Area 52 - Southland Tales Reviews: 20 of 52... Southland Tales I... Two Roads Diverge...

When I started this project I had never heard of the movie Southland Tales. It had come out at a time post-film school when, ironically, I lost track of the movies being released and damn near stopped going to the theater altogether.

I knew that I wanted to review a movie on a weekly basis and multiple friends agreed that this would be the best movie for this experiment.

I looked up the movie to order it and that’s when I learned that it was directed by the guy that did Donnie Darko and that it starred the Rock and Seann William Scott. (I’m also one of these film people that doesn’t know anybody’s name or what else they’ve done.)

I did so good at avoiding spoilers that it took me at least three viewings to get the story straight.

I blame the mind-altering aspect of the first few experiments as much as I blame the complex storyline. I truly believed at least four of the characters had twins and not just Seann William Scott.

With each viewing… I not only gained more knowledge of the story, but I also learned more about the overall production.

While looking for images to add to the review I started to notice artwork from the set of graphic novels. Then one of my readers confirmed the existence of these supplemental materials and told me of the Cannes Cut of the film.

I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Cannes Cut of Southland Tales and started to break down the difference between the two cuts.

At the time I wasn’t quite ready for the graphic novels because I knew I had many reviews to go and didn’t want to blow my load early.

So after weeks and weeks of dragging this thing out… I’m finally going to tap into the information provided in the set of three graphic novels created as prequels to the feature film know as Southland Tales.

This week on Monday the 1rst at noon in the pm I cracked open book one of Southland Tales which is titled Two Roads Diverge. Then I waited until about 9:30 in the pm for it to get dark and cool off to fire up this week’s viewing of Southland Tales.

This is the second graphic novel that I’ve ever read in my life, so I may not be the one to judge the quality of work. It was… however… a fun way to gain more information about the story. I applaud Richard Kelly for his attempt at this dynamic approach to storytelling.

Being that I don’t have experience reading graphic novels, I was half expecting each of these three segments to be a feature-length movie’s worth of information. I was pleased to find this wasn’t the case.

So far the added information helps to clarify information given in the movie. I wouldn't necessarily say that this new information is needed to understand the movie but this is a nice companion piece.  

Here are my new findings.

• I’m happy to know the guy with the red, white, and blue Mohawk is named Jimmy Hermosa.

• I like that Will Sasso uses Golden Palace to gamble. I remember Golden Palace. Are we able to gamble online in America again? I thought we were working on that.

• It’s set up very early on that the officers in this world will shoot someone on a whim and quickly cover it up.

• I don’t know if I noticed that the truck that the Rock was found in was a Treer Truck, but I like the way that the graphic novel sets this up.

• In an earlier review… I mentioned that I was confused about how the Rock knew so much about himself yet didn’t know he was married. I figured that they tricked him somehow but the way that Krysta pulls it off makes total sense but even with this information it’s kind of hard to gauge how long the Rock has been hanging out with Will Sasso and Sarah Michelle Gellar before we meet him in the movie. I’m sure parts 2 and 3 will clear this up.

• Yay, Kenny’s in the graphic novel!

• The biggest, “Ooooohh,” moment that I had after reading the graphic novel while watching the movie was Justin Timberlake talking about the Rock over images playing on TV screens. The images are of a roller coaster ride at the state line. This scene never made sense to me. It made so little sense that I don’t think it ever even registered to me. Now that I’ve seen that this rollercoaster sends the Rock back in time, I’m interested in seeing where this leads and how it fits into the overall story.

• I feel Krystal is a little less of a ditsy character in the comic, I feel the same about Will Sasso’s character, and the Rock’s, “I… I… liked your poem,” line is almost dead on.

I’m trying to imagine that I’m getting this information without knowing the outcome. It’s pretty hard to do that, but I feel that things are being set up properly.

I can’t wait to see what part 2 has to offer.