For Better or Worse, Southland Tales Is Now on DVD
Richard Kelly's sophmore effort Southland Tales crash landed itself onto DVD today. The film has a storied history of production problems and its much delayed theatrical release was met with confusion and disappointment. Even the handful of critics that liked the film admitted it was "messy" and "tedious" at times. Still, during it's most self-indulgent, lyrical tangents Southland Tales is compelling and hypnotic.
I just saw the DVD and I'm still trying to make sense of it. Eric (the Sci Fi Department's Video editor) said, "I'm glad to live in a world where a movie like that can get made." Amen to that, brother! It's a testament to the weirdness of American cinema, and that makes me proud to be a Weird American!
After the jump, the Sci Fi Department video show's take on the movie, before we actually saw the film....
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My college friend Todd Berger played Skip, the roller-blading anarchist assistant to Cheri Oteri. After his sudden (SPOILER) death (END SPOILER) in the film, it was all downhill from there...
Speaking of insanely ambitious, sci-fi epics with storied productions, I recently saw "The Fountain." The two films seem like long lost twins – thick with surreal imagery, metaphysical pseudo-science, and endings that straddle the line between the sublime and the ridiculous. Both were also ginourmous flops. Although where Kelly's vision is sprawling mess full of irony and thinly veiled political satire that spilled over into several graphic novels, Aronofsky's film is a tightly focused mind-trip with the romantic earnestness of a 19th-century love sonnet. I think there may be hope for American cinema yet.