Whatever happened to director Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, the follow-up to teen mystery sci-fi flick Donnie Darko?

The film was premiered at this year’s Cannes Film festival, supposedly receiving both ends of the critical spectrum, according to this imdb debate. Critics didn’t seem to enjoy the 160-minute long film either. And the confusion is understandable, with a cast as oddly diverse as Sarah Michelle Gellar, The Rock, Sean William Scott, Kevin Smith, and Justin Timberlake.
The film then seemed to disappear into limbo for a while, until Sony stepped in as distributor. Again silence, until this week when Kelly himself posted a blog that the film is now cut down to a more reasonable 137 minutes, and is in “better shape than ever“.

I am still doubtful about the quality of Southland Tales. While Donnie Darko was an excellent debut, the Director’s Cut, released on DVD, was a vastly inferior version, packed with unnecessary moments, irritatingly perplexing additions, and soundtrack changes that detracted from the original’s atmosphere. Kelly needs to reign in his ‘creativity’ as much as possible, it seems, and for once I’m on the distributor’s side.

Southland Tales is expected to be released in Spring 2007 and worldwide later in the year. For those still interested despite reviews like this, stay tuned to the official site, for more infuriatingly enigmatic shenanigans. Also released is a series of comic books preluding the film.
Kelly has also announced that his next project will be The Box, a Twilght Zone-inspired tale of a box that grants a wish, only to balance that with the death of a random person. Oh, the morality.

Popularity: 1% [?]