’ve bought this film on DVD four times as gifts, appreciated. Michael Koresky isn’t trying to get it— his writing is never about the film but about his own prose style; wish he’d one time actually try to write about something other than his own writing— the film is simply about giving $17m to a teenage 29 year old white North American guy and asking his thoughts on 9/11 and in that regard it’s a masterpiece, strictly considered within the terms of its contract

otm

Is it crazy to say that this maybe should’ve been longer