It’s pretty clear that AI looks like good writing or art to people who have no idea what the fuck good writing or art is supposed to look like. I always think of the AI prompt that was told to write a paragraph in the style of William Gibson; it produced prose that was full of the most generic “noir” imagery, lots of…

The original scrawl for the original Star Wars had at least one guy manually cranking the text over top of the overhead projector while another guy filmed it, and one guy created the starfield and another guy composited it using special equipment.

The funny thing is that now apparently AI art prompts are feeding increasingly off AI-generated imagery, so the results are becoming more aesthetically inbred over time. At some point it will be much easier to spot AI imagery, simply because it’ll have that look to it. The Secret Invasion credits are a good example of…

That has a social function, though. Ted Chiang has talked about this. When the Beastie Boys sampled Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” for “Rhymin’ & Stealin’,” that was an aha moment. They knew that lots of listeners would recognize the sample and think it was cool or funny. An AI is just averaging out the…

These were not just random suits, they were essential talents in curating, managing, and programming the movies in TCM’s vast library, which includes not just movies from Warner Bros. but MGM and many other studios as well. It’s so bad that Scorsese, Spielberg, and Paul Thomas Anderson had an emergency meeting today…

It certainly hasn’t helped the movie’s prospects. But the fact that Miller wasn’t recast, which would be about the least and smartest thing Warner Bros. could do, reveals the schizoid nature of the whole enterprise. You hear about how the studio wants to wrap up this chapter of the DC cinematic universe, but the…

2000 was “only” almost a quarter century ago.

So the latest Warner Bros. news: Zaslav axed most of TCM’s top execs yesterday, including general manager Pola Chagnon as well as head of programming Charles Tabesh, both of whom had been with the company for 25 years.

Spiderverse’s visuals are as revolutionary today as Toy Story was in 95.

Marvel created or at least popularized the idea of a shared superhero movie universe, and it had a five-year jump on its closest rival, Warner Bros./DC. That’s a first mover advantage. Virtually every other studio has tried at one time or another to mimic Marvel’s approach but almost all of them have failed miserably.…

Truth be told, most people have not followed the Miller story that closely. Miller was never a big star or had headlined a movie. The last time they’d appeared as the Flash in a theatrical release was Justice League, nearly six years ago. So I don’t think the controversy harmed the movie, except among the viewers who…

My guess is that everything that isn’t currently filming is gonna be delayed indefinitely due to the writers’ strike (and maybe the SAG-AFTRA strike as well). 

Don’t forget Adam West!

I’ve been listening to a podcast called Make Mike Marvel, in which a dyed-in-the-wool MCU fan and an older guy who’s more into Philip Roth and knows next to nothing about Marvel (both producers for Tom Scharpling’s Best Show podcast) watch every movie and show in the franchise. Early on, the older viewer (the Mike of…

I’d put even odds on Coulson (or a variant thereof) showing up on Loki.

My big concern is the library. I’ve been going through the Warner Bros. catalog looking at movies I’d want to own on physical media, because I figure that’s going to be the first to go. Most of the old-school studio execs were creeps or worse, but they seemed to genuinely enjoy watching movies and making movies. For…

I think also (and this is based on purely anecdotal evidence) the audiences have changed over the years, especially the last decade or so. It seems like most studio movies are aimed at younger people who’ve never known a world in which there weren’t Marvel movies. Fabelmans is the sort of thing that, had it come out…

The big hit CGI movies lately seem to be mostly video game adaptations, Mario and Sonic, and while they’re obviously aimed at small children, I have to assume they’re also designed to appeal to parents who have fond memories of playing those games when they were kids or teenagers. Not quite the same as having to endure…

The thing that strikes me the most about this video is it sounds like the guy is turning into a werewolf, and he just happens to have the series finale of his favorite superhero show on at the same time.

Working on it, sincere thanks.