Attention, cult of Donnie Darko: There is another. Critically reviled it may be, 160 minutes long it certainly is, unwatchable it has been pronounced, but Southland Tales, against all laws of nature, will be coming to a theater near you. (Here endeth the Yodaspeak, to our mutual relief.)
Sony has picked up Darko director Richard Kelly’s follow-up, a postapocalyptic, quasi-musical, pseudophiloso-fest starring The Rock and Sarah Michelle Gellar (pictured).
But you won’t see the Cannes version that got critics braying — the ones who didn’t walk out after the first 20 minutes, that is. Producers are now saying Kelly submitted an unfinished version to Cannes, and had every intention of editing it after the fact. I’d snort something to the tune of, "Yeah, right — some way to sell a film." Except, uh, Kelly actually sold it.
Of course, it helps to have a built-in cult following that will, if nothing else, guarantee DVD immortality. Does Kelly really have a cult? Ask yourself this: Who else already has a fan-made trailer for a graphic novel prequel to a reportedly incomprehensible movie that hasn’t even been released yet?
Me, I’ll be watching it on a double-bill with Shortbus. Afterwards, I will be so iconoclastic, icons won’t dare come within three feet of my bad, bad strenu-indie self.
Comments (1-14) of 14 Add your comment
Does Shortbus have a distributor yet? Hopefully whoever picks it up will actually distribute in more than just LA and NYC…
And I can’t imagine how Kelly will salvage Southland Tales. I saw it at Cannes and I just don’t see how it can be done. The acting is pretty bad, and plot is convoluted, almost beyond redemption. It’s a complete joke, no matter how he recuts it. Sony is just not making very good decisions lately (Rent, Memoirs of a Geisha, Da Vinci Code).
I remember Brown Bunny or whatever that Chloe Sevigny movie was a couple years ago having a similar disasterous debut. SOuthland Tales and that one would make a fantastic one-two punch for an art house theatre novelty weekend.
I’m seeing it for sarah michelle gellar.
To anyone who actually believes that Kelly ALWAYS intended to re-edit “Southland” (before the DISASTROUS reviews started pouring in): I have some real-estate you might be interested in.
I wasn’t in France when it screened, but by all accounts, and judging by the “Darko” Director’s Cut, the only way to salvage this movie, is to give it to the anonymous producer/executive who cut up “Darko” and made it into the cult fave it eventually became.
Kelly sucks. But I realize he’ll ALWAYS have his fans (as will pretty much every so-called “artist”). I bet a I could a picture of the next dump I take, and have little difficulty finding a small group of people to consider that “art”.
“I bet I could TAKE a picture” I meant (sucks that we can’t edit our own posts on here, oh well.)
I think Southland Tales may actually be salvageable, but Richard Kelly has to be willing to cut out entire characters and very big chunks of plot if it’s going to be watcheable. I saw it at Cannes and can fully understand why so many people left both the screenings of it that I attended. Regardless, fans of Donnie Darko (like myself) may be willing to look past it’s (many) faults.
I’ll give it a chance, it has Kevin Smith in it, so it can’t be all bad.
Annie: you sat through Southland Tales twice? Wow. I think you’re my hero. That’s quite a feat!
Wouldn’t the fact that The Rock is in it obligate half of the WWE fans to watch the movie as well? I mean, regardless of what it’s about… The millions(and millions) of Rock’s fans would undoubtably watch it for the sake of getting him bigger acting roles.
I actually saw Donnie Darko for the first time about two weeks ago on The Movie Channel(had to see it twice since i didn’t understand it at all the first time through)… But i came to the conclusion that it was worth watching. Even if everyone responsible for making the movie had to be on acid during their parts….
SMG looks like she has a MASSIVE overbite in that picture. Yikes.
I can’t wait for Southland Tales. I love Donnie Darko, I don’t care what other pepople here say. I’m sorry if you need your plots spoon-fed to you. Cinema Scope has a great article about the film ( Not sure if you can post links but if you google CANNES 2006: Conspiracy of Dunces, you’ll probably find it). Here’s a great quote from it:
“There are innumerable interpretations or tentative analyses of Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001) follow-up (the amount of films cited is Godardian), but with its crazy names and cuckoo conspiracies, it strikes me as positively Pynchonian performance art—the entire film an approximation of Tyrone Slothrop’s plunge into the crapper in Gravity’s Rainbow, emerging in a semi-fascist, semi-recognizable near-future America. Its obfuscated, noir-tinged narrative style is of the conspiratorial variety beloved of Jacques Rivette (who will surely love this movie: it’s the new Showgirls), with constant double-crosses and shadowy, under-elucidated plots manned by a bevy of oddballs, both government and private. Southland is also a film internet propre, constantly condensing space, zooming about like a hyperactive, pre-Ritalined (silver) surfer: it’s a perpetual motion machine. The way the story is told is inseparable from the content, as the conspiratorial narrative style is an integral element to Kelly’s anti-status quo provocation. Will the kids like it—dunno, don’t care—but, irregardless, why does it all need to make sense? Despite what you may have heard (and are hearing, and will hear), Southland Tales is very much releasable at its current length. Sure, it might drag a bit in the third hour, but what Rivette film doesn’t?”
Now, I’ve never seen Southland Tales, so i can’t defend it. But I wouldn’t trash a film I’ve never scene either (well, that’s not entirely true). Different people goes to films for different things. I have no interest in many of this summer’s “blockbusters”, but Oscar season looks very promising. Films by Sophia Coppola, Darren Aronofsky, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Eastwood, Scorsese, etc. all look to make 2006 a great year for film.
To say that Kelly sucks, I dunno, just kinda pisses me off….
Massive overbite?? Watch it, LW.
Ok, the film badly does need to be edited, by someone other than Kelly as Donnie Darko was. DD got the same kind of reactions when it was on the festival circuit for being bloated and overblown, but the cut that went to theaters was brilliant with the help of some real good editors, we all know how bad Kelly’s director’s cut turned out to be so let’s hope he gets his same editors to work their magic.
Although, the casting for this film is just plain awful.
Wwe Pic
divas pic wwe every little one thing thing sony laptop fx