Area 52 - Southland Tales Reviews: 37 of 52... On The Road Again...

Am I alone in noticing that the weeks following my review where I admit to the fact that I'm in a rut, or climbing out of a rut, by the next review things seem to be running smoothly... well maybe not smoothly, but the ruts seems to clear up... at least a little and all it seems to take is announcing it to the world of my five weekly readers :)

Thanks to those that do follow this project.

It's interesting being this deep into the experiment, it's gotten to the point where I've forgotten my whole reason for doing this.

Last week I pointed out that I felt disappointed in myself for not putting enough effort into week 35's review, feeling that my point of doing this was to crack the code of this crazy movie.

After writing last week’s review when I joked on the Facebook page saying, "there is a review in there somewhere," I remember the reason I started this experiment.

It has nothing to do with the movie at all.

Again up until my very first review, I had no idea what this movie was about.

In fact… I think it took me three weeks to realize Seann William Scott was the only actor playing two characters. The reason I started this was to find my voice as a writer on the internet, a format that's out of my comfort zone. I don't think I'm there yet, but I'm having a blast with the search.

Speaking of searching I'm contemplating ripping off Matt Lauer with a, "Where in the World is Bunker Watching Southland Tales This Week?" segment.

This week I landed another away gig and am watching and reviewing the movie Southland Tales on my laptop in a motel room located in a small town in Washington state that I have never heard of.

I would say what the town rhymes with, but I'm not fully sure how to pronounce it.

I did a search to try to come up with clues but found very little other than the population is 7,664 people,  and my yahoo travel search of, "things to do in -------," came back, "no results found."

Then I noticed the official city webpage where I found this fun fact.

In 1909 the town incorporated and was given the county seat for the newly created ----- County. ------- allegedly won the seat by intentionally intoxicating the representative from a rival community just before making competing presentations to the state legislature.

I think I like it here.

I also really like the Cannes cut of Southland Tales.

Being that it's the only copy that I have on my laptop means that even though I barely have time to fit this into my schedule, I have to watch the longer version in order to meet my deadline.

So at 8:30 in the pm on Monday… October the 28th, I fired up Southland Tales for the 37th time.

Though it is tens of minutes longer than the theatrical release, I was reminded that it's just a far better version of the movie.

The pacing and the order of the scenes just make far more sense.

There's one scene from the theatrical release in particular that has bothered me from day one, which makes total sense when it plays out in the Cannes cut.

This is the scene when  Bai Ling cuts off the emperor's hand.

In the theatrical release… this scene happens randomly and late in the movie. By the time it happens… there's in-fighting amongst the group of antagonists, so it seems strange that the group seems to be so tight.

In the Cannes cut, this scene happens right away and shows how tight and demented this group of antagonists can be as if it were a scene used for character development, and not so much just for shock value.

I don't really have the time to go into all the differences in pace and timing this week, that's just one of the major scenes that stands out as an example of the changes in order and pacing that lead me to believe that the Cannes cut is a far better version of the film.

Good thing I already did a side by side comparison back in week 14!

I learned one more thing while viewing this movie out on the road...

I HATE WINDOWS 8.

I got over halfway into the movie and decided to start writing the words you started reading just a few minutes ago.

First… it took me what seemed to be a frustrating lifetime to figure out how to exit out of fullscreen mode for the video player.

I actually never figured it out to the point where I was satisfied.

I wanted half the screen to be the movie, and half the screen to be Word.

The best I could come up with is three-quarters of the screen being Word and the video taking up the remaining one quarter. Due to the ratio… the video is playing on a screen that only takes up the top one-quarter of the already tiny window.

The movie is playing on a screen about the size of a business card.

(I'd do a screen capture, but I don't know how to find shit on Windows 8.) 

I'm now at the music video scene and about to go back to devoting the entire screen to the movie as it begins to wind down.

I'll chime in when it's over and I transfer this from Word to The Wicker Breaker site, but I wouldn't count on much more insight as I'm getting drunk enough to fall asleep early enough for my 6:00 in the am call time.

Nope... nothing...

Goodnight, see you next week.

 (Oh yeah, I'm working on a show about polygamist Mormon gun runners who really seem to get a kick out of beating their children, at least that what I'm getting out of the scenes that I've seen shot so far.)