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Under discussion:

Southland Tales  (2006)

Could any film ever hope to overcome a festival drubbing like the one that greeted Southland Tales at Cannes 2006? Screened in competition, in an early incarnation clocking in at 2 hours 40 minutes (director Richard Kelly later claimed it had been a rough cut all along, but that???s apparently not how it was billed to the press at the time), Kelly???s follow-up to the slow-burning cult hit Donnie Darko was roundly, emphatically, infamously booed. Sometime after the first shockwave of bad buzz hit the States, a handful of critics rose to defend Kelly???s vision. The rest of us sat back and waited a year and a half to get a look for ourselves.

Southland Tales may never be able to live down that first, fateful, fatal screening, but you can???t say Richard Kelly didn’t try to reverse the damage; in fact, he spent a good portion of the 18 months following the film???s ill-fated premiere streamlining his disasterpiece. The 2 hour 24 minute cut premiering in theaters tomorrow boasts a newly-fashioned prologue (wherein a July 4th barbecue is interrupted by a mushroom cloud, touching off World War III), a re-recording of Justin Timberlake???s narration (stoney and oblique, but purposefully so), and the exorcism of one or two subplots (Janeane Garofalo used to be in this film; now she is not).

Most auspiciously, Kelly brokered a deal with Sony that required him to shave a sizable chunk off the running time in exchange for their bankrolling of 90 new effects shots. It would seem that this money was put to good use: I???m not someone who usually takes much pleasure from good CGI, but if there???s one thing we should all be able to agree on when it comes to Southland Tales, it???s that the effects are truly special. Particularly in the film???s spectacular final twenty minutes, Southland Tales contains some of the most purely beautiful digital effects that I???ve ever seen on a big screen.

And the rest of it? It really comes down to what you???re willing to let Kelly get away with.

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Under discussion:

Wet Hot American Summer  (2001)

The Baxter  (2005)

Michael Showalter (writer/director/star of The Baxter; writer/co-star of Wet Hot American Summer) is blogging at PopWatch today to promote his new comedy CD, Sandwiches & Cats, which features guest appearances from Janeane Garofalo and Eugene Mirman. In his first blog entry, Showalter discusses that strange phenomenon that occurs on reality dating shows, wherein every single contestant claims to have fallen in love with the prize bachelor or bachelorette by the second episode. He’s particularly concerned with how this plays out on A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila:

The sad thing is that Tila can only fall-in love with one of them. There is only room in her heart for one man or woman. And that lucky guy or gal will be Tila’s new main squeeze, and he or she will know how hard-earned their relationship with Tila was. And years from now, when Tila and whomever she chooses are old and gray and living together somewhere secluded, they will look back at this experience and have an amazing tale to tell their grandchildren of how they met. What they won’t say is that their road to happiness was littered with broken hearts.

When you take into account Reverse Shot’s reputation for consistently bursting the bubble on over-hyped art house darlings (I became an Andrew Tracy fan after he called Pan’s Labyrinth “dreck” last year), for taking challenging and/or unfashionable positions on filmmakers and stars (see Justin Stewart’s analysis of Colin Farrell’s performance in Miami Vice here), and for just generally being contrarian, the most surprising thing about their latest issue is how closely many of the pieces hew to the critical party line. No one needs Reverse Shot to tell them that the Farrelly Brothers have “suck[ed] all of the soul and much of the meaning out of The Heartbreak Kid,” or that Across the Universe is a “disastrous…pawning [of] the Sixties as nostalgia to a younger generation,” while “I???m Not There is great art.”

But where the new releases section falters a bit, the issue’s main thrust, a symposium on Gus Van Sant, restores faith. Justin Stewart, in particular, saves the day, with two pieces on films sprung from the grey matter of Mr. Ben Affleck.

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