| This movie is disjointed on a lot of levels. The gruesome gunshot wound at the beginning of the movie is not part of the action, unless you are good at guessing which of the few guns which appear in the movie might have hit a target near the end of the action. The lead guys are played by Rory and Ross, but Rory is mainly trying to get out of town, which will require a particular synthesizer and hopping on a band's tour bus when it pulls out of L.A. He plays Chance, who wants to play for a group called Future Pigeon. My original interest in this movie was the female lead, Beth Orton as vocalist in Future Pigeon, but Snowbunny as Motherchild's wife, Laura Prepon as Seven = Five speaking telepathically at a Los Angeles poolside party, and a pair of lesbian thieves also have a few lines, and a girl in the pool doesn't. There are live performances and incidental background music in this movie and the bonus materials. A dream sequence uses a video for the song "Sweetest Decline" from Beth Orton's "Central Reservation" CD (1999). The page inside the DVD case lists credits for the soundtrack songs that are different from the songs listed at end of the credits on the DVD itself. The list is 33 songs, but "Dr. Fantasm" is listed third, fifth, and twenty-sixth, so someone must want people to notice that song whenever they hear it again. Songs listed at the end of the DVD literature are: "Gently Waves" by Takako Minnekawa "Broken Train" by Beck Hansen "Dr. Fantasm" by E. Ruscha Jr. "Confederate Dub" by Ed Ruscha Jr. "Alone and Dying" by Hank Williams III "Central Reservation" by Beth Orton "Fatter Cats Bigga Fish" by The Coup "Snowbunny's Serenade" by Elliott Smith "Motherchild Chase" by Ed Ruscha Jr. "Splitzville" by Elliott Smith After seeing the movie a few times, to observe how this disjointed mess fits together, it is helpful to listen to the commentary, to get a little more insight into how money, drugs, cops, auto registration, robosaurus, freeways, telephone conversations, a stoner cop, Los Angeles and women in lingerie were plaguing the minds of Ross Harris and Steven Hanft when they wrote this movie. People who are just interested in seeing Beth Orton might try putting her CD "the other side of daybreak" (2003) into the CD-ROM drive of their compters to see if the video of the song "concrete sky" featuring her alone, sitting on a chair, standing, and walking on stairs, will load (it takes a while) on whatever computer system people are using now. This movie might be a few years older than that video, but this DVD is still new. Her function in "Southlander" is mainly to sound like a singer whenever she opens her mouth, which she does, even in an underwater video, and to say, "I want to hear the Moletron." I did not notice many deleted scenes in the Bonus materials on the DVD, but the "Uncut Performances" included a few lines that were as funny as the movie. If you can stand to hear a joke: When Rory Cochrane, playing Chance, shows up at a Future Pigeon rehearsal and Beth Orton wants to hear the Moletron, the guitarist, Corduroy, tells him, "You are getting another chance, Chance." After the full audition in the bonus materials, a conversation with a hologram space manager suitable for "Star Wars" movies filmed on a low budget in L.A. has a conversation with Roy to approve the new keyboard player. This might have been cut in the movie version because the director was in a hurry to get to the rules: no shooting up during the gig. The commentary made the movie much funnier for me, particularly the idea that certain people might have backed out of this project if robosaurus was not going to be in the movie. |
Southlander - Diary of a Desperate Musician dvd movie.