Southland Tales Has a Release Date [UPDATED with Richard Kelly interview at Comic-Con!]

UPDATE: The Termite Art man of action, Matt Singer, is covering the San Diego Comic-Con for IFC News, and had a few words with the director, Richard Kelly. Here's Matt's summary of the interview: "I spoke with the good Mr. Kelly about SOUTHLAND TALES today at Comic-Con. It was very exciting to see a SOUTHLAND poster with a release date.

Mr. Sweeney (and perhaps some of you) would be interested to know that it is indeed a different cut of the film. In our interview Kelly referred to the Cannes as basically his test screening; instead of bringing the film to a mall to show to teenagers, be showed a rough cut to Cannes.

In the interim he's reedited the film and added something like 90 more effects shots that were funded by his distributor Sony. But the movie is coming and he is totally psyched. So am I."

Now I don't know if I entirely buy that the Cannes cut was a "test screening", but it sounds like he's content with the finished product, so that's good news.

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Southland Tales, the film maudit of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, finally has a release date of November 9th, with Samuel Goldwyn Films taking the plunge. What is left unclear is if it is the 160 minute version that was widely reviled at Cannes, or an edited down version that was demanded by Sony after they acquired the film in '06 (they are partnering with Goldwyn on November's release). I would imagine the Cannes version will never see the light of day, unless it turns out to be a cult hit like Kelly's '01 Donnie Darko, one of many generational touchstones I've yet to see.

So why do I want to see it? Mainly because of the vocal support of J. Hoberman ("Southland Tales actually is a visionary film about the end of times. There hasn't been anything comparable in American movies since Mulholland Drive.") and Amy Taubin ("As oneiric and overwhelming as two memorial films of Cannes past - David Lynch's 'Mulholland Dr.' and Wong Kar-Wai's '2046' - and a lot funnier, 'Southland Tales' attributes the war in Iraq and the devastation of the planet to the greed and increasing desperation of Big Oil and to the all-encompassing (at least in the US) media culture, of which the film is unabashedly a part.") Color me excited: