The Emperors New Clothes

Genius is a title bestowed lightly on just about everyone. Thanks to numerous criteria its never been easier to be a genius. For example, if you make a comic book adaptation that is just about inferior in every way to the texts it was based upon but it makes a lot of money you are a genius. Also if you create 3 annoying characters appearing on tv week after week depicting them to the annoyance of many and flesh out an inconsequential plot line to provide the minimum progress necessary to lift you above catch phrase comedy you are also a genius.
And if you create a truly unique and original show out of a simple premis that doesn't make much money and is given absurdly obscure scheduling you are also a genius.

But my friend described a movie quite brilliantly when they said it was a bit of the 'emperor's new clothes' I can't remember what it was, maybe/probably mulholland drive that is completely impenatrable unless you look up interviews where Lynch describes the themes and archetypes and subtext you being not in possession of the 6th sense where quite justified in not extracting from the content of the film presented to you.
And 'emperor's new clothes' like the allegory fairytale possible the first exposure any child gets to the concept of try-hards and posuers (I wonder if there is an eastern equivalent?) means that people pretend to get what the fuck was going on in order to appear intelligent and not stupid.
I best like Morley's categorisation of films like 2001 and Mulholland Drive as 'not a film, it's a bunch of scenes' and one film that tickles the boundary is Donny Darko.
Today I wasted 3 hours of my life watching Southland Tales. I never thought I would ever see a movie worse than 'Dream One' an obscure Swedish film my dad rented on VHS to entertain us stupid kids at a dinner party. And to give you some perspective on how bad and obscure this film was I couldn't find reference to it on THE INTERNET.
This could be it, but I'm pretty sure it involved a giant beach ball?
Anyway, the problem with tickling is that whilst tickling a clitiros may seem like a good idea, it's a bit sensitive when it comes to direct stimulation and can only take so much. Donny Darko may have lucked out as a masterpiece by having strong enough performances from the cast and the nonsensical plot being close enough to a closed loop as to allow one to walk away satisfied, maybe a little confused as to what you had just consumed but a full stomach non-the-less. I enjoyed when the lights came up in the cinema the full force of the emperors new clothes effect when other audience members would spin around and try and demonstrate the 'don't you get it what happened was...' and then as they laid out their versions of what had happened they noticed that what they thought they had figured out was not sufficiently supported or particularly relevant.
Anyway at least Donny Darko succeeded in making several people at least feel something, brought some respect to whatsherface, put Patrick Swazye back out there and launched Jake Gyllenhaal's career.

Southland tales does none of this. Its shit, last year around this post christmas time I watched Hannibal Rising, and was amazed that such a bad film could ever get made, and such obvious mistakes be made in this day and age yet here I am a full year later looking at the burning carcass of Southland Tales etched into my retinas and thinking 'what the fuck? again?' and let's put this straight in 2007/2008 Southland tales grossed $365,000ish dollars. With a budget of $15 or $17 MILLION dollars it suggests that its boxoffice takings likely wouldn't have paid for the film stock.

I watched it knowing nothing, so it opens up and I think, okay, I'm watching a film like Spellbound/mad hot ballroom or something a documentary set in the southern states of America. Then a nuclear bomb goes off and I think, okay cool I can always watch an apocalyptic movie in the vain of Children of Men/The Road/The Myst etc shot in the style of Jericho.
Then I start thinking I'm playing Command and Conquer again as an interface opens up and fills me in on the hypothetical consequences of a nuclear attack in Texas, it is a prologue reminiscent of one of the worst post production decisions in history which is that of David Lynch's 'Dune' (which I'm told will be remade) in that it is poorly done, convoluted and contains far too much information that by the time we land in the film and are introduced to the narrator we are confused and it never get's easier.

Too many ideas. And that's ultimately the shit sandwhich you are left with a Sci-fi/Headfuck/Comedy/Mokumentary/Allegory. There are characters they easily could have just cut out of the movie, I thought for a moment the movie had some merits and would prove surprisingly interesting, like a 360 degree attack on all the douchebags that had profited from the war on terror, the douchebag politicians that suspended civil liberties and the douchebag social alternative groups that claimed the problems of the day somehow legitimised their long discredited alternative - the bogus dilemma of our times 'capitalism or socialism' is the new damned if you do, damned if you don't that probably serves to prop up capitalism.

Anyway if the film had been about that it would have been arguably worth the money even if it didn't make any at least as a text to study or a message to get across it could be justified.
In the end, it just didn't go anywhere, didn't make any sense, had impressive visual effects in some scant parts, plenty of non-sensical sequences, plenty of allusions to significance of bits that turned out to have no significance, dragged the fine work of Jane's addiction down with it, inexplicable inclusion of midgets, a pointless story, shifting premisis, poor characters, poor dialogue and shit in a zip lock bag.

Actually shit in a zip locked bag would have made Southland Tales better, the movie unfortunately does not contain shit in a zip locked bag.
It's just a fucking piece of shit that deserves to be buried up margeret thatchers cunt with her.

I think though here is a lesson about economics, investment and finance in general. It is Warren Buffett's sage advice to 'not invest in things you don't understand' a policy that saw him pass on Microsoft. Doesn't matter to Buffett he's still the world's richest man most of the time.
But if you were a producer and you saw that Donny Darko made a lot of money, so you saw the film, you would probably then sit back and say 'okay if I'm truly honest with myself I don't understand why this made a lot of money' and you would not have given a couple of million to the guy who promptly would turn it into $20,000 for you.
This was easy to understand with Donny Darko, and should have resulted in Southland Tales not ever being made. For Hanibal Rising I would concede that it may have been harder. But maybe you would look at the success of Silence of the Lambs, and the oscars it took home, and then the ten years interviening it and Red Dragon and the oscars it didn't take home and look at the box office returns and say 'okay it was a long awaited sequal, generated a lot of buzz, got a good crowd turnout who found it inferior to the original' you can understand why it made money but then realised that wasn't sustainable in the long run. So when you released Hannibal you could have said 'okay, obviously there were less intervening years so there was less buzz about the franchise returning, fans didn't like it as much as the original still, but the loyal fans obliging put out their money' understanding how it did make money should have said 'quit while you are ahead' and not 'force the author to write an origin piece by threatening to give his precious intellectual property you've licensed to some hack in order to line your own pockets' resulting in a cliched, dull and uninspired catch of buzzwords and bullfuck where you surrender the one man carrying the franchise being Anthony Hopkins.

Anyway the moral of the story is that on average people are average and genius should not be used lightly.