The Screengrab : southland tales

In Other Blogs: Jesus Wept

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

It’s Good Friday, so somebody out there must be writing about Jesus movies. Ah, here we go – it’s Joshua Land at Moving Image Source comparing The Passion of the Christ and The Last Temptation of Christ. “The single most hollow claim of those who picketed Last Temptation was the notion that Universal was exploiting Christianity in pursuit of the almighty dollar; like The Passion of the Christ, Scorsese’s film was an obviously uncommercial proposition from the get-go, and it remains remarkable that the studio ever pursued it at all, let alone held firm in the face of protests—particularly after Paramount had already dropped the project before it even went into production.”

David Lynch won’t do commentary tracks, so the folks at Shooting Down Pictures have taken it upon themselves to live-blog Inland Empire. “I don’t think it’s an informational kind of film. I don’t think it’s part of his vocabulary. That might be the trouble behind understanding the ‘genre’ of this film. Simply avant-garde play of light, affectations and moods. I think the first time I saw this, by this point I was thinking that it was explicitly about interpretation. And it’s setting up all these signs for you to interpret in any number of ways. But it is going to provide a network of significance, and there are several things that will keep popping up for you to pay attention to how and when. There’s an intuitive kind of architecture to the film. A lot of it is just the face - dreams, and faces. It’s all about cinema as a dream, dreams as cinema. It’s not even a syllogism, it’s all a bunch of links.”

Director Richard Kelly (Southland Tales) blogs on his MySpace page about his new movie The Box. “The film was digitally photographed using the Panavision Genesis camera. In my audio commentary on Tony Scott's Domino, I mentioned that I would never shoot a 1970s period piece using a digital camera. My position on this changed when I saw David Fincher's extraordinary Zodiac. It can be done.”

This open letter to Bill O’Reilly has nothing to do with movies, but Roger Ebert wrote it and it’s too good to pass up: “I understand you believe one of the Sun-Times misdemeanors was dropping your syndicated column. My editor informs me that ‘very few’ readers complained about the disappearance of your column, adding, ‘many more complained about Nancy.’ I know I did. That was the famous Ernie Bushmiller comic strip in which Sluggo explained that ‘wow’ was ‘mom’ spelled upside-down.”

And in List-o-Mania this week…what the hell, let’s go with the 10 Greatest Mall-Set Action Scenes from Spoutblog, including Commando. “There’s nothing like seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger throw off about eight mall cops attempting a circular apprehension. There’s also nothing like seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger swing across the atrium of the Sherman Oaks Galleria using a plastic balloon-like decoration that couldn’t possibly have held him. Yes, there are a lot of over-the-top moments in this action scene, but there’s no denying it’s entertaining, at least to those of us who aren’t employed as mall security.”

Dwayne Johnson Is Coming for Your Children

Phil Nugent — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The New York Times has honored Dwayne Johnson with a profile. Despite reporter Brooks Barnes's rote tribute to the Artist Formerly Known as the Rock's "Paul Bunyan physique and Central Casting good looks", the piece raises suspicions that what really struck the editors as newsworthy is that, in these confused and festering times, at least somebody has got a long-term career plan. Having had mixed success with hit action films such The Scorpion King and non-hit action films such as The Rundown, and having had his acting praised for his work in such unlikely repositories for his talent as Southland Tales and Be Cool, the 36-year-old, six-foot-five-inch star is consciously making his pitch to the youth market. And not the tweens and the twentysomethings, either; it sounds as if his business cards should be printed with the motto, "You Know: For Kids!" A top executive at Walt Disney Studios says of Johnson, “He’s larger than life and has endless charisma but comes across as a regular guy on screen. That makes him a very unique talent.” But the judgement seems to be that, in a casting universe dominated, in Barnes's words, by those "who are either intense and brooding (Christian Bale) or pudgy and dorky (Seth Rogen)", the Rock lacks an "edge." That might help to explain why one is drawn to him, as to solid flotsam floating past in a hurricane, when he's passing for the most normal thing in the context of the storm of weirdness that was Southland Tales. "“Audiences, particularly kids," says director Andy Fickman, "seem to love discovering that a guy this big and this good looking is actually very sweet and very funny." As did the autograph-seeking stranger who, Barnes writes, interrupted Johnson's dinnertime interview to ask, "“Um, I’m sorry to interrupt you while you have a knife in your hand..."

The movie that set Johnson on his new path was Fickman's The Game Plan, a 2007 family-friendly Disney movie involving football and an adorable eight-year-old moppet that turns out to be one of those things that did monster business while remaining off the radar off anyone without kids. Fickman directed Johnson's new vehicle, Race to Witch Mountain, a "re-imagining"--"remake" is such an ugly word--of the 1975 Escape to Witch Mountain, forever known to people of my generation as "the one with the flying Winnebago." (I am not entirely certain that I have actually seen Escape to Witch Mountain, but I saw the TV commercial for it so many times that Eddie Albert's read of the line "You kids have powers that are beyond belief!" is embedded in my memory as if it were my first kiss, which given the circumstances and quality of my first kiss, it might as well have been.) Although the new movie has a better-than-respectable cast that includes Carla Gugino, Ciarán Hinds. Tom Everett Scott, and AnnaSophia Robb (of Bridge to Terabithia), Johnson's big head is undeniably the focal point of the ad campaign, flying Winnebagos be damned. After that, Johnson will take on the title role in Fix's $45 million Tooth Fairy; it will require that he don a tutu and wield a magic wand, which means that, if nothing else, Vince McMahon will standing in line at the box office at 12:01 A.M. on opening day. (Since you asked, Johnson has seen The Wrestler. “That film rang really true,” is his verdict. “It’s sad, but that’s exactly what happens to a lot of those guys.” It now seems far enough from being what's likely to happen to him that Barnes might have been pushing it by finding reason to drop Mickey Rourke's name twice in the course of the article.) In the meantime, Johnson has appeared at the Grammys, the Oscars, "the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, guest starred on Hannah Montana and served as the grand marshal of Hong Kong Disneyland’s Main Street Parade," all as part of his effort to have himself declared, as Barnes puts it, "Mom-Approved." It is hard not to wish him the best. He really is talented, he really does seem like a nice guy, and he even does his own stunts--of necessity, "because it is so difficult to find stuntmen of his size." Burt Reynolds would trade everything he ever had to have read that, just once.

Smells Like Indie Spirit: Our Favorite Sundance Films Of All Time (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT

BUFFALO 66 (1998)

At some point in the recent past, we here at the Screengrab compiled a list of our guiltiest pleasures, and one of mine was The Brown Bunny, which I pretty much only wanted to see because of the notorious...uh...love scene between director/star Vincent Gallo and his co-star (and former paramour) Chloe Sevigny. Such a prurient interest is sad on two levels: first, that a grown, married man would rent a movie just to watch a quasi-famous actress get busy with an allegedly prosthetic schwanzstucker...but secondly that Gallo’s sophomore directorial effort would have so little else going for it after the flat-out brilliance of Buffalo 66. Starring as an ex-con loser who kidnaps a bored teen (Christina Ricci) in hopes of passing her off as his wife in a doomed effort to impress his hateful parents (Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston), Gallo's Billy Brown is all jittery desperation and hostile self-loathing...yet somehow, by the end of the movie, you’re rooting for both the character and the director, while the grim, hellish landscape of upstate New York in winter (a perfect reflection of the protagonist’s stunted isolation) has somehow blossomed with unexpected hope.

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (2000)

Sundance, like most film festivals, has never lacked for sensitive dramatic films about dysfunctional families. This entry, which marked the film directing debut of playwright Kenneth Lonergan, stood out enough to count as a redemption of the genre. It also upped the profile of its star, Laura Linney, and all but launched the career, after some ten mostly uneventful years in movies, of Mark Ruffalo. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 festival, and Lonergan (who himself picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award) finally follows it up later this year when his second feature, Margaret, starring Anna Pacquin and Ruffalo, arrives in theaters.

AMERICAN PSYCHO (2001)

In the wake of The Blair Witch Project, Sundance slowly fell victim to that most dreaded of industry catchwords: “Buzz.” And as the fest’s spotty post-1999 reputation confirms, the most troublesome thing about encouraging and promoting buzz is that, when the buzzed-about don’t live up to their advanced billing, it’s the festival itself that suffers. Few films have ever arrived at Sundance with more early-bird hype than did Mary Harron’s American Psycho in 2001, given that, as an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ infamous serial killer tome, its mixture of tongue-in-cheek ‘80s details and brutal violence, all wrapped up in a Kubrickian chill, seemed to make it, in the minds of many prognosticators, an “edgy” film with Fight Club-ish cult-fave potential. Such similarities, it turned out, were superficial at best. Still, American Psycho remains, eight years on, one of the few to match its lofty Sundance expectations, thanks to Christian Bale’s pitch-perfect personification of yuppiedom as a lethal mental affliction, Harron’s eerily composed, sterile direction, and a superlative murder scene set to the ominous sound of Huey Lewis and the News.

DONNIE DARKO (2001)

Every once in a blue moon, Sundance provides a platform for a truly exciting new voice, and in 2001, that was Richard Kelly, whose Donnie Darko received enthusiastic critical and audience response upon its premiere. Kelly hailed from a film-geek background but, with his debut, refused to simply indulge in name-check homages and cheesy nostalgia, instead creating an authentic sense of his ‘80s time period and suburban milieu (and the discomfort liberals felt during Michael Dukakis’ failed ’88 presidential bid), all while offering up one giant head-scratcher of a sci-fi saga involving time travel, Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” and a menacing, knife-wielding giant rabbit who foretells news of the coming apocalypse to Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal). As assured as it is beguiling, Donnie Darko, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento (which preceded it by a year), is a genre piece that rewards and, in certain respects, requires repeat viewings to unlock its twisted chronological mysteries, something that can’t, unfortunately, be said of Kelly’s follow-up Southland Tales. Me, I say come for the mystery, stay for the entrancing atmosphere of doomed-teen-romanticism.

SUPER TROOPERS (2001)

Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe behind Super Troopers, Club Dread (2004) and Beerfest (2006), is a decidedly hit-or-miss outfit, inspired one moment and flat the next. That description certainly applies to their debut about a group of misfit-slacker state troopers, which first screened at Sundance 2001 and amounts to a series of gags that range from the brilliant to the dreary. If the latter slightly outnumber the former, however, they don’t overshadow them, thanks in part to some inspired casting – how Broken Lizard convinced serious thesp Brian Cox to participate in such inanity remains baffling – that energizes the film’s humor. But moreover, Super Troopers thrives thanks to its pièce-de-résistance involving a couple of troopers pulling over a speeding car in which the backseat teenage passenger, in an effort to avoid arrest and prosecution, has engulfed a giant bag of marijuana. The bizarre incident that follows is dim-witted goofiness of a virtuosic variety, delivering a hilarious high so powerful that it carries one through quite a bit of ensuing patchiness.

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager

DVD Digest for November 18, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, some of summer’s biggest hits arrive in stores in time for the holiday shopping season, along with a handful of choice classics.

DVD of the week: With all the care Pixar devotes to creating their theatrical releases, it’s amazing that they have any time left for their DVDs. However, Pixar’s DVD editions are almost invariably first-rate, and this week’s release of WALL-E would appear to be no exception. We begin, of course, with the razor-sharp transfer of the movie itself, which comes directly from the digital master, making it arguably crisper than could be found in the theatre. But that’s only the beginning, with two animated shorts (one seen in theatres, the other a DVD original), featurettes on the film’s sound design, visual design, music, character design, and more. Finally, there are a number of features on WALL-E that take viewers into the world of the film, including a documentary about the movie’s robotic cast, and short films about the nefarious “Buy N Large” corporation from its inception to their Earth Exit plan, and beyond. Needless to say, WALL-E is an ideal DVD for kids, but it’s also a must-have even if you don’t have a family to buy for this holiday season.

Other recent releases coming to DVD this week: Ben Stiller’s Hollywood action satire Tropic Thunder (Paramount, also Blu-Ray); America Ferrara, Amber Tamblyn and friends in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (Warner, also Blu-Ray); and a quartet of acclaimed indie films- Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World (Image); the documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson (Magnolia); Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely (Genius); and Audrey Tautou in Priceless (First Look).

On the classics front, the big release this week is David Lynch: The Lime Green Box Set (Absurda), which includes the new-to-DVD Industrial Symphony No. 1, plus the remastered Eraserhead, a Lynch-approved 5.1-surround version of Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, Wild at Heart, The Short Films of David Lynch, Dumbland, along with new extras for Elephant Man and Wild at Heart, the Eraserhead soundtrack, and a “Mystery Disc” full of exclusive Lynch goodies. Or if you’re looking for something a little more “classical”, pick up the new Criterion editions of Martin Ritt’s masterful adaptation of the John le Carre novel, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, or the French swashbuckler Fanfan la Tulipe. Also worth mentioning is the release of Fred Schepisi’s long-unavailable classic of Australian cinema, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Ryko Distribution).

In a slow week for TV on DVD, the most noteworthy title is Bones Season 3 (Fox).

Finally, this week presents the most definitive argument that Blu-Ray has really arrived, with a plethora of mostly crappy Blu-Ray only releases. The exceptions are Curtis Hanson’s pretty-good Eminem vehicle 8 Mile (Universal) and the Neil Gaiman-scripted Mirrormask (Sony). But other than that, it’s looking pretty dire, with the Martin Lawrence double feature of Blue Streak (Sony) and National Security (Sony), Guy Ritchie’s Revolver (Sony), and Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (Sony), which if nothing else remains the most definitive cinematic statement about the ongoing war over teen horniness. I’m for decriminalization, by the way.

DVD Digest for March 18, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a memorable trio of new Criterions shares a release date with three of the most critically lambasted films of 2007. Who will prevail?

DVD of the Week: In the past decade, the suburban-dysfunction genre has had a lot to answer for, not least the seemingly endless string of glib American Beauty clones full of easy laughs and cheap stabs at profundity. But The Ice Storm shouldn't be held accountable for this- an uncommonly sensitive take on similar material, Ang Lee's adaptation of Rick Moody's novel ventures into uncomfortable corners of the bourgeois lifestyle without softening them with irony. Lee's film also boasted a cast that if anything is more impressive now than it was then, given the subsequent careers of then-newcomers Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes, as well as former child stars Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci. Criterion's new two-disc set features commentary from Lee and writer/producer James Schamus, interviews with Moody and many of the film's stars, and much more, plus it promises to make Frederick Elmes' cold, wet cinematography look particularly gorgeous. It's the perfect opportunity to revisit a film that warrants a second look.

Also this week, Criterion brings us two films that are new to DVD, Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso and Hiroshi Teshigahara's documentary Antonio Gaudi. Not having seen either of these films I can't pass judgment on them, but I'm glad Criterion has seen fit to give them the best treatment possible, particularly Teshigahara's film, the latest effort on their part to celebrate his often-overlooked career.

Recent releases coming to DVD include: Joe Wright's Oscar-nominated Atonement (Universal), the kid-friendly princess comedy Enchanted (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the surprisingly good I Am Legend (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Fox's failed attempt at a Potter-like franchise The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, and the aforementioned trio of critically-drubbed films, Love in the Time of Cholera (New Line), Revolver (Sony), and Southland Tales.

New TV on DVD includes Volume 1 of the 2007 reboot of The Bionic Woman (Universal) and Season 8 of Married... with Children (Sony). That's a strange juxtaposition of flashy action and soundstage-bound low comedy, but then when it comes to television, you can't have one without the other.

Also of note is MGM's trio of new DVD editions of baseball-themed movies to get viewers geared up for Opening Day: Bull Durham, Eight Men Out, and Pride of the Yankees. Indeed, these new editions appear to be geared more toward baseball fans than movie lovers, as they're chock full of baseball-themed extras, particularly the Curt Schilling-heavy Pride of the Yankees platter.

Finally, we bring you yet another edition of the ever popular Huddleston Corner. This week, we're offering shout-outs to two new HD-DVD releases, Atonement (Universal) and Justice League: The New Frontier (Warner). However, Mr. Huddleston would like to inform you that he doesn't know how many more condolences he has left in him, and he hopes that the bums companies who are still stuck on HD-DVD will get their acts together soon.

YouTube Cabinet of Curiosities: Candy From Castro

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

We here at Screengrab consider ourselves to be omnivorous in our moviegoing tastes. So, in an attempt to counter the rash of pieces about end-of-year lists and other prestige pictures, I'd like to tell you about a singularly strange film I caught up with recently, entitled If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? Released in 1971, Footmen was meant to be screened in churches throughout the South, but the film is no clean-scrubbed bit of Christian piety. It’s perhaps the most notorious example of a regional genre called the "soul winner," designed to (literally) scare the hell out of stray believers and send them running back into the bosom of the Lord.

Footmen was directed by down-home auteur Ron Ormond, who was spotlighted in the indispensable hixploitation book Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema, written by Screengrab’s own Scott Von Doviak. But the real dominant force behind the film was Mississippi preacher Rev. Estus Pirkle. Footmen was based on Pirkle’s book of the same title, and is a mindbending mix of fire-and-brimstone Christianity and anti-Communist propaganda. A sermon by Rev. Pirkle serves as narration for dramatized scenes of what would happen when the Communists took over America- based, according to Pirkle, on events that have already occurred in other Communist nations.

Footmen feels like a kind of Southern-fried Red-panic version of Scared Straight, containing one bizarre scene after another. The video above is from one of the film’s most infamous scenes, in which a state-sanctioned schoolteacher brainwashes children to turn away from Jesus. Believe it or not, the movie only gets weirder from here. Footmen is one of the damnedest films ever committed to celluloid, and one that ensured that Southland Tales was only the second most jaw-dropping movie I saw this past weekend.

Bottom Five of 2007

John Constantine — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:25:00 GMT

With The Screengrab’s overall Top Ten of 2007 going up today, it is high time we let you, the reader, know which movies we thought sucked the most in good ‘ol ’07. Here are five movies that run the gamut from so-bad-you-have-to-see-it down to my-life-is-emptier-after-that-shit. It should be noted that one of these movies actually caused the writer to scream in public for about twenty minutes about how bad it was, embarrassing editor Peter Smith while he tried to order a slice of pizza. Try to guess which one. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

#5: HITMAN (Xavier Gens, dir.)

Big and dumb are words often used to extol an action movie’s virtues. Not so with Hitman, a video game adaptation that, as far as I can tell, isn’t even about anything. It’s shocking that a movie with both a nude Olga Kurylenko and Timothy Olyphant could be this bad.

#4: TRANSFORMERS (Michael Bay, dir.)

Bravo, Michael Bay. Only you could make a movie based on a cartoon - itself little more than a half hour toy commercial - that is actually shallower than its source material. Bravo.

#3: DAN IN REAL LIFE (Peter Hedges, dir.)

Am I really supposed to feel sorry for this asshole? He lies to his motherless children, acts like a petulant child, and makes out with his brother’s girlfriend when he barely knows her. Look not to Evan Almighty for the worst Steve Carell movie of the year. It is before you.

#2: HALLOWEEN (Rob Zombie, dir.)

I checked my watch approximately sixteen times while watching Zombie’s remake of Halloween, desperate for it to be over. Whenever I pass by one of the numerous posters throughout New York City advertising the recently released Halloween: Unrated DVD, I puke a little in my mouth.

#1: SOUTHLAND TALES (Richard Kelly, dir.)

Wow. Just, wow, man. Jesus.

Slate's Movie Club Still Swinging

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Just when we think we’re completely burned out on year-end critic’s awards, list-making and assorted summations of What It All Means, along comes another installment of the Slate Movie Club to remind us how much fun it is to argue about this stuff. The annual roundtable of film pundits is always at its most entertaining when the gloves come off. The 2004 edition was particularly juicy, with original ringmaster David Edelstein and guests including A.O. Scott of the New York Times and Salon regular Stephanie Zacharek gleefully taking their shots at everyone’s favorite infuriating contrarian Armond White. (White’s style is accurately characterized by the Village Voice’s Dennis Lim as “entertainingly predicated on a bullying, unpredictable subjectivity.”)

The Movie Club’s heyday may have passed; Edelstein is long gone and big names like Scott, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Roger Ebert are absent from this year’s roster. Still, current Slate critic Dana Stevens and guests Scott Foundas (L.A. Weekly), Nathan Lee (Village Voice) and Wesley Morris (Boston Globe) manage to keep it lively, kicking around such water cooler topics as the ending of No Country for Old Men, the attitude towards abortion in Knocked Up and Juno, and whether Southland Tales will ultimately be regarded as a masterpiece or a mess.

The Goriest Year-End List of 2007

Gwynne Watkins — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:15:00 GMT

Chicago film critic Jim Emerson has published the first part of his 2007 Exploding Head Awards on his blog, Scanners (not to be confused with Nerve's blog, Scanner). It's far more entertaining than most year-end lists, but we did notice a great deal of repetition. Let's run down exactly what makes Jim's head explode, shall we?

No Country For Old Men made Jim's head explode no less than 13 times. If you were sitting next to him for that one, your shirt definitely needed to be dry-cleaned.

Judd Apatow and friends caused 10 cranial eruptions: 7 for Superbad, 3 for Knocked Up.

Juno appears 3 times, meaning it caused Jim severe hemorrhaging, but he recovered.

Persepolis, There Will Be Blood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Zodiac, Atonement, Margot at the Wedding, Ratatouille and Southland Tales each show up twice. They all gave Jim nasty nosebleeds. Check out the full list, if only to see the winners in such fabulous categories as "Best performance by an inanimate object", "Most cringe-worthy lines" and " Best Supporting Crotch."

FILM GEEK EXTRA: Can you identify the exploding head pictured? (Hint: Not Jim Emerson's.) — Gwynne Watkins

Understanding "Southland Tales", and Other Impossible Dreams

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:05:00 GMT

It used to be that if you wanted your movie to be perceived as so cool and mind-blowing that it had a shot at outsider-midnight movie status, you had to somehow shock the bejesus out of people. But now that, as John Waters says, what was once shocking has been fully co-opted by Hollywood, so that everything from Hostel to South Park is mainstream entertainment, the best way to go about it seems to be to confuse people. A few years ago, Salon, in its function as a daily manual for the intelligent cool-hunter, was so impressed by the head-scratching qualities exhibited by David Lynch's Mulholland Drive and Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko that it provided handy skeleton keys to help guide the baffled viewer through both movies. Now, writer Thomas Rogers has whipped up an explanatory gloss on Kelly's new film, Southland Tales. (It should perhaps be noted that, in keeping with the insular nature of the pursuit of the coolest movie in the world, Southland Tales explicitly references Mulholland Drive, along with Kiss Me Deadly, Philip K. Dick, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and God knows what else.)

As a large-scale directorial achievement, Southland Tales is impressive, and I can honestly say that, watching it, I was never bored. I also felt like I had less of a grasp on what it was supposed to mean when the closing credits rolled than I did when I walked into the theater. What's remarkable about Rogers's article is that now that I've read it, I feel more confused than ever. Besides the fact that some key scenes are filmed and edited in a way that makes them really difficult to follow, there's a phenomenal amount of complex back story to the characters, their world, and the events they're caught up in that the audience simply isn't made privy to in the course of watching the picture. Kelly, who extensively re-edited the picture after its premiere at Cannes, losing an entire subplot involving Janeane Garofalo and adding voice-over narration intended to meet the viewer halfway, has also written three so-called "graphic novels" (in my apartment, we read "comic books" and are proud of it) that have been collected as Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga; it seems that anyone who hopes to understand the movie better would be well advised to read them and, you know, I might just do that one of these days. Rogers makes it clear that anyone looking to better understand the movie would also be well advised to grab a copy of the New Testament and make a deep study of the Book of Revelations and, okay, I probably wouldn't do that even if it was guaranteed to help me better understand my ex-girlfriends. It comes down to the individual to decide whether just getting Kelly's alternate-universe apocalyptic fantasies is worth this much work. Kelly may be one of the first filmmakers of the Information Age, building mixed-media collages that can't be fully appreciated on their own until you've read the comic book, seen the director's cut on DVD, diagrammed the interviews, checked out the YouTube ephemera, etc. He might also just be a talented but undisciplined guy making a mess. The possibility that he's a bit of both is enough to ensure that he remains interesting at least for a while.

Today in the Nerve Film Lounge: Margot at the Wedding, Southland Tales, Beowulf, Redacted, The Life of Reilly, Bob Balaban, Close Encounters DVD

Peter Smith — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Margot at the Wedding: "Somehow plays more like curdled Rohmer than straight Bergman, thanks to Baumbach's precise wit and penchant for droll exaggeration."

Southland Tales: "A great high-concept movie can be summed up in a single sentence, and Southland Tales is too confused to be summed up in two hours and twenty minutes."

Beowulf: "The real star of Beowulf is the technology on display."

Redacted: "It's a formally ambitious approach to a dramatically powerful subject, which makes it all the more disappointing that nothing involving the characters seems even remotely believable."

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition: "Close Encounters foreshadows the movies Spielberg would make in the coming years. It's showy. . . it's far from intellectually challenging, and it's as sentimental as a high-school yearbook."

Q&A: Bob Balaban: "I directed My Boyfriend's Back, in which a teenage boy becomes a zombie and eats some of his classmates, and Parents, in which Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt cannibalize people for meat. I don't know as I'd really call it a theme, though."

Today in the Nerve Film Lounge: No Country for Old Men, It Is Fine, Pixar Collection, Richard Kelly

Peter Smith — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

No Country for Old Men: "You know the Coen Brothers are back on top of their game when they somehow derive maximum tension from the banal image of a candy wrapper slowly uncrinkling on a dusty countertop."

It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine: "A remarkable next step for Crispin Glover."

Pixar Short Films Collection: "An important collection that contains the past and future of cinema in equal amounts."

Q&A: Richard Kelly: "It's the darkest of dark subject matter, but I wanted it to be like a party."

Southland Toons

Peter Smith — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, opening in two weeks after innumerable delays and controversies, has gone from being one of the most anticipated films of recent years to one of the most dreaded. But however it’s ultimately received upon its national debut, there’s still a whole lot of people who can’t wait to see it, either to praise or damn it. In an unusual bit of marketing, Kelly has scripted a series of graphic novels (drawn by Brett Weldee) that will serve as a prequel to the story the film will allegedly finish, and released them in bits and pieces, scavenger-hunt style, to fifteen different websites. The first collection, Southland Tales I: Two Roads Diverge, is now available, in order, at JoBlo.com, MTV, UGO.com, Comics2Film and IGN. — Leonard Pierce

Morning Deal Report: Beam Me Up

Peter Smith — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

More Trek news: Simon Pegg — Shaun of the Dead himself — to play Scotty. Awesome.

Zack Snyder will direct The Last Photograph, an Afghanistan-set drama "based on an original idea by Snyder." (Snyder has original ideas?)

Frank Langella joins Cameron Diaz in The Box, Richard Kelly's intended follow-up to Southland Tales — assuming anyone lets the guy direct after that thing comes out.

— Peter Smith