Girl Gone Wild:
the Janeane Garofalo
Story
Girl gone wild: the Janeane Garofalo story
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Richmond, VA 23230
United States
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Southland Tales
Who says there's no originality left in Hollywood?
First, some background on Southland Tales, for anyone who hasn't been following along. The film's synopsis describes it like so:
Director Richard Kelly follows up cult favorite DONNIE DARKO with this sprawling epic about a futuristic version of Los Angeles that harnesses the power of the ocean to produce energy. The eclectic cast includes The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, Mandy Moore, and Janeane Garofalo.
Sounds a little strange -- and it doesn't even get into the appearances of Seann William Scott as twin brothers, Wallace Shawn as a villain named Baron Von Westphalen, a blond Jon Lovitz, and Kevin Smith as a legless vet. Oh, and a musical performance by Timberlake.
Clearly, this is one of 2007's must-see films, and if you're one of the people who have been anxiously awaiting the trailer, FirstShowing has good news -- according to Richard Kelly himself, it will be surfacing on television and the Web during the first week of September. That's just around the corner (check your calendars if you don't believe us), but if you're the impatient type, and are willing to settle for photos, follow the link below for a gander at some shots from the movie.
Source: FirstShowing.net
Richard Kelly predicts the future of Janeane Garofalo in "Southland Tales"
Guest Richard Kelly's follow-up to Donnie Darko is an apocalyptic sci-fi war story that challenges an audience's narrative expectations. Nay-sayed at Cannes, Southland Tales was re-edited and released and championed by critic Amy Taubin as a new form of cinema along with David Lynch's Inland Empire, a form employing the associative editing and continuity breaking conventions of dreams. Kelly readily acknowledges the multiple pop culture influences -- comics, music videos, movies, internet -- in his films but still manages to somehow twist them in his own image.
-- James River Film Festival
Janeane Garofalo's subplot will return in the director's cut of "Southland Tales," director Richard Kelly revealed in a Q&A following the Richmond, VA premiere of his visually stunning film at the James River Film Festival April 6, 20o8.
Kelly discusses the reasons why Garofalo's segment wound up on the cutting room floor and why he used "Saturday Night Live" actors extensively in the film in this YouTube video.
Short stuff
When Jon Lovitz as a policeman says, "Flow my tears," that's a reference to a Philip K. Dick novel.
Wild in the Streets was a popular 1968 movie, produced and released by American International Pictures, and based on a short story by writer Robert Thom. The movie, described as both "ludicrous" and "cautionary" became a cult classic.
-- Wikipedia.org
The Frost family plays an important role in "Southland Tales." That's probably a homage to the sixties apocalyptic movie, "Wild in the Streets," in which Max Frost is a revolutionary and musician.
"Southland" is local tv news-speak for Orange County.
Your career may already have peaked
Richard Kelly was a precocious 25-year-old filmmaker whose gloriously twisted Donnie Darko was nominated fro the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance festival. The film spanwed a huge and cultish fan base. it took Kelly six years to make another movie, Southland Tales, and it disappeared without a trce.
-- Mac Motandon, Details, July 2008
Movie Review
Southland Tales (2006)
NYT Critics' Pick This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.
Samuel Goldwyn Films
November 14, 2007
Apocalypse Soon: A Mushroom Cloud Doesn’t Stall 2008 Electioneering
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: November 14, 2007
“Southland Tales,” Richard Kelly’s funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired look at America and its discontents, opens with the very biggest of bangs. The place is Texas, the time is 2005, and a crowd of laughing men, women and children are celebrating the Fourth of July when a mushroom cloud blooms in the sky, igniting World War III. Not long after the smoke clears, Justin Timberlake, playing an Iraq war veteran with a thing for quoting Revelation, ominously intones in voice-over: “This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a whimper but with a bang.”
More About This Movie
Related
Booed at Cannes, but Now the Real Test (October 28, 2007)
The lines are borrowed from T. S. Eliot’s post-World War I poem “The Hollow Men” and reverberate through “Southland Tales,” which satirically imagines a wartime landscape unsettlingly close to a modern pessimist’s vision of the day after next. Mr. Kelly has purposely distorted Eliot’s poem, which ends with the whimper, not the bang, and speaks to a ravaged Europe. Now the wasteland is America, where, in the wake of nuclear attack, the Bud Light still flows freely (par-tee!), though not the fossil fuel. Having reinstated the draft to stock its war fronts — in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Iran, Syria and North Korea — America has gone into lockdown. Somewhere in Venice, Calif., the revolution tick, tick, ticks.
After the big-bang prologue, the story shifts to 2008, when on the eve of a presidential campaign competing interests are jockeying violently for power. Among the sprawling cast of unusual suspects are the “neo-Marxists,” mostly middle-age hippie chicks swinging Tasers and heavy rhetoric; a Republican presidential candidate and his Lady Macbeth of a wife; and a gaggle of totally awesome porn stars in hot pants and lip gloss who preach their own brand of liberation theology on cable television. Skulking on the sidelines is a mystery man with a spit curl who claims to have found a solution to America’s depleted reserves in something called Fluid Karma, which will light up the country by harnessing the ocean’s power.
There’s more stuffed in Mr. Kelly’s crowded fun house, including the linchpin figure, Boxer Santaros, played with lilting delicacy by Dwayne Johnson. After having gone inexplicably missing, Boxer — identified as an actor with ties to the Republican Party — has re-emerged on the grid in Venice, amnesiac and nestled in the arms of an entrepreneurial porn star, Krysta Now, given dignity and melancholic soul by a lovely Sarah Michelle Gellar. Together, Boxer and Krysta (she’s all about now, not later) have written an apocalyptic screenplay that they’re trying to pitch amid the intrigue and noise. Everyone wants a part of Boxer, but all he wants to do is research his role, which he does by riding shotgun with a mysterious cop (Seann William Scott, terrific).
What is “Southland Tales”? It’s a romp, for starters, a genre pastiche, a blast of conscience. It’s also overly plotted and at once too long and too short. It took Stanley Kubrick 102 tidy minutes to blow the world to Kingdom Come in “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” one of Mr. Kelly’s touchstones. (His other influences: “Kiss Me Deadly,” “Double Indemnity,” David Lynch, Fox News, comic books, video games, “Saturday Night Live,” years spent living in Los Angeles.) By contrast, “Southland Tales” clocks in at 2 hours 24 minutes. It sounds padded, but I miss the 19 minutes shorn from it in the aftermath of its disastrous premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
Being booed at Cannes can be a rite of passage or merely ritualistic, and it’s neither a novel occurrence nor especially notable: Sofia Coppola was booed, as were Antonioni and Bresson. Even so, the critical reaction to “Southland Tales” was harsh and in some instances as ugly as it can get when the wolf pack starts to circle, with one critic actually wondering if its director had ever met another human being. Since then, Mr. Kelly has streamlined the narrative, excising characters and plot threads (blink and you’ll miss a trace of Janeane Garofalo’s redacted performance), added some nifty special effects and secured domestic distribution. The film still sprawls, at times beautifully, at times maddeningly, but its ambition and pleasures remain undiminished.
American cinema is in the grip of a kind of moribund academicism, which helps explain why a fastidiously polished film like “No Country for Old Men” can receive such gushing praise from critics. “Southland Tales” isn’t as smooth and tightly tuned as “No Country,” a film I admire with few reservations. Even so, I would rather watch a young filmmaker like Mr. Kelly reach beyond the obvious, push past his and the audience’s comfort zones, than follow the example of the Coens and elegantly art-direct yet one more murder for your viewing pleasure and mine. Certainly “Southland Tales” has more ideas, visual and intellectual, in a single scene than most American independent films have in their entirety, though that perhaps goes without saying.
Neither disaster nor masterpiece, “Southland Tales” again confirms that Mr. Kelly, who made a startling feature debut with “Donnie Darko,” is one of the bright lights of his filmmaking generation. He doesn’t make it easy to love his new film, which turns and twists and at times threatens to disappear down the rabbit hole of his obsessions. Happily, it never does, which allows you to share in his unabashed joy in filmmaking as well as in his fury about the times. Only an American who loves his country as much as Mr. Kelly does could blow it to smithereens and then piece it together with help from the Rock, Buffy, Mr. Timberlake and a clutch of professional wisenheimers. He does want to give peace a chance, seriously.
“Southland Tales” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Adult language and gun violence.
SOUTHLAND TALES
Opens today nationwide.
Written and directed by Richard Kelly; director of photography, Steven Poster; edited by Sam Bauer; music by Moby; production designer, Alexander Hammond; produced by Sean McKittrick, Bo Hyde, Kendall Morgan and Matthew Rhodes; released by Samuel Goldwyn Pictures. Running time: 144 minutes.
WITH: Dwayne Johnson (Boxer Santaros), Seann William Scott (Roland Taverner/Ronald Taverner), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Krysta Kapowski/Krysta Now), Curtis Armstrong (Dr. Soberin Exx), Joe Campana (Brandt Huntington) and Nora Dunn (Cyndi Pinziki).
Average Reader Rating
3 rating, 15 votes
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Readers' Reviews (10)
10.
February 18th, 2008
Rating:
A TALE without head or tail
IN a few words as its blasphemous to waste any time or energy on this wortless tale -it is senselessly devoid of any aesthetics ,artistic or abstract meaning but does absolve itself by its sheer absurdity in becoming a pseudo intellectuals delight
reminds me of my favourite nursery rhyme, to modify it as this flabbergastingly frustrating epic
sing a song of sexpence
a movie full of flies
just a bunch of actors
in a rotten pie
when the pie was opened
the flies began to sing
wasnt this a filthy dish
for anyone with a sensible whim
AVOID
- jbz7879
9.
December 26th, 2007
Rating:
Amazing Review
Manohla,
If you ever read this, I just want to say that this review is excellent. I loved Southland Tales as much as I did Darko and I feel like Kelly is the most daring director out there. Your review speaks to the state of cinema and film critique eloquently and I will always listen to what you say. You and J. Hoberman are my favorite critics and you both got this one right.
Thanks!
- nagyovafan
Girl gone wild: the Janeane Garofalo story
P.O. Box 11242
Richmond, VA 23230
United States
webmaste
