View image The evil queen and her dwarves. How clever. This was the shot that almost prompted me to walk out. I can't believe they used it for a production still. Yes I can.
Sometimes I doubt Richard Kelly's commitment to Sparkle Motion. The first time was the "Director's Cut" of "Donnie Darko," which de-emphasized all that was mysterious and exciting about the original film by insisting on a literal explication of the time-warp theories of Roberta Sparrow (aka "Grandma Death"). Huge mistake -- as bad as showing us the inside of the mothership in the "Special Edition" of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." At least Spielberg knew that was an error, and removed it from his Director's Cut: He'd wanted to tweak things he'd had to rush in order to meet his deadline (after all, the fate of Columbia Pictures was riding on this picture), and to flesh out some character details. But Columbia let him go back and fine-tune his blockbuster on the condition that he show Richard Dreyfuss inside the ship -- something we really didn't want to see, because it ruined the uplifting momentum of the ending, and who wants to see Richard Dreyfuss crying over anti-climactic special effects anyway?
"Southland Tales" is the product of the same literalist sensibility that produced the second version of "Donnie Darko." Part of me questions whether it's even worth writing about, mainly because it offers so little of cinematic interest. It's fussy and inert, like Part 4 of a PowerPoint slide-show based on a set of elaborately drawn storyboards that explain in excruciating detail the minutiae of the mythology behind "Hudson Hawk." There's nothing close to a movie here.
There's an obvious channel-surfing aesthetic to mimic "information overload," but nothing's on, anyway. One shot could just as easily be followed by any other shot -- they aren't cut together with any verve or intelligence, so the effect is flat and linear. We flip by a beachside talk show ("The View" with porn actresses), and that's as sophisticated and penetrating as "Southland Tales" ever gets about sex, politics and media. (He said "penetrating"!) Is it hard to follow? Not really. The voiceover makes sure everything is explained (often more than once), but it could just as well not have been explained and it wouldn't matter, because nothing is illuminated in the explanation.
Like "Hudson Hawk," it's a bloated, white-elephantine vanity production (for the writer-director, not the star) -- a strained, deliberate, joyless, big-budget, star-studded Hollywood effort to manufacture a "cult movie" by pandering to what some studio execs probably consider to be "the comic-book youth demographic." It wishes it could be "Repo Man" (or "RoboCop" or "Starship Troopers") but it's not even "The Postman." Actually, "Southland Tales" -- co-financed by Universal, which is distributing the film internationally but dropped any domestic plans after the disastrous reception at Cannes -- isn't "big-budget" by today's Hollywood standards ($17 million). But the feeling of waste and desperation behind it -- "Let's throw money at the screen for big sets and unimaginative digital effects!" -- is not unlike that dead-lump-in-your-stomach feeling you get while watching your average Michael Bay movie. [Since writing this, I have learned that the time and (Sony) money spent re-tooling "Southland Tales" after Cannes has included cutting 20 minutes, adding to Justin Timberlake's too-literal voiceover, and beefing up the special effects. That's what I was afraid of. It shows.]
"Just because it's loud doesn't mean it's funny," says a character played by Amy Poehler, and the words land with a lifeless thud, as if everybody on the set were trying to pretend that wouldn't become the picture's epitaph. What's missing is resonance -- a quality that's hard to define. Will "Southland Tales" become another "Hudson Hawk"? "Howard the Duck"? "Spaceballs"? "Strange Days"? "1941"? "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"? "Battlefield Earth"? "Brazil"? "Baby Geniuses"? Maybe, but I doubt it's memorable enough to make much of a lasting impression. (Mike Judd's virtually unreleased "Idiocracy" strikes me as a much smarter and funnier satire.)
Of course, every cult movie -- even a calculated one like "Southland Tales" -- has its partisans, who will say it's a mess, but revel in it as an ambitious mess. But is it a "mess," or is it exactly what it's meant to be? The more pertinent question for me is: What is the nature of its ambition, and how does it manifest itself? There's not an image or a joke or an idea that isn't hackneyed. The movie has already dated badly, and probably would have felt so in 1997, when it feels like it was conceived. (One character mentions a URL for an underground neo-Marxist revolutionary pirate web site and spells out the "WWW." Maybe that's meant to be funny. It isn't when it happens.)
My favorite joke, I thought, was a title that indicated the early part of the movie as episode "IV." You know, like "Star Wars." Then I find out at All Movie Guide that "director Kelly also created an accompanying series of three graphic novels which chart these events and characters prior to this story." See what I mean? The whole thing is so literal that everything has a banal explanation.
I don't want to pile on after the movie has flopped with audiences and critics, but let me describe one shot. It's the only one that sticks with me because it was the moment I felt I had to decide whether to walk out or not. (I'd checked my watch when I thought it was just about over, about an hour and 15 minutes in -- something I never do, but I was confident I wouldn't disturb the other guy in the theater because he was way up in the back on the left.) So: Miranda Richardson, as the Disney animated villainess at the headquarters of the government domestic surveillance agency, US-IDENT, leads her staff through office calisthenics. The camera dollies past the stretching employees in their cubicles and when it gets to her, she bends down to reveal... a line of exercising dwarves! (I know the proper term is "little people," but this picture treats them as a freakshow sight gag. If anyone ever spoke of them, they would probably be called "midgets." That's the movie's sense of humor.) Anyway, it was so pathetic it made me really angry. But I stayed through the whole thing. Let me tell you: Nothing else happened worth mentioning.
Dissenting (i.e., much more favorable) opinions: Manohla Dargis, J. Hoberman, Ed Howard.
P.S. I did enjoy the performances of Cheri O'Teri, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, Seann William Scott, and Jon Lovitz, though. Their in-the-moment energy is what kept me watching.
P.P.S. Just found this paragraph, from Scott Foundas at the L.A. Weekly, that hones in on something I found annoying about the movie, which is its inability to absorb its own explicit references:
As I wrote from Cannes, Kelly seems to think that to merely mention Fallujah or global warming — or to name a bank after Karl Rove — is the same as actually having an opinion about them, and his all-you-can-eat buffet of cinematic in-references (to say nothing of his Bartlett’s-style quoting of Eliot, Yeats and the Book of Revelation) operates on pretty much the same superficial level. The movie’s frequent invocations of "Kiss Me Deadly" and "Mulholland Drive" have been much discussed, but in addition, "Southland Tales" pilfers large chunks of its plot and visual style from Alex Cox’s "Repo Man," Kathryn Bigelow’s "Strange Days" and Shane Carruth’s Sundance-winning "Primer," and unlike the makers of those films, Kelly hasn’t digested his influences and made them his own — he’s more like the slacker college kid who’s just enough of an intellectual poseur to bluff his way to an A.
From what I've read here and on Michael Atkinson's site it sounds truly hideous. Sorry you had to see it. Maybe this would be a good time for Kelly to do his best Howard Roark imitation and blow the whole damn thing up.
Wow. I'm sold.
This seems like a good time for a reconciliation between you and Mr. Rosenbaum.
First of all, I actually want to see Southland Tales, now that I'm reading these unbelievably bad reviews. (I'm the sort who gets perversely interested in "train-wreck" movies.)
But the main reason I'm commenting on Jim's article is actually a bit off-topic. He said, "Will it become another "Hudson Hawk"? "Howard the Duck"? "1941"? "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"? "Battlefield Earth"? "Baby Geniuses"?"
When I read the sequence of titles, the inclusion of It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World surprised me a bit. Now, I'm not claiming it's any great piece of art, but I was totally unaware of it having as famously bad a reputation as the other films he mentioned.
I'm aware that at the time, it was intended to be a kind of "ultimate" comedy film, with participation from a large lineup of the comedians of the day (and yes, there are several scenes where you can tell they're "trying too hard").
But generally, the only reason I'm familiar with the film at all is because it's a moderate favorite of my parents. I was born in 1980, and I've seen it maybe a half-dozen times in my 26 years. If it weren't for them, I probably wouldn't have even *heard* of the film, let alone seen it. And although I've gotten older, and more deeply interested in the film world, I've never come across anything that suggested IAMMMMW was worthy of a Hudson Hawk-style legacy. (And I'm not saying it's *not* worthy; it's just a title that came out of nowhere for me.)
So now I'm curious - does anybody have any information or insight into this? Was it a miserable flop upon release? Did it get increasingly scorned throughout the years? Who considered it eligible for the pantheon of train-wreck cinema? And am I just personally ignorant of this film's reputation, or is it less publicly reviled than the other movies mentioned?
What a mess of a movie. It wants to be both "Brazil" and "Blade Runner" in terms of tone, with disastrous results.
Simple, snarky answer: yes, it's a movie. [Original headline: "Southland Tales: Is it even a movie?"] Critique the film all you want, but that kind of rhetoric just gets in the way of real discussion.
Southland Tales definitely has its problems, and the deployment of "little people" (really? why is that less offensive than midget?) for easy visual jokes is probably its most troubling flaw, though it's thankfully limited to just a few scenes. That annoyed me too, but it's not the first time that an artist I admire has used midgets for gag lines (Lynch, Fellini, Bergman).
But the "channel-surfing" aesthetic you pick on isn't so much a problem, to me, as it is the film's point and raison d'etre. Kelly adopts the aesthetics of television infotainment in order to present a vision of what the next World War might look like in America -- with the war itself lost in a sea of soft porn, idle talk, and commercials.
And we'll just have to agree to disagree on whether it's funny or not -- I laughed a lot, and so did everyone else in the modest-sized audience I saw it with. For me, its satire of American media culture is so dead-on accurate and complete that I couldn't help but smile throughout the whole thing, even when there wasn't anything overtly funny. Is it a mess? Not really -- the basic plot is easy enough to follow, and though Kelly's graphic novels probably clear up some details, it's not really necessary, and I haven't bothered to read them yet. It's maybe a mess in the sense that it throws a lot of stuff out there, and not all of it works, but that could just as easily be called "ambition."
Not that I want or expect to convert anybody, but here's my review where I expound on random ideas related to the film.
JE: Ed, you're right about that headline, which I came up with at 2 in the morning after a very long couple of days. I don't want to sound like one of those people who says, for instance, "Rap isn't even music!" Not my intention. So I changed it.
I saw it about 3 weeks ago, and wrote a piece, now out of curiosity I'm reading the graphic novels. Somehow it reads better on a comic book page. Probably because you can feel the Philip K Dick influence a little better and it has time to unfold itself without being a mess. And probably because it doesn't force itself onto the audience as a satire ... an unfunny satire.
Do I think the movie worked...no. Do I think that somewhere in there was a movie that could have been made if some focus had been mustered, yes. Kelly I don't think trusted his most empathetic character to hold the reigns of the film, the Sean William Scott character. Instead he brings to the forefront all of the lesser story lines or story lines that further create this mirror world and forgoes the story we end with. I liked the last 7 minutes of the film, and not just because it was ending. Maybe I was hoping the film wouldn't be a complete waste of time, but when the two Scott characters finally came into contact it made sense to me what the movie should have been about - should have been narrowed down to. The Rock and Michelle Gellar's storyline was more about the cleverness of his science fiction addled brain.
The parallels are pretty obvious in the film as to our situation following 9-11 and one thing I felt it did effectively was to show the influx of news info as entertainment in the first 7 or 8 minutes of the film, with the boxes and scrolling texts it was a literal mirror of how our own news infiltrates our television sets with ADD riddled momentum and most of the info is pretty much just as useless. And I didn't find the literalness of that to be as annoying as you did.
The other really annoying thing was that I don't think Kelly knows how to sculpt a film as comedy/satire. He tries, but ultimately keeps the audience at arms length. Satire doesn't work if the film is cold and distant in style.
I read somewhere that there was supposed to be more musical numbers and was told that 20 minutes had been cut from the Cannes version.
Not a good movie, no. Too literal, perhaps. Cryptic for the sake of being cryptic, yeah. Unsure what to do with itself, definitely. But I found some of the ideas to be intriguing, if the film has just trusted those ideas.
Jim: You know I'm with you on this one. I haven't seen such a desperate movie in a long time. I avoided the director's cut of Donnie Darko for just the reasons you ascribe to it, and while I was watching Southland Tales I imagined Kelly in some editing cubicle somewhere in North Hollywood pasting together a five-hour cut for DVD that would make it come together for all us unbelievers. You mentioned Michael Bay-- I sincerely wonder if Transformers would have gone down as easily as it did for me (another member of the Anti-Bay League) had I not just seen the disastrous Southland Tales just hours before? Kelly is not without talent, but I think the prescription for him is not more rope to make yet another self-indulgent compost heap in the Southland vein, but instead some for-hire work to help him work out the kinks in his methods as a storyteller. Assuming, of course, he's interested. Kelly may think he's just kinky enough, or not enough, in which case it's me who will no longer be interested.
Jack Foley: It's odd. I've always used It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World as an example of bad comedy myself but I don't believe it has the reputation of the other movies Jim mentioned which were outright disasters when they opened. For me, brevity is the soul of wit, or as The Simpsons put it, "brevity is... wit." So Mad, Mad and 1941 lose me with their epic bloat but I think out of all the titles Jim mentioned they have a much stronger following now than they ever did when they first opened. And I enjoy sections of both I will admit but I'm no great fan.
Jack: I think "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" was actually a popular success in its time. I saw it as a kid and suffered mightily. My little sister and I were miserable, and my mom said we could have left if only she'd known!
I threw that title into the list of comparisons because "Southland Tales" tries to emulate it, and because (as much as some dislike it), it has enthusiastic defenders. So does "1941."
I haven't seen SOUTHLAND TALES, but by what I've heard of it, it sounds like a 'premie.'
What do I mean by 'premie?' Well, the way it used to be with 'pop' movies is that most pop film-makers didn't take themselves or their product too seriously. (For instance, Zemeckis in the 80s, or most of John Carpenter's filmography.) But eventually, fans of pop-movies (or pop-TV, for that matter) seriously read their favorite films, and this lead to the die-hard zealotry of fan-boy culture. In turn, these informed/'serious' fan-boy readings influenced future pop film-makers to take their own work seriously, even before their movies were filmed. This has resulted in stilted, pretentious multi-plex 'blockbusters' that are off-putting and indulgent (for instance, the two Matrix sequels.)
Now there are more pop-movies that aren't allowed to seriously 'mature' in the minds of movie-goers because they were pre-emptively fashioned as 'mature' and 'thought-provoking' before they were made. They were pre-maturely born as fun yet 'important' movies. Thus, they are 'premie' movies. (Other examples of this: the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Star Trek after the original series.)
A couple things to indicate Southland Tales is not in fact a good movie:
1) When trying to summarize the film to my roommate, I talked for twenty minutes before getting to the opening scene.
2) About halfway through the film, I correctly predicted songs which would play later.
3) About halfway through the film, I hadn't yet realized that the film was told in a linear chronology.
4) The only halfway convincing performance was Jon Lovitz as a renegade cop. That's right: Jon Lovitz... As a renegade cop... (Well, technically he's not actually a renegade cop but an actor playing a renegade cop to implicate star Boxer Santeros in a scandal involving the murder of two people so that -- nevermind)
I have not seen this, but from the divisive reaction, and the descriptions I read (whether in Jim's and Ebert's negative reactions, or Hoberman's and Manohla's admiration), it just sounds utterly fascinating.
I will not hide the fact that I'm a Tarantino-apologist. I think Pulp Fiction is a wonderful film, and Jackie Brown a post-modern pastiche masterpiece. The point: I get a huge kick out of irreverent post-modernism (though, I wouldn't say Jackie Brown is particularly irreverent), and every description I hear about this makes it sound like a truly indulgent post-modern epic that revels in its frivolity while still maintaining delusions of grandeur and profundity. Sounds like a fascinating tension, to me. Even knowing that it's quite possible I'll hate this, I still think it sounds incredibly interesting.
Ed: I left this comment over at your place, "Only the Cinema":
Really good piece, Ed -- and I enjoyed it much more than I did the movie. You inspired me to add a couple clarifying comments to my own (brief) piece -- including changing my headline, which was a bad choice I came up with at 2 in the morning when I couldn't think of anything else.
I didn't laugh at all watching "Southland Tales," but I did smile a few times, and Lovitz's line was one of those times.
I actually agree with you about the critics who have called the movie a "mess" (fans and detractors). I think that's almost irrelevant, because it's designed to mimic "information overload." What's on the screen is, I think, exactly what Kelly wants. I just think it's nothing we haven't seen done much more effectively before -- in "RoboCop" and "Starship Troopers," for example.
Thanks, Jim. I note that one of the things you added is a clarification of exactly what changed after Cannes, and though I knew they lopped off 20 minutes and revamped the effects, I didn't realize that Timberlake's voiceover hadn't been there originally. That was one of the aspects of the film I liked the least; I didn't feel it added too much. Quotes from Revelations are pretty redundant considering the overall apocalyptic mood of the whole film. His voiceover worked OK over the opening infotainment montage, and then quickly just became extraneous. As an admirer of the film, albeit with some reservations, I really hope the Cannes cut shows up on DVD eventually. I suspect it will make me like the film even more.
One other comment, in response to Matt Rosen: "When trying to summarize the film to my roommate, I talked for twenty minutes before getting to the opening scene." I don't really see why that should be a sign of a bad film. There's definitely a lot to talk about, and it's a pretty complicated plot with a lot of characters, but then I've never really put much stock in the old marketing chestnut that you know a film/book/whatever is good only if it can be summed up in a single sentence.
Ed: My understanding from that International Herald Triune story I linked to is that the narration was expanded and re-worked. Some of it was reportedly there in Cannes, but I don't know how much, or how differently it is used in this cut. (I detected quite a bit of redundancy -- maybe that's part of Kelly's "info overload" strategy, I don't know.)
From an interview with Kelly at The Deadbolt.com:
"We were still working on the film - far from finished - and we submitted it in the off chance that we might get into the festival. We were very shocked to be nominated for the Palme d’Or, put it that way. At first we were like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe this is happening. What an honor.’ And then it was like, ‘Oh my god, this movie is never going to be finished in time,’ but we couldn’t turn the honor down, so we went with what we had. It was a situation where we took our licks and were handed lemons, but Sony bought the film, which was a good thing and we continued to refine and reshape it. Then we realized, what we knew all along, was that the film needed more visual effects to make everything fit together and that was going to require more money. That made it drag on a little more, but then we got the money and were able to finish it the way we wanted. It’s only 19 minutes shorter and I would love to put some of the deleted scenes back in at some point - maybe a director’s cut - but I’m very happy with what we have."
On Timberlake: "... So we talked about the role and this doomsday prophet, this actor who’s been drafted and sent to Iraq and disfigured by his friend with a grenade. And now he’s perched on top on this gun-mount for political purposes and protecting his alternative fuel project. He became the narrator as the role evolved and we worked on it. Justin has this very confident nature, he’s very laid back and from the South like me. He’s a very down to Earth guy and there’s something that felt right about him being the narrator. When he talks about The Killers’ song, "All the Things I’ve Done"... in my mind it felt like the voice of a disenfranchised Iraq veteran, and I don’t know if that was the intention when The Killers wrote that song. But if you listen to the lyrics, it’s really powerful. We didn’t have the rights to the song and we just shot it anyway. Then we showed it to The Killers and their management, and they were like, ‘Okay, we love this and how much money do you have?’ We were like, ‘Ahh [cough] $40,000,’ and they said alright you can have it. It was an amazing gift and it set a precedent to get all of this other music, and they were really generous."
It feels like it got the "Blade Runner" treatment. Maybe in 30 years Kelly will revisit it a fourth time and finally make it flawless, eh?
Phillip: Yeah, Kelly says it wasn't done in time for Cannes, and this is the movie he wanted to release to theaters (though he had to lose a few scenes he'd like to include in a DVD "Director's Cut"). Which is exactly what he SHOULD say at this point, to try to promote his movie. He says he's very happy with what he's done. Will he stay "happy"? I don't know. More changes and the "Director's Cut" label may be a the best way to sell the picture on DVD. You're right: It's been working for "Blade Runner" for a quarter century! I just think it's more about marketing than moviemaking.
I have to say, I find it interesting that there have been a number of essays written about what is supposedly such a terrible movie (I have admittedly not seen it). I read, not too long ago an article in The Guardian wondering if "Southland Tales" is the future of film. I bring this up because your normal terrible movie (if there is such a thing) rarely brings out such critical analysis and commentary. In this way, perhaps the film is in fact a post-modern success. Its terrible reviews notwithstanding, we are treating the film with a certain respect worthy of reasoned analysis. The film is supposedly trying to make an observation about modern American culture and/or pop-culture. Essays like this ask what a terrible mess of film says about American culture or pop culture. Just an observation.
idiocracy was the creation of mike judge (not judd). good post jim and valuable comments too, as usual.
Can we just go ahead and say DONNIE DARKO sucked now, too? I've been waiting for that moment for a long time.
I'm a huge "Donnie Darko" fan, even though I think the reasons I loved the film weren't the ideas that Kelly brought to the film (as evident in the commentary, when the ending to me represented, with Donnie's sacrifice, a world with less fear and more courage where a girl can wave at a stranger whose pain she can only imagine, and Kelly's comments where not of that notion).
"Southland Tales" was much ado about nothing to me. It was two and a half hours of nothing engaging. In the beginning the direction made the humor was so forced that it wasn't funny (Kelly's wide angled close-ups did him no favors in the opening). After that the direction was so scattershot that the force it carried in the opening moments was found needed.
I hated the poor man's "Big Lebowski" musical number. I hated that the film had Holmes Osborne was obviously playing a character that was a send-up of George W. Bush is presence and stature when the real George W. Bush is in existence in the film as the president, rendering the Obsorne character redundant (why go after the fake Bush when you can go after the Real McCoy?). I hated that there wasn't a damn thing defining about the Neo-Marxists other than that they had "Das Capital" painted in their loft (the title of the work only, of course).
But most of all I hated that the only thing coherent with the film was that it was completely narcissistic. Not only was it about a guy who wrote a screenplay that turns out to be a true indicator of what's to come (wishful thinking, Mr. Kelly?) but the film cribs "Donnie Darko" with it's unnecessary time traveling subplot. It gave significant thematic weight in "Donnie Darko" but here the subplots concerning such are frivolous, exposing them as the "Darko" rip-offs that appear to be.
Sadly the ending spelled out completely how narcissistic the film is. Not only does it feature a character showing love and consideration to himself but the a "character" is afflicted with the same wound that a significant character in "Donnie Darko" has. The narcissism running through "Southland Tales" is the closest thing to any coherence the film has, unfortunately.
Joseph: I'm so glad you mentioned the "Big Lebowski" musical number! Stoned protagonists, bowling alley, chorus girls... The comparison has to be intentional (given Kelly's extensive film knowledge and enthusiasms), but the comparison is to "Southland's" detriment in every way.
I remember listening to Kelly's comments on the original DVD version of "Donnie Darko" (2002, I think?) and writing that I didn't think he knew why he'd made a good movie. Another reason to trust the art above the artist.
My apologies for my numerous typos. But I think the point was reached anyway. :)
Also, isn't it funny that both "Donnie" and "Southland" come down to personal sacrifice? I think if one were to focus on that aspect you can find how the actions in "Donnie Darko" create a lot of emotional and thematic weight at the end of the story when in "Southland" the sacrifice isn't even the focus of the final moments. When it arrives to it the sacrifice is pretty much written off, and one character's self-love becomes the focus.
But maybe that's the point. In the world of "Donnie Darko" one person's sacrifice can really change things but in the world of "Southland Tales" it's arbitrary. Then again, so is everything about "Southland Tales."
I'm not a hater of Richard Kelly or anything. I loved "Donnie" but hated "Southland." I guess I'm neutral, but with hope. I really hope "The Box" is something good. I hope to just write off "Southland Tales" under the cliched term of Sophomore Slump.
So when are you critics and bloggers gonna get all cahiers du cinema on these posers and soulless stylists and start injecting some passion for the art into what's available. I'm doing my part, assembling my works and making ridiculously awful/wonderful shorts at myspace.com/51deep...please note, ridiculous. But it's a start. Bring on the revolution. The time is ripe.
Colin: I think it has little to do with the movie's "success" and more to do with its pretensions. Your average crap festival is simply dumb on all levels, from the conceits behind it to the lines spoken on the screen. But because Kelly is a (let's be kind) dimestore intellectual, his very subject matter and method of delivery just begs for the big guns to come out and tear him down.
That doesn't make him any kind of success. It just makes him even more of a spectacular failure.
And Johnny: I can't stand DONNIE DARKO. Unite!
Girl why you be hatin on Spaceballs and Brazil, yo, they's be cult classics? You be trippin, dawg. Right about IAMMMMW, though. Peace out.