Surprise Sneak Preview Of ST!

ohiofan · 09-26-2007, 12:25 AM

ST had a surprise sneak preview on Sept 22nd at the "Fantastic Fest 2007". I think it was the 22nd because the review is dated that day:

"The first weekend of Fantastic Fest 2007 is not even finished yet, but already, it's been an exciting and eventful series of screenings, events, and special guests. Saturday night's super secret screening was the first unveiling for the final/re-edited cut of Richard Kelly's sophomore feature, Southland Tales, probably one of this year's most highly anticipated fanboy films. I had to miss the screening, but the response was certainly more favorable than what the original version of the film received at Cannes in May 2006."

Fantastic Fest

Read what one critic had to say (keep reading as his appraisal gets better!):

Warning! Gives a lot details about the plot. If you don't want to know - read no further!

Fantastic Fest Report: SOUTHLAND TALES Review
Posted by Todd Brown at 7:09pm.
Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Sci-Fi & Fantasy, USA & Canada, Fantastic Fest 2007.

Over the brief lifespan of Austin’s Fantastic Fest the AICN sponsored secret screenings stand as a significant highlight, offering early unannounced looks at hotly anticipated titles. The first of this year’s secret screenings was unveiled tonight with Richard Kelly’s long delayed follow up to Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, playing to a packed house with Kelly himself in the audience. Utterly despised by audiences in Cannes two years ago when it screened in an early, rough form, the film screened here in its just completed final version, nearly twenty minutes shorter than the Cannes cut. The verdict? Most of the complaints about the film are accurate to varying degrees. It is overly ambitious, incredibly dense with ideas often obscured by stylish diversions, and a prime example of pop culture philosophy in action. If Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain was too obscure and cerebral for mainstream audiences then Southland Tales, a more challenging film by far, is destined to die a quick and unpleasant death at the box office. That said, for those who make it through the initial overload of information and can latch on to Kelly’s vibe, Southland is also a dazzlingly smart, funny, and engaging work, one that fuses political fears with apocalyptic religiosity and techno-dread and wraps it all in a glossy, colorful package. Southland Tales is far from the mess it has been made out to be, a work that rewards as much as it challenges and succeeds in finding the human, emotional core lurking beneath all of its high concepts.

It is near future, 2008. Texas has been struck by twin terrorist attacks, nuclear strikes eliminating two entire cities. The federal government has assumed regulatory control over the internet and stepped up electronic monitoring of the citizenry. Travel visas are now required to cross state lines. World War Three has begun with fronts in Iran, Syria and North Korea. The draft is on. The oil supply has been largely cut off by the war effort, alternate energy sources are now a must, energy salvation coming in the form of the Utopia Three project, a sort of perpetual energy machine that draws power from the ocean. Extremist left wing groups are taking up guerrilla military strikes against the dominant conservatives. In this environment a famous actor, married into a political family, disappears deep in the desert. He reappears days later in Los Angeles, amnesiac, where he writes a strangely prescient movie script with a media-darling porn queen predicting a coming apocalypse. Simultaneously the dominant resistance group recruits a second amnesiac man to replace his identical twin brother in a plan to blackmail and humiliate the local congressman.

Intricately plotted with numerous simultaneous threads - what’s above only scratches the surface - Southland Tales bombards the audience with ideas, characters and scenarios. This is a film driven by the ideas and obsessions of its creator and fans of Donnie Darko will find many familiar tropes revisted. Once again there are time loops, apocalyptic scenarios, and seemingly everyday characters caught up by forces beyond their control or understanding. But where Darko rooted its drama in family dynamics Southland Tales operates with a far larger scope of vision, tackling issues of global politics, foreign policy, sustainable energy, media obsession and more. That larger scale is both the film’s biggest attraction and largest curse. Kelly casts his net so wide that he cannot fail to pull in potent images and concepts by the boatload but the scale is so ambitious that it can also be distancing and overwhelming.

What saves the film from collapsing under its own weight is the stellar cast Kelly has assembled. The marquee features a trio of recognizable names - Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sean William Scott and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson - all cast strongly against type and that novel approach continues throughout the film with recognizable, and largely neglected, faces popping up throughout in surprising ways. The cast is enormous with so many interweaving stories that it is difficult to accurately label any of the players a true lead but Johnson is clearly the star of the show, this is his film through and through and he delivers an absolutely magnetic performance. Johnson obviously has depths to him that he has seldom been allow to show so far, the man is a legitimate star with enormous personal charisma and surprising range, and needs badly to be freed from the constant stream of trite family friendly films that he is currently trapped in. The sheer style of Kelly’s work - there are few who use and manipulate music nearly as well and effortlessly as he does - will hook many but together with his performers he finds a surprisingly effective human heart to things.

Sure to frustrate many Southland Tales is a film that will not just reward multiple viewings but will very clearly require them. It is enormously ambitious, perhaps too much so, but in a world where films are so often focus-grouped to death and broken down to the lowest common denominator the sin of ambition is one that should be embraced, one that confirms Richard Kelly as one of the most fascinating and promising young voices in American film.

ST Review

sarahbrazilianfan · 09-26-2007, 08:01 PM

Finally a good review ! This made my day , thanks a lot Pat !

eadweard · 09-27-2007, 01:14 AM

Things are looking up! Thanks, Pat!

**andrew r** · 09-27-2007, 02:00 PM

So it was a good review? I saw spoilers so I didn't read it. I want to see as much of the film without knowing. But thank you Pat for posting up this review. It's nice to see that it's gotten a showing, without us knowing about it as well.

ohiofan · 09-27-2007, 08:07 PM

Here's the last paragraph, Andy. No spoilers here. Let's hope that the people who go to see this film are cerebral enough to appreciate it and want to see it multiple times!

"Sure to frustrate many, Southland Tales is a film that will not just reward multiple viewings but will very clearly require them. It is enormously ambitious, perhaps too much so, but in a world where films are so often focus-grouped to death and broken down to the lowest common denominator the sin of ambition is one that should be embraced, one that confirms Richard Kelly as one of the most fascinating and promising young voices in American film."

**andrew r** · 09-28-2007, 02:24 PM

Cool. Thanks for this Pat. Also to add to this, there's a small mention of ST in Total Film in the UK (with Brad Pitt on the cover). It's one of the 'Seventeen Must See Films of the Winter'. It talks about it being slated at Cannes last year, and also saying that it should be given a chance as well. Due to all the work the director put in. Plus there's a ST poster, that Sarah's face is the central one out of all of the characters, and a pic of Sarah too. She's in a silvery sequinned dress, holding what looks like a cross betwen a mask (for a masked ball) and a gas mask...

ohiofan · 09-28-2007, 11:29 PM

Intriguing. We know there's a dance sequence with her and The Rock, but she was wearing a black dress. I do remember a shot of her in a dress like you described with her girls in a bar or club. I think her hair was dark in those pics.

**andrew r** · 09-29-2007, 02:03 PM

I think it was a little darker in colour than the infamous Krysta pic of her that we all love. Makes me think then, is her character wearing a wig in the film?

little t · 09-30-2007, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrew r

I think it was a little darker in colour than the infamous Krysta pic of her that we all love. Makes me think then, is her character wearing a wig in the film?

Sarah is definitely wearing a blonde wig, and it is parted on the other side to her natural parting.

eadweard · 09-30-2007, 09:26 AM

Good observation, little t.

ohiofan · 09-30-2007, 09:05 PM

Little T is the CSI of Fanhost! Good observation! I was pretty sure that Krysta was supposed to be wearing a wig just from the publicity stills that have been released.

**andrew r** · 10-04-2007, 01:05 PM

Thanks for the great info little t. Nothing gets past you!

ohiofan · 10-11-2007, 07:40 AM

Special thanks to Anne 5 By 5 for finding this:

"Larry 411 over at IMDB has reported that Southland Tales will be shown during AFI Fest 2007 in Los Angeles.

The movie is scheduled to air on November 2 and 3rd.

SOUTHLAND TALES
Special Screenings

USA, 2007, 150 min, 35 MM

DIR: Richard Kelly
SCR: Richard Kelly
EXEC PROD: Oliver Hengst Katarina Hyde, Bill Johnson, Ernst August Schnieder, Jim Seibel, Judd Payne
PROD: Bo Hyde, Sean McKittrick, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes
DP: Steven B. Poster
ED: Sam Bauer
PROD DES: Alec Hammond
MUS: Moby
CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Will Sasso, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Smith, Wallace Shawn, Jason Lee, Janeanne Garofalo, Jon Lovitz, Amy Poehler, Tim Blake Nelson

In 1920, Robert Frost divided two roads in a yellow wood. More than 85 years later, filmmaker Richard Kelly, director of the cult favorite DONNIE DARKO, takes the one less traveled. In Southland Tales, one of the year’s most anticipated films, Kelly takes us on a journey into a parallel reality to our own.The year is 2008, the place is Los Angeles, and Boxer Santos (Dwayne Johnson), an action star, has married into the political world. (Sound familiar?) His budding relationship with porn star and business mogul Krysta Now leads to a screenplay that may or may not be an accurate prediction of the end of the world. And it only gets stranger from there ...

The rest of the synopsis may be classified as spoilerish by some."

eadweard · 10-11-2007, 09:38 AM

Useful info, Pat; thanks.

sarahbrazilianfan · 10-11-2007, 01:57 PM

thanks for the info Pat....Btw...I didnt know Tim Blake Nelson was in this movie....I remember him from SD2 !

**andrew r** · 10-11-2007, 03:06 PM

Cheers for the info Pat and Anne 5 by 5 for this info. It's great to see it's at the AFI Festival!

09-26-2007, 12:25 AM	#1 (permalink)
ohiofan Fan Artist Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 4,704 My Profile	Surprise Sneak Preview Of ST! ST had a surprise sneak preview on Sept 22nd at the "Fantastic Fest 2007". I think it was the 22nd because the review is dated that day: "The first weekend of Fantastic Fest 2007 is not even finished yet, but already, it's been an exciting and eventful series of screenings, events, and special guests. Saturday night's super secret screening was the first unveiling for the final/re-edited cut of Richard Kelly's sophomore feature, Southland Tales, probably one of this year's most highly anticipated fanboy films. I had to miss the screening, but the response was certainly more favorable than what the original version of the film received at Cannes in May 2006." Fantastic Fest Read what one critic had to say (keep reading as his appraisal gets better!): Warning! Gives a lot details about the plot. If you don't want to know - read no further! Fantastic Fest Report: SOUTHLAND TALES Review Posted by Todd Brown at 7:09pm. Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Sci-Fi & Fantasy, USA & Canada, Fantastic Fest 2007. Over the brief lifespan of Austin’s Fantastic Fest the AICN sponsored secret screenings stand as a significant highlight, offering early unannounced looks at hotly anticipated titles. The first of this year’s secret screenings was unveiled tonight with Richard Kelly’s long delayed follow up to Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, playing to a packed house with Kelly himself in the audience. Utterly despised by audiences in Cannes two years ago when it screened in an early, rough form, the film screened here in its just completed final version, nearly twenty minutes shorter than the Cannes cut. The verdict? Most of the complaints about the film are accurate to varying degrees. It is overly ambitious, incredibly dense with ideas often obscured by stylish diversions, and a prime example of pop culture philosophy in action. If Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain was too obscure and cerebral for mainstream audiences then Southland Tales, a more challenging film by far, is destined to die a quick and unpleasant death at the box office. That said, for those who make it through the initial overload of information and can latch on to Kelly’s vibe, Southland is also a dazzlingly smart, funny, and engaging work, one that fuses political fears with apocalyptic religiosity and techno-dread and wraps it all in a glossy, colorful package. Southland Tales is far from the mess it has been made out to be, a work that rewards as much as it challenges and succeeds in finding the human, emotional core lurking beneath all of its high concepts. It is near future, 2008. Texas has been struck by twin terrorist attacks, nuclear strikes eliminating two entire cities. The federal government has assumed regulatory control over the internet and stepped up electronic monitoring of the citizenry. Travel visas are now required to cross state lines. World War Three has begun with fronts in Iran, Syria and North Korea. The draft is on. The oil supply has been largely cut off by the war effort, alternate energy sources are now a must, energy salvation coming in the form of the Utopia Three project, a sort of perpetual energy machine that draws power from the ocean. Extremist left wing groups are taking up guerrilla military strikes against the dominant conservatives. In this environment a famous actor, married into a political family, disappears deep in the desert. He reappears days later in Los Angeles, amnesiac, where he writes a strangely prescient movie script with a media-darling porn queen predicting a coming apocalypse. Simultaneously the dominant resistance group recruits a second amnesiac man to replace his identical twin brother in a plan to blackmail and humiliate the local congressman. Intricately plotted with numerous simultaneous threads - what’s above only scratches the surface - Southland Tales bombards the audience with ideas, characters and scenarios. This is a film driven by the ideas and obsessions of its creator and fans of Donnie Darko will find many familiar tropes revisted. Once again there are time loops, apocalyptic scenarios, and seemingly everyday characters caught up by forces beyond their control or understanding. But where Darko rooted its drama in family dynamics Southland Tales operates with a far larger scope of vision, tackling issues of global politics, foreign policy, sustainable energy, media obsession and more. That larger scale is both the film’s biggest attraction and largest curse. Kelly casts his net so wide that he cannot fail to pull in potent images and concepts by the boatload but the scale is so ambitious that it can also be distancing and overwhelming. What saves the film from collapsing under its own weight is the stellar cast Kelly has assembled. The marquee features a trio of recognizable names - Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sean William Scott and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson - all cast strongly against type and that novel approach continues throughout the film with recognizable, and largely neglected, faces popping up throughout in surprising ways. The cast is enormous with so many interweaving stories that it is difficult to accurately label any of the players a true lead but Johnson is clearly the star of the show, this is his film through and through and he delivers an absolutely magnetic performance. Johnson obviously has depths to him that he has seldom been allow to show so far, the man is a legitimate star with enormous personal charisma and surprising range, and needs badly to be freed from the constant stream of trite family friendly films that he is currently trapped in. The sheer style of Kelly’s work - there are few who use and manipulate music nearly as well and effortlessly as he does - will hook many but together with his performers he finds a surprisingly effective human heart to things. Sure to frustrate many Southland Tales is a film that will not just reward multiple viewings but will very clearly require them. It is enormously ambitious, perhaps too much so, but in a world where films are so often focus-grouped to death and broken down to the lowest common denominator the sin of ambition is one that should be embraced, one that confirms Richard Kelly as one of the most fascinating and promising young voices in American film. ST Review Last edited by ohiofan : 09-26-2007 at 04:07 PM.

10-11-2007, 07:40 AM	#13 (permalink)
ohiofan Fan Artist Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 4,704 My Profile	Special thanks to Anne 5 By 5 for finding this: "Larry 411 over at IMDB has reported that Southland Tales will be shown during AFI Fest 2007 in Los Angeles. The movie is scheduled to air on November 2 and 3rd. SOUTHLAND TALES Special Screenings USA, 2007, 150 min, 35 MM DIR: Richard Kelly SCR: Richard Kelly EXEC PROD: Oliver Hengst Katarina Hyde, Bill Johnson, Ernst August Schnieder, Jim Seibel, Judd Payne PROD: Bo Hyde, Sean McKittrick, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes DP: Steven B. Poster ED: Sam Bauer PROD DES: Alec Hammond MUS: Moby CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Will Sasso, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Smith, Wallace Shawn, Jason Lee, Janeanne Garofalo, Jon Lovitz, Amy Poehler, Tim Blake Nelson In 1920, Robert Frost divided two roads in a yellow wood. More than 85 years later, filmmaker Richard Kelly, director of the cult favorite DONNIE DARKO, takes the one less traveled. In Southland Tales, one of the year’s most anticipated films, Kelly takes us on a journey into a parallel reality to our own.The year is 2008, the place is Los Angeles, and Boxer Santos (Dwayne Johnson), an action star, has married into the political world. (Sound familiar?) His budding relationship with porn star and business mogul Krysta Now leads to a screenplay that may or may not be an accurate prediction of the end of the world. And it only gets stranger from there ... The rest of the synopsis may be classified as spoilerish by some." Last edited by ohiofan : 10-11-2007 at 07:41 AM.

09-26-2007, 08:01 PM	#2 (permalink)
sarahbrazilianfan Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Rio de Janeiro Posts: 1,366 My Profile	Finally a good review ! This made my day , thanks a lot Pat !

09-27-2007, 01:14 AM	#3 (permalink)
eadweard Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Bristol, TN, USA Posts: 3,897 My Profile	Things are looking up! Thanks, Pat!

09-27-2007, 02:00 PM	#4 (permalink)
andrew r Moderator Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: England Posts: 29,528 My Profile	So it was a good review? I saw spoilers so I didn't read it. I want to see as much of the film without knowing. But thank you Pat for posting up this review. It's nice to see that it's gotten a showing, without us knowing about it as well.

09-27-2007, 08:07 PM	#5 (permalink)
ohiofan Fan Artist Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 4,704 My Profile	Here's the last paragraph, Andy. No spoilers here. Let's hope that the people who go to see this film are cerebral enough to appreciate it and want to see it multiple times! "Sure to frustrate many, Southland Tales is a film that will not just reward multiple viewings but will very clearly require them. It is enormously ambitious, perhaps too much so, but in a world where films are so often focus-grouped to death and broken down to the lowest common denominator the sin of ambition is one that should be embraced, one that confirms Richard Kelly as one of the most fascinating and promising young voices in American film."

09-28-2007, 02:24 PM	#6 (permalink)
andrew r Moderator Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: England Posts: 29,528 My Profile	Cool. Thanks for this Pat. Also to add to this, there's a small mention of ST in Total Film in the UK (with Brad Pitt on the cover). It's one of the 'Seventeen Must See Films of the Winter'. It talks about it being slated at Cannes last year, and also saying that it should be given a chance as well. Due to all the work the director put in. Plus there's a ST poster, that Sarah's face is the central one out of all of the characters, and a pic of Sarah too. She's in a silvery sequinned dress, holding what looks like a cross betwen a mask (for a masked ball) and a gas mask...

09-28-2007, 11:29 PM	#7 (permalink)
ohiofan Fan Artist Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 4,704 My Profile	Intriguing. We know there's a dance sequence with her and The Rock, but she was wearing a black dress. I do remember a shot of her in a dress like you described with her girls in a bar or club. I think her hair was dark in those pics.

09-29-2007, 02:03 PM	#8 (permalink)
andrew r Moderator Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: England Posts: 29,528 My Profile	I think it was a little darker in colour than the infamous Krysta pic of her that we all love. Makes me think then, is her character wearing a wig in the film?

09-30-2007, 09:26 AM	#10 (permalink)
eadweard Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Bristol, TN, USA Posts: 3,897 My Profile	Good observation, little t.

09-30-2007, 09:05 PM	#11 (permalink)
ohiofan Fan Artist Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 4,704 My Profile	Little T is the CSI of Fanhost! Good observation! I was pretty sure that Krysta was supposed to be wearing a wig just from the publicity stills that have been released.

10-04-2007, 01:05 PM	#12 (permalink)
andrew r Moderator Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: England Posts: 29,528 My Profile	Thanks for the great info little t. Nothing gets past you!

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)

10-11-2007, 09:38 AM	#14 (permalink)
eadweard Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Bristol, TN, USA Posts: 3,897 My Profile	Useful info, Pat; thanks.

10-11-2007, 01:57 PM	#15 (permalink)
sarahbrazilianfan Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Rio de Janeiro Posts: 1,366 My Profile	thanks for the info Pat....Btw...I didnt know Tim Blake Nelson was in this movie....I remember him from SD2 !

10-11-2007, 03:06 PM	#16 (permalink)
andrew r Moderator Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: England Posts: 29,528 My Profile	Cheers for the info Pat and Anne 5 by 5 for this info. It's great to see it's at the AFI Festival!