News: Kelly Wraps Southland Tales

If you're anything like me, then you can't get enough of the genre bending teen angst opus Donnie Darko. That also means that you've been waiting anxiously for director Richard Kelly's long delayed follow up film, Southland Tales, the sprawling sci-fi debacle that was reportedly booed at Cannes and received a thunderstorm of bad publicity. At one heartbreaking moment in time there were reports that it might not be released in America at all and then there were the even more heartbreaking reports that it would be released in a brutalized 90 minute non-director approved format. Alas, Kelly has editted the film, which at Cannes played for approximately 2 hour and 45 minutes. Kelly at first seemed panicked about having to cut his work and reportedly resisted demands from distributor Sony Pictures to shorten the film and "clarify" its plot. However, Kelly recently said that he has happily compromised with the studio and put together the final theatrical cut, which will run 2 hours and 17 minutes and provide some structure to the "rubix cube" plot of the film. This is good enough news for me. I'll take Kelly's word that he's proud of the theatrical version and does not see it as an inferior edit in any way. In truly warped Kelly tradition, the film tells the story of an amnesiac action star (The Rock) being lead by a psychic porn star (Sarah Michelle Gellar) around Southern California in an alternate 2008 in which Texas has been bombed and the American government has amped up securtiy to a scarily high level. The exact details are fuzzy to me even having read almost all the materials leading up to the film so far. It's safe to say that Kelly is once again exploring a world on the verge of the apocalypse and he's using the vain L.A. movie scene to do so. Anyone interested can pick up the prequel graphic novels (Part I and Part II are in stores now and Part III will be released shortly). Kelly is currently prepping his third film, The Box, and is hoping to begin filming in March 2007. It's based upon the short story by Richard Matheson and is thought to be a step toward a more commercial project.