| Southland Tales | 
 enlarge | Director: Richard Kelly
Actors: Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Carlos Amezcua, Curtis Armstrong
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.94
Buy Used: $2.99
You Save: $16.95 (85%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  98 reviews
Sales Rank: 6828
Format: Ac-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 145
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.6 x 0.8
MPN: COLD18283D
UPC: 043396182837
EAN: 0043396182837
ASIN: B0011VIO3W
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: March 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 09/23/2008 Run time: 144 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com
Well, filmmakers should aim high, they say. And Richard Kelly shot the moon on his highly-anticipated follow-up to cult sensation Donnie Darko, which expands the apocalyptic mood of that movie and blows it up tenfold. Set during the election season of 2008, Southland Tales proposes a series of apparently linked events: the reappearance of a vanished movie star (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), now an amnesiac; the bizarre doubling of a policeman (Seann William Scott in two roles); the development of an energy source from ocean waves; and the presence of an Iraq War veteran (Justin Timberlake) who seems to be watching everything, and narrating some of it. Not that the narration helps; even with voice-over (reportedly added after the film's disastrous debut at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival), Southland Tales doesn't come close to making sense, let alone at the minimum level of dangling a carrot to lead the audience along (even Mulholland Drive had a semblance of murder mystery to be solved, or not). The cast is loaded with Saturday Night Live cut-ups, but only Jon Lovitz connects, and in other roles people like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christopher Lambert, Bai Ling, and John Larroquette are utterly mystifying, by no fault of their own. In some of the musical sequences Kelly gets in stride, but it's easy to create drama in a three-minute music video, and harder to do over two and a half hours. Some top critics rushed to champion the movie, as though flying in the face of philistinism, so feel free to try out this incoherent pastiche for yourself. --Robert Horton
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| Customer Reviews: Read 93 more reviews...
Southland Tales - Blu-ray Info November 19, 2008
Version: U.S.A / Sony / Region A, B(?), C(?)
MPEG-4 AVC BD-50 / High Profile 4.1
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Running time: 2:24:32
Movie size: 35,83 GB
Disc size: 44,40 GB
Average video bit rate; 26.94 Mbps
Dolby TrueHD Audio English 2476 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2476 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps)
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / Dolby Surround
Subtitles: English SDH / English / French / Spanish
Number of chapters: 16
#Audio commentary with director Richard Kelly
#Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga graphic novel gallery
#This is the Way the World Ends animated short
#USIDent TV: Surveilling the Southland documentary
#Bonus Trailers
 Visually impressive, but incoherent November 11, 2008
I usually try to begin my reviews with a brief, neutral description of the plot, but in this case I have to make an exception. Pulling a coherent narrative out of this mess would require more effort on my part than writer / director Richard Kelly apparently made to put one in.
There are some excellent visuals here and it can be fun to play "spot the recognizable character actor," but I'll be darned if I know what it was about. With so many pointless and inconclusive subplots going on, I just became bored after a while, but I stuck it out to the end, which left me unenlightened. I even watched the credits roll, at the end of which I saw that there is a trilogy of graphic novels that precede the film. Would they help to make sense of what I saw? Can't say I care much anymore.
 the Anti-"Magnolia" November 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
No Aimee Mann songs, no tear jerker scenes. It's LA, and it's the end of the world. Huge cast. Epic set-up. Huge budget. Did terrible at the box office, and even now has a growing army of fans. 10 years from now, it'll probably be shown regularly at college campuses at midnight, with people showing up dressed as different characters from the film, and shouting the lines at the screen.
It's like that. If you don't like it after 15 minutes, don't bother. If dark satire about how vain and screwed up American culture is annoys you, don't bother. If wild free form interpretation of scripture bothers you, don't bother. But if you watch it and something gets under your skin, watch it again. Watch it 7 times. It gets clearer and clearer what it's about the more you see it, because it's just too dense to get in one sitting. I didn't really 'like' it the first time I saw it, but I was intrigued by the different layers of subtext, just enough to watch it again. Then I started to really laugh at the jokes...
What's it about? It's a pop culture free poem about Los Angeles, mostly, and the post 9/11 ultra-right mentality. It's very much about the Revelation of St. John, and the 2 main characters would seem at different points to be Jesus or John. And it's a hardcore black comedy.
It's the Anti-"Magnolia", really. It's a bunch of vain, disparate characters intersecting in a way that brings about the end of the world.
If that's your cup of tea, jump in. ;) But don't be fooled by the fact that this film appears to be a thrown together impromptu mess, it's not. It's deeply layered, and carefully put together.. it's just hard to see it on one casual viewing.
The Blu ray transfer is lovely, though you will notice a little grain in some of the composite effects near the end (smoking buildings, etc).
A nice bonus to this release is the inclusion of the 'Southland Tales Prequel Saga' on the disc. You can read the whole graphic novel frame by frame, and it does add some important background material, especially about the mysterious 'FluidKarma'.. where it comes from, what it does, and why Fallujah was such a mess.
This addition makes this disc a real bargain for fans of this film!
The Best Movie of 2007 October 9, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This film received such polarizing reviews, which is usually the sign of genius in film. If you were not a fan of Donnie Darko, stop reading here as you will probably hate this film. However, if you appreciate Richard Kelly's genius, he has actually outdone himself in this, his sophomore effort. I won't attempt to explain the plot to you, just read the tag "This is the Way the World Ends", nuff said. There are so many intricate plot threads, obtuse characters, and out there scenarios that it takes a good 2-3 viewings to comprehend what you are seeing. Imagine watching every cable news channel at once and you start to get the idea. If you do become a fan of this film, I would highly recommend the graphic novel tie-in, which is actually the first 3 chapters of the movie (Kelly took a cue from George Lucas and began in the middle of the story). It makes the setup much easier to understand, and contains elements that would have been much too expensive to film with the budget they had. I think that when people look back at this trainwreck of a decade, this film perfectly encompasses the atmosphere of post 9/11 America, with all of the paranoia, police state, turn-in-your-neighbor mentality the Bush administration has fostered.
 Hard to "get" but worth it September 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This film, the second from "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly, is definitely not for everyone. The story is a bit convoluted, but becomes so much clearer when experienced in combination with the prequel graphic novels. This apocalyptic-action-thriller-drama is a very dark comedy with a lot of excellent commentary on the state of us right now. Taken to an extreme? Yes. Worth it? Very.
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