SOUTHLAND TALES
(Review)

“I wanna shine on in the hearts of men,
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand…”
-- The Killers
“All These Things That I’ve Done”

When I first laid eyes on Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko just as were entering this brave new millennium, the damned thing simply blew me away; it was a fantastic movie that had brains and a heart, it sported the most excellent Mary McDonnell, featured Jena Malone and October Sky’s Jake Gyllenhaal, and introduced me to his sister, Maggie.
As the dust settled around me, the facts sunk in: not only did Kelly apparently have a keen eye for casting, he was also clearly a vital, imaginative force to be reckoned with and a name to watch out for.
So it was with some excitement that I greeted the news of his follow-up, Southland Tales. Yes, I was a tad dubious; among the cast were names like Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock), Sarah Michelle Gellar (a.k.a. Buffy), and Justin Timberlake (a.k.a. That Dude From That Boy Band).
But this was Richard Kelly, so I took a deep mental breath, and trusted him.
As it turned out, I had quite the wait before Southland Tales finally saw the light of day.
Though the 163-minute cut that screened at Cannes in 2006 was met with some derision, it was subsequently picked up by Sony, on the condition that Kelly return to the editing room for some celluloid surgery.
Now, two years later—and twenty or so minutes less—and Southland Tales is finally with us.

Southland Tales is a sprawling apocalyptic epic set in 2008, on the eve of the Presidential elections, in a totalitarian, post-nuclear attack United States exploring alternative energy sources in light of the Middle Eastern conflict. The ambitious, tentacular narrative follows a diverse band of characters—which include an apparently amnesiac movie star (Johnson), a porn star poised for a complete career make-over (Gellar), and a host of Venice Beach-based Neo-Marxist revolutionaries (played by everyone from Christopher Lambert to SNL alumnae Nora Dunn and Amy Poehler)—all struggling to either topple the government, or maintain the status quo.
And while all that socio-political jockeying is going on, the fate of the cosmos lies in the balance…

If you’ve seen Donnie Darko (and if you haven’t, you really ought to), you’ll know that Kelly loves the heady stuff.
Well, Southland Tales certainly delivers on that score. One could, in fact, argue that there is perhaps, too much of the heady stuff. From time travel to T.S. Eliot to the fourth dimension to a perpetual motion drug called Fluid Karma, there is a blazing surplus of cerebral concepts that are certainly not the staple of your average Hollywood movie. Throw in a healthy dose of New Testament Revelations, as delivered to us courtesy of Timberlake (as movie star/disfigured Iraq war vet, Pilot Abilene), who supplies the film’s narration, and a dance number involving Johnson, Gellar, and co-star Mandy Moore, and this one gets truly, truly wild. This is the drugged-out master's thesis to Donnie Darko’s high school explorations of wormholes and time travel.
Little wonder then, the long delay Southland Tales experienced.

What surprised me though was, no matter how bizarre and convoluted things get in Southland Tales (and they do get noodly, believe me), Kelly always manages to smack me with some amazingly moving bits, sometimes when I least expect it, other times when the emotion is enough to help me get past a bit where my brain isn’t sharp and quick enough to process the narrative tics as they’re unfolding.
Among those amazingly moving bits: Timberlake lip-synching to The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done,” and Rebekah Del Rio (who also appeared in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive) singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Again, if you’ve seen Donnie Darko, you’ll know that Kelly has a flair for the Musical Moment, and though the song choices here are arguably not as strong as those in Darko, Kelly more than makes up for it by roping in Moby for the film score. I honestly think Moby’s music had a lot to do with grounding the loopy on-screen action in a potent emotional context.

But what could very well be the best hook Southland Tales has is its truly insane cast, which also includes Seann William Scott, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Smith, Zelda Rubinstein, Bai Ling, Wallace Shawn, Curtis Armstrong, Donnie Darko alums Holmes Osborne and Beth Grant, and Jon Lovitz. Sadly, Janeane Garofalo’s General Teena MacArthur is virtually cut from the proceedings, though you will see her once or twice as the film winds down.
And if you don’t blink, you’ll see Eli Roth die on the crapper…
It’s also a noteworthy thing that though the ultimate effectiveness of the performances of both Johnson and Gellar are up for debate, they do gamely toy with—and in some instances, skewer—their very own celebrity. (And I’d like to think that’s precisely the reason Kelly cast them in the film.)

In the end, I can safely say, I love Southland Tales. Not as much as I love Donnie Darko, mind you, but I love Kelly’s sophomore effort just the same.
It’s messy and strange and moving, and I may not be able to explain to you exactly what’s going on (particularly in the film’s climax), but it’s a fun, revelatory ride that makes the end of the world look like a party you wouldn’t want to miss.
Yeah, I had a nice apocalypse.
I hope you have one too.

“Over and in, last call for sin,
While everyone’s lost, the battle is won,
With all these things that I’ve done,
All these things that I’ve done…”
-- The Killers
“All These Things That I’ve Done”

Parting shot: Kelly has indicated that he has intentions of releasing a longer cut of Southland Tales (as he did with Donnie Darko) on DVD. Hopefully it’ll be the original 163-minute Cannes cut.
A prequel saga to Southland Tales is also available in comic book form. (And it appears that what’s contained in them could shed some light on the more bizarre—and apparently inexplicable—bits in the film.)
Meanwhile, Kelly’s working on his third movie, The Box. Based on the Richard Matheson short story, “Button, Button,” this one features Cameron Diaz, and Superman Returns co-stars James Marsden and Frank Langella.
Of The Box, Kelly had this to say: “[It] is still in my crazy wheel house, but I’m deliberately trying to see if I can make a film that is very easy for a studio to release on 3,000 screens at once, as opposed to platforming it and waiting to see how the public digests it.”
Looking forward to that one…

(Southland Tales OS courtesy of impawards.com; UK quad courtesy of empireonline.com.)

ENTOURAGE
Season 4 Episode 10
“Snow Job”
Written by: Doug Ellin and Ally Musika
Directed by: Ken Whittingham

We return to developments on the Lost in the Clouds adaptation Billy is supposed to be working on.
Dana Gordon freaks when Walsh sends in a script called Silo, which is a futuristic space epic that has absolutely zero to do with Lost in the Clouds. Since E is MIA (more on that later), Ari has Vince read the script himself to see what the problem is. (Besides, Vince is producing.)
Thus begins a crisis as Walsh refuses to write the script the studio paid for (the money already having been spent so he can’t even return it). Ari zooms into Kill Mode and offers up Richard Kelly (who kicked my a$$ into orbit with Donnie Darko) as the new writer/director to replace Walsh. But after reading the script, Vince finds he loves it and wants to do this movie instead of Lost in the Clouds.
Vince even winds up talking to Walsh on the phone, Billy having locked himself into the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey and a gun, since he believed he’d frakked Vince up good with Silo. Of course, Vince loved the script, and the gun wasn’t loaded anyway.
Vince then tells Ari to read the script, and to make it happen.
Ari keeps on going on Kill Mode, bysteps Dana Gordon, and goes directly to her boss, Richard Wimmer (John Heard). What follows is a great scene where Ari Gold, SuperAgent, works his magic, and convinces Wimmer that Silo is the summer tentpole the studio needs to get it out of the red. When Dana is asked for her opinion on the script, she describes it as “Blade Runner meets Field of Dreams,” and Wimmer is sold.
At the end of it all though, Dana’s still pissed and wishes Ari would just die. (I love Dana.)


And while all this drama is going on, E is on his first day on the job as Anna Faris’ manager, at a photo shoot way up in the hills where cellular reception is nonexistent.
At the shoot, E meets Anna’s boyfriend, Dave (CSI: NY’s A.J. Buckley), who’s been hanging around Anna of late, since the CW passed on his pilot.
Dave is opinionated, ultra-critical, and jealous that E may have a thing for Anna (which of course, he does). Dave winds up making a complete a$$ of himself, and Anna dumps him.
E arrives as the boys, Ari, and Billy are toasting to Silo. Demanding to know what went down, E is tossed the script, and when he flips it open, asks, “Where’s the snow?”


As with the previous episode, this one’s a great half-hour, as we slide back into Hollywood mode and see Vince’s new project coming together. We also see E getting in deeper with Anna Faris, and not being available for Vince and Ari when the whole Silo thing exploded. It should be interesting to see if (or when) Vince will call E out about his responsibilities.

(Images courtesy of hbo.com.)