Southland Tales

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Fletch F. Fletch
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Southland Tales

#126 Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:12 am

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced Southland Tales which stars Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, and Justin Timberlake. This Richard Kelly directed film about a future dystopia will be available to own from the 18th March, and should retail at around $24.96. The film itself will be presented in anamorphic widescreen, along with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround track. Extras will include a USIDent TV: Surveilling the Southland featurette, and a This Is The Way The World Ends Animated Short.
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sevenarts
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#127 Post by sevenarts » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:33 pm

No word of the Cannes cut, huh? That's disappointing -- especially since I doubt this film will be making enough money to justify the studio double-dipping on a double-disc set in the future.

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#128 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:11 am

What does “Pimps do not commit suicide” mean? Otherwise, I love this movie. Using the Killers was great, Lovitz quoting Dick was great, using a Pixies song as a chapter title was great, and even the Rock was great. I'm still not certain where this film was going, but the ride was great. I have to watch it again this weekend.

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#129 Post by John Cope » Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:07 pm

A terrific assessment by Waggish.

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#130 Post by klee13 » Sat Mar 22, 2008 1:49 pm

I think that you can tell how much Sony cares about this movie by simply seeing which previews they have chosen to include on the DVD: Revolver (another flop) and Zombie Strippers (!)

The chances of a double-dip (and the accompanying director's commentary that would finally make it all make sense) in the near future seem pretty small. That is, until it becomes a cult classic / pigs fly / a new director's cut of Waterworld is released.

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#131 Post by miless » Sat Mar 22, 2008 2:37 pm

Klaylock wrote:That is, until it becomes a cult classic / pigs fly / a new director's cut of Waterworld is released.
Costner can finally restore Jack Black's performance to its full length (making him the main character.)

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#132 Post by Hrossa » Sat Mar 22, 2008 3:30 pm

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:What does “Pimps do not commit suicide” mean?
I'd like to know as well. Is it a quote from some other song, movie, or, less likely, book?

I'm surprised to see that no one has discussed how closely Southland Tales mirrors Donnie Darko. They both have to do with rifts in space-time, the end of the world, people getting shot in the eye, prophecy, and messianic self-sacrifice.

I just noticed on a second viewing that Roland Taverner and Boxer Satnoros are apparently supposed to be the two witnesses of Revelation and that the messiah (a baby mentioned in the graphic novels) is supposed to follow after they are killed. Also, the graphic novels label Krysta Now as both the woman with the child being pursued by the dragon and the Whore of Babylon mentioned in Revelation. Maybe these are topics better suited to the "Bible as Literature" thread.

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#133 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Sat Mar 22, 2008 7:53 pm

The similarities with Donnie Darko are incidental, I think. (Although, I would like to know why Kelly loves Apocalypses and eye injuries.) I think that Southland Tales can stand on its own. I'm still a little surprised and not convinced by Kelly calling his movie political. It does work, but why go all to that trouble to make such a cosmology and then use it to illustrate the dangers of a two-party system? As satire it doesn't work nearly as well as it does as science fiction. As others have pointed out, the film is as much a fever dream as Mulholland Drive. However, Kelly's conception of the media and the spectacle in engenders is right on. It's not a coincidence that this movie takes place in California of all places. I think he was reading City of Quartz before making this movie. I can see why Cannes hated the film, but that just points out what the film is up to. At least it doesn't fall on its face like Strange Days.

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#134 Post by Hrossa » Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:23 am

Oh, I definitely think that Southland Tales can stand on its own. I just think it's interesting to look at Kelly's ouvre as a somewhat cohesive whole.

As to the political elements of the film, here's a quote from a Dark Horizons interview from a couple of years ago:

"I think the point is that we wanted to make a film that's sort of conveying the feeling of frustration and unease that, I guess, a lot of my friends are feeling about a lot of things that are happening in the world. And to try to tell it in the most entertaining, fun way possible."

In the same interview Kelly also says, "The movie is definitely a love letter to L.A."

Thank God it's not a coherent political film. It would have been much less entertaining had it just been about how stupid Republicans are. Interestingly, neo-Marxists come off as being just as violent and stupid as the Republicans in the movie.

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#135 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:50 pm

See, that first quote you excerpt is what I got from the film. Then on the making of doc on the DVD, Kelly says that he made the film for people to decide who to vote for. I just don't see it that way. I'm glad that he did a great job showing how the left and right really work, but I think it's just a stepping stone in the film and not its whole point. I think the movie is about media spectacle and the political part of it is just an illustration. Anyway, sorry to keep bugging you about the movie, but what Kelly said on the DVD kept bugging me.

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#136 Post by petoluk » Fri Apr 04, 2008 2:58 am

FYI, a tech review of the UK disc, released March 31...

Cheers! :wink:

Peto

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#137 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:12 am

Watched the film on DVD last night. I'm going to scorch any credibility I have left by saying I found it...interesting! Not a classic but I enjoyed it a lot and admired the ambition, if not exactly the execution. Spoilers follow:

I can see why others got bored or confused by it though and just gave up five minutes in - it is a sprawling film and while I just about kept up with the various factions, factions within factions and various people within them shifting allegiances I could imagine people just giving up at the way the film is constantly trying to twist out of their grasp as the characters constantly redefine themselves (or at least attempting to!). I don't think people were quite prepared for that being combined with the flippant throw away one liners (I think the Rove Credit Agency was my favourite!)

In terms of factions we have on one side Fluid Karma, an extremely powerful corporation, and USIdent, the political family of California seemingly working together. On the other the Neo Marxist movement within which is the more specific USIdeath 'cell'. The former is associated more with Boxer Santoros and the latter with Ronald Taverner. Fluid Karma and USIdent appear to be working together but FK destroy the government while their attention is taken up in entirely the opposite direction with surveillance of their citizenry (the point of the Miranda Richardson section).

The Neo Marxist movement is similarly made up of people with more mercenary than philosophical objectives (shown by Bart and Zora killing their colleagues for real rather than faking it) willing to use bimbos like Krysta Now in their blackmail plans but unaware that Krysta has already been picked up for corporate sponsorship by Fluid Karma!

One of my criticisms of the film is not really that it is so weird and out there but more that Southland Tales seems like a retread of Donnie Darko, except on a more epic scale.

It portrays another tangential universe with biblical passages substituting for the philosophy of time travel book (I guess most of the Timberlake quotes were inserted later on to make the story more comprehensible, similar to the way images from the time travel book were used in the Donnie Darko director's cut?) and similarly to Darko has minor characters used as devices to push the protagonists on to closing this tangent universe off (Kefauver with the rocket launcher seems a similar character to Frank from Darko - someone used by others without being allowed any conscious understanding of what they are doing).

As far as I understand it Fluid Karma created their perpetual motion wave machine to solve the power shortage with the unintended side effect that they created this space time rift in the Nevada desert. At the same time through chance or coincidence Boxer Santoros wrote a screenplay describing the exact same event so Fluid Karma had Ronald kidnap Boxer and take them both through the rift, sending them back in time by an hour. Then in the previous hour in which they are both existing pre-rift Boxer is killed meaning that he could not have been able to go through the rift. This leads to the tangential universe where Boxer is still alive but at the same time is already dead(!)

And of course that there are still two Ronald's running around and there is the suggestion that this universe is the combined creation of both Boxer and Ronald rather than just of one or the other. For Boxer the play's the thing and for Ronald his wounding of Abilene plays on his mind and both of these elements seem to have been picked up in the creation of the tangent universe.

What is different in Southland Tales from Donnie Darko is that we never go outside of the tangential universe. In Darko we had a few scenes before the jet engine crashes through Donnie's room and a few scenes after Donnie dies and sets things straight again to see things return to their original timeline - in Southland the audience only experiences the span of the tangent universe and when it goes the film itself also ends.

In a way Southland Tales magnifies everything about Donnie Darko - both its successful aspects as well as its flaws. It allows people to take the 'road not travelled' (literally in Boxer's case since he is already dead before the universe is created compared to Donnie's survival being the catalyst for the creation of the tangent universe in his film) but it leads to the same dead end. (In filmic terms we lose the wonderful family interaction and 80s high school setting in Darko for a shallow, atavistic world that isn't particularly worth saving, which is perhaps why we do not see outside the tangent universe?)

Also there is a more explicit rendering in Southland Tales of the creators of the tangential universe being a kind of superhuman Godlike figure within it. I like the way that one of the workers at the USIdent offices has come across a copy of Boxer's script and becomes obsessed with it to the extent of acting out the role of one of the characters in his play. I suppose it would be a kind of spiritual revelation to come across the script of your life by accident and Starla treats Boxer as a creator - but at the same time there is a comment on celebrity worship as well with the little altar to Boxer she has built at her workstation!

I'm still not certain what Ronald's changing eye colour signified at the end of the film though - anyone have any ideas?

I did think Timberlake's drug addled dance with the 'angels' while miming to The Killers was a fun scene though - almost surpassing a similar scene in The Big Lebowski!

The other film that kept coming to mind watching this was another fascinating folly with multiple plot strands dealing with surveillance culture - The End of Violence. It was as if it were that film combined with the already dated at the time of release feel of Until The End of The World (I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing but it does make it an acquired taste) with a dash of toilet humour!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:28 am, edited 6 times in total.

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#138 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Thu Apr 24, 2008 1:16 pm

Thank you very much for posting this! Your reading is one of the best that I've found online. I remember the member here finding comparisons with DD and I wasn't convinced. Now I'm more inclined to see them. I never thought of the film taking place in the tangent universe so I'll have to watch it again with that idea in mind. Thanks, Colin! As for the eyes, well, I just thought it was a neat trick Kelly did because he won't show us the world ending, but would give a taste anway by the reflection of it in Taverner's eyes. A little obvious, but that was my take on it.

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2006)

#139 Post by paranoid-knight2008 » Tue Apr 07, 2009 9:16 pm

The eyes represent Christ returning. In the Bible it mentions that God would ride in on a white horse during Armageddon. The white horse is the ice cream truck and the eyes turning silver show that God is back. In the Bible, it is constantly mentioned how God has silver eyes. :D Also, the scene involving Timberlake's musical number is quite moving. His character is known to be a musician before the major wars broke out and he was injured overseas. Now his music career is dead as he watches over L.A. This drug-induced scene shows, with the blood on his shirt and the scar on his face, that he is no longer that person he used to be and has literally been robbed of his own voice. The fact that this character is played by Timberlake adds onto director Kelly's genius crossings of satire and drama.

I'm one that actually really likes "Southland Tales" as much as I do "Donnie Darko" and the latter is one of my favorite films this decade. Most who figure the film a jumbled mess really don't understand Richard Kelly's intentions. Yes, there is satire and that ties into the film's casting and its sometimes sitcom-ish dialogue. But the satire isn't just blowing its load on media, but also on politics and religion. The film is, also, a nice showcase for genre compilation. There are moments of satire, dumb and sometimes slapstick comedy, romance, a nice bunch of homages of Kelly's favorite films, novels, songs and poems - and also wrapping it all in with his own breed of science fiction. There are very few films that do that, yet alone mixing it all in with the Bible!

The film is basically the story of Revelation, which is the final book in the Christian Bible and discusses armageddon and the world ending. It's a fascinating story in itself, and Kelly uses these symbols for his own story - and this makes for some brilliant, brilliant sequences; and also - with the book in mind - also helps one understand just how fascinating the film is itself when it puts together everything in such a coherent, yet incoherant, way.

I sound confusing. I know. But look at the film I'm talking about.

I think years from now, more will look back at this film as being excellent. I mean, I already do, and I'm one who hated it on the first viewing. ](*,)

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2006)

#140 Post by MoonlitKnight » Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:23 am

Wow...other people who actually LIKE this movie!! I knew there had to be some. :shock: :lol:

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2006)

#141 Post by paranoid-knight2008 » Mon May 11, 2009 6:20 am

Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007)
When I'm asked what I consider to be the most original film of the past ten years, it takes me no more than one second to give my answer. Richard Kelly's Southland Tales is the only contemporary film that I think holds its own chain in terms of baring hardly any similarities to other films post-Generation X. In fact, its blatant originality is composed of so many genres, themes, morals, twists, turns, and confusion, that it spins the viewer's head around multiple times until it explodes – thus explaining why there are a select few that can't make their way to the film's ending. But if opened up, and if given time to take in its multiple strains, Southland Tales not only makes sense, but it also becomes much easier to watch.

Director Richard Kelly's sophomore film is completely different than his 2001 cult debut Donnie Darko, and since that is Kelly's only pre-glimpse before Southland, it remains obvious that you'd expect it to be similar in terms of atmosphere and mood. But Southland Tales is so off-kilter to Kelly's first feature, grasping onto its own mood, its own atmosphere, and its own overall palette of style. While Darko held the moods of a coming-of-age drama mixed with spots of humor, science fiction, fantasy, and horror; Southland Tales is a full-blown satirical drama fueled with campy and sitcom-ish dialogue, an unconventionally eyebrow-raising cast, self-aware and sometimes sexually perverse humor, colorful musical sequences, and a futuristic setting that is as dark and sinister as the very best utopias in science fiction. And everything is blended together, many scenes echoing one or more of these things, and every scene holding onto the fact that, while there is a variety of genres in the making here, this is still satire and this is still a drama, and this helps the film build up to its surprisingly moving resolution.

The film has incredible edge and its contrast of an array of emotions is completely jagged. Southland Tales uses all it has to give off the messages it feels are important to tell. (Whether those be political, sexual, scientific, or whatever.) Actors seem to be playing patterns with their characters (most of which shade the actor's actual celebrity image) and they play off each other as if they are in a screwball comedy that feels the need to not take itself seriously. But at the bottom of many scenes are dark, evil, and twisted circumstances that deserve to be taken seriously, and while this can come off as just a bad direction, you have to understand that Kelly's intention is obviously to over-exaggerate the moral he is trying to teach. His moral is valuable and important, but why act on it in a bland, conventional manner when you can have your fun?

And yes, you can have fun if you place what Kelly's multiple layers of genre are. You can embrace and laugh at its humor, all while embracing the undercurrent of heartbreak and drama that exists at its core. The best example of Kelly's storytelling canvas is a musical sequence involving Justin Timberlake. Timberlake's character is a man who watches over Los Angeles with a gun in hand, his job to watch out for the politically violent bigots that wonder the beaches and streets of the city. He'd been assigned his job as a watcher after being injured during a war in Iraq, where his best friend accidentally shot him in the eye, giving him a scar that ultimately ruins the success of the pop singer he was before the draft. Timberlake now watches the city by day, and deals drugs by night. When he passes out after shooting up the film's fictional drug Fluid Karma, Timberlake engages in a fantasy sequence. A three-minute scene in which Timberlake wears a blood-stained shirt, drinking a beer, and lip-syncs The Killers' “All These Things That I've Done” while looking directly into the camera. Notice the many layers Kelly has in the sequence. The political undercurrent (war), the social inconsistencies and hypocrisy (drugs, celebrity expectation), an actor satirizing his own personal image for the sake of the character (Timberlake being an actual pop singer), and the level of drama underlying that satire (Timberlake, an actual singer, lip-syncing another artist's song to symbolically show that his character is a man that has lost his voice both socially and personally.) This is the kind of layering that goes on throughout the film, it just needs to be separated to actually be understood.

And while Kelly constructs his scenes based on this layering, the overall depth of the film has its bookends. On the surface, Kelly likes to insert his personal favorite art to mix and clash with his own devices of storytelling. Many examples include a soundtrack composed of contemporary music including The Killers' song used in the Timberlake number, scenes that obviously pay homage to films (such as many reconstructions of moments in Kiss Me Deadly and Mulholland Drive, and also a scene in which a character falls into a dumpster filled with a bunch of movie posters), and even the use of time travel and the parallel universes examined in Kelly's Donnie Darko. And then, at the deepest part of the film, Kelly echoes the whole narrative on the Christian book of Revelation. Each character ties into the story, just as each moment is a clever retelling of another moment from it. This could be seen as another of Kelly's personal additions; but unlike the many homages and tributes he follows through, the religious notions run throughout the entire film. This not only gives the film its spiritual backbone, but it also fits into Kelly's social comment that exists throughout the picture: the comment on society and its denial that everything will eventually come to an end.

Southland Tales is a colorful assembly of so many things, that on a first viewing, I felt as most of the critics who reviewed the film did. I was confused, I was angry, I was bored, I felt cheated, and I hated it with a passion. But I refused to believe that there was nothing there. I knew there had to be something there. And on multiple views, more and more became clear; and I began to realize the power in Kelly's concoction. It may seem like a mess, but its only messy because its the painting of an eccentric man with an important thing to say. And he did so with fun and intelligence. Southland Tales is the most original film of the past ten years.

Rating: 10/10

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2006)

#142 Post by knives » Tue Oct 06, 2009 1:24 am

SpoilerShow
American Pie allowed the Apocalypse to occur rather than save the world, right?

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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2007

#143 Post by Brian C » Fri Jul 29, 2011 12:44 pm

swo17 wrote:10 Southland Tales (Kelly)
I like the pure subversiveness of putting this on a top 10 list, given how it's become shorthand for utter bewildering failure. I didn't like it as much as you apparently did, but I did admire the pure craziness of the whole thing, and was sad when Kelly seemed to rein himself in a little with The Box.

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007)

#144 Post by swo17 » Fri Jul 29, 2011 1:06 pm

Oh, it's a mess to be sure, with just as many frustrating moments as brilliant ones, but I have a fonder recollection of it than several other films that I liked more at the time but haven't given a second thought since. This is what bottom positions on lists were meant for.

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007)

#145 Post by cdnchris » Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:32 pm

I remember more how frustrated I was with it more than anything else; I barely remember the movie itself. But I do recall liking Seann William Scott in it and thinking if only he could get a decent serious role (in a better movie) and stop being typecast as Stifler he could really surprise us all.

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007)

#146 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:50 am

The World Ends With a Handshake: Unraveling the Apocalypse of 'Southland Tales' - a "fifth anniversary" look back with Kelly with many answers and more about what the hell the director was thinking. He also talks about an animated prequel and how Marilyn Manson is a huge fan of the film.

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007)

#147 Post by albucat » Wed Jul 03, 2013 12:08 pm

Thanks a bunch for the link. I'm one of the film's few adamant defenders, and speaking to Kelly about it before it came out was one of the best interviews I've ever done. It feels like I've been impatiently waiting for his next feature forever at this point.

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007)

#148 Post by zedz » Wed Jul 03, 2013 8:22 pm

albucat wrote:It feels like I've been impatiently waiting for his next feature forever at this point.
Did you miss it?

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Re: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007)

#149 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jan 21, 2014 6:34 pm

A tragic mixture of morbid curiosity, unwatched pile clean-up, and a snow day led me to finally watch this and wow, this is up there with It's All About Love and Mad Dog Time on the mortification scale of name actors brought together for jaw-dropping nonsense. From characters exchanging 9th Grade Lit poetry quotes to SNL actors acting all serious (there are at least FIVE of them by my count here plus a Mad TV alum) to pretentious (and I hate that word, but it's apt) chapter titles and numbering to a (poorly conceived) music number in the middle of the film for no reason than that it falls under the same impetus of the rest of this film: Kelly thought it would be "Cool," but isn't smart enough to tether his wishlist of exotic cinematic distractions to anything that makes sense. This is unbelievably worse than the two films I compared it to earlier in this brief write-up, and that alone should stop anyone else from finding out what you could already guess: this is one truly awful piece of shit.

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Forthcoming: Southland Tales

#150 Post by rapta » Fri Oct 19, 2018 2:17 pm

Announced via a new Arrow teaser postcard (source).

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