Gattaca Tales, by Ric Meyers
Well, it’s SF week at the ol’ DVD Xtra. Not sci-fi week, but SF week, using the “official” contraction sanctified by the Science Fiction Writers of America, of which I was once a member. Now, if I were considering the likes of I Robot and/or I am Legend – two Will Smith vehicles adapted from far superior books – then maybe it would be sci-fi week. But, no, I’m reviewing two wildly divergent films – one totally out of control and one totally in control – that best exemplify the “genre of ideas.”
As virtually almost always, the studios green-light these projects then never really know what to do with them or how to market them. So, while both these releases should have been (and would have benefited greatly from being) glutted with special features the way Will Smith’s DVDs are, they’re both a tad light in the digital loafers (as it were). The lightest, and the most needy, is Southland Tales, another ready-made cult classic created by writer/director Richard Kelly, who had already given the world Donnie Darko.
Anybody involved had to know what they were getting here. It’s not like the whole thing was improvised. In fact, during the thirty minute “making of” doc called “USIDent TV: Surveilling the Southland,” actors professed to not being able to understand the long script but signing on anyway. If any film needed an audio commentary, this one does, but it doesn’t have one. Instead, the half-hour behind-the-scenes featurette skims over a wide range of approaches – from actor interviews to set decoration to stunt detailing. Richard Kelly is much in evidence, however, vainly trying to defend and detail his base-level Dr. Strangelovian funhouse of a film.
Here, again, is where DVDs can improve the viewing experience. In theaters, Kelly’s overstuffed confection would, and did, become fairly intolerable. But taken in DVD chunks (or chapters, if you will), the futuristic action mystery musical dramedy can even be enjoyable … if only to marvel at Kelly’s hubris, and the huge cast who agreed to participate. Even as a game of “spot the cult fave,” the film can be fun. There’s the Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Christopher Lambert, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Kevin Smith, Curtis Armstrong (Booger!), and Janeane Garofalo, as well as a bunch of past and future Saturday Night Livers and Mad–TVers.
DVD special features are an invaluable tool for aspiring filmmakers. In addition to the discs that let you reedit sequences, there are many who simply present the filmmakers’ points of view in such a clever, informative, interesting, and edifying way that volumes can be learned with even a cursory viewing.
Eight years ago an anime appeared that has stood, and even reverberated, the test of time. Blood: The Last Vampire was a groundbreaking and engrossing effort that clearly left virtually everyone who saw it wanting more. Clocking in at a breathless, seemingly unfinished, forty-eight minutes (just enough to fill a network TV hour slot), it showcased a pretty, young high school co-ed who swung a mean samurai sword against vampires at a Vietnam-era military base.
I hope you’ve already read Matt Raub’s advance review of Justice League: The New Frontier — DC Universe’s Animated Original Movie — 
Note to producers: either retire words like “phenomenal” and “unbelievable” from your vocabularies or think thrice before allowing yourself to be filmed for DVD special features. Rest assured it will only help your cause. The aforementioned suggestion comes as a result of watching two long overdue DVD offerings back to back. If you watch only the extras, you’d think The Amateurs was the movie to see rather than The Nines. Neither movie will ever usurp the place of, say, the newly hi-deffed Lawrence of Arabia, but they surely prove how influential special features can be.
It’s also great to compare the director/producer relationships. On The Amateurs, novice writer/director Michael Traeger is well served by temperate producer Aaron Ryder. On The Nines, writer/director John August is so outrageously lauded by producer Dan Jinks that the overstatements are hard to accept. Nevertheless, The Nines is the better film, which some critics, at the time of release, had a hard time understanding. 
