This was incredibly common back in the day. Elsa Lanchester wrote in her autobiography about how she would often be paid to play “the other woman” so couples could get divorced. She would check into a hotel with a man, he would leave, she’d spend a nice night at the hotel.

She’s probably best known for playing the Bride of Frankenstein, but she was a fantastic actor and dancer, and married to Charles Laughton, who was one of the best character actors of the early 20th century, and a fantastic director. And also gay. Her book Elsa Lanchester, Herself, is INCREDIBLE.

And the really sad part is all the harm that was already caused by this cash grab. Environmental impact, lost jobs, users causing harm to themselves and others. I have seen a couple of online people in the grips of AI psychosis and it's one of the most horrifying things I have ever witnessed.

The scary part is that it IS working with some people. I talk to folks who can't go five minutes without saying they asked ChatGPT this and Claude that. This, of course, encourages AI companies to continue their "it's inevitable, you may as well relax and enjoy it" talking points.

Basically, AI companies are hoping to get us all hooked on their products before the bills come due so they can jack up token prices. Pesky people asking questions and pointing out stuff that doesn't work are ruining the whole plan and it's very rude of them.

I dust my house. My AI Robot watches. "It should be you doing this." "Can't. I'm writing a novel for Primark." "That's not why you were invented." "These 153,000 fan letters say otherwise." "They're all from upcycled toasters. And you programmed them." "Literary snobbery will get you nowhere."

I'm (barely) old enough to remember when product liability lawsuits were leveled on toy companies over the death of one child swallowing a plastic missile. There has got to be an attorney who wants this pelt on their wall.

Yet I can't buy lawn darts anymore because kids might get hurt.

Fred Astaire was #BOTD, so it seems fitting I post my favorite of all the Astaire-Rogers dances, in which they replay their (failed) romance in Swing Time through the course of one long, climactic dance. Stunning in and of itself, but unforgettable within the context of the film.

Bei den Tagesthemen wurde heute NIUS zitiert. Wie man als öffentlich-rechtlicher Sender ernsthaft seine Feinde, die nicht ansatzweise journalistischen Standards genügen, auch noch freiwillig eine Bühne geben kann, als wäre die Welt noch 2012, I don‘t get it.

happy 9th anniversary to the day we watched Zendaya fall madly in love with Tom Holland in real-time

what could the story of a veteran returning home from a prolonged, needless war — one born of self-destructive hubris and lorded over by petty gods and pettier kings — ever have to say about America

Johanna Czerny, 1. Vorsitzende des AVÜ: „Wir lehnen jegliche unvergütete und ungenehmigte Nutzung urheberrechtlich geschützter Leistungen für KI-Training ab und fordern einen transparenten, politisch regulierten Umgang mit der Verwertung unserer kreativen Arbeit.“ #HumansNotMachines

🚨Das vom AVÜ in Auftrag gegebenen Gutachten ist da: Die KI-Klausel, gegen die Synchronsprecher*innen seit Monaten protestieren, betrifft auch die Übersetzung - die Grundlage jeder Synchronisation. Für faire Mitbestimmung & Honorare, gegen den Ausverkauf menschlicher Expertise! #HumansNotMachines

AVÜ-Statement zum KI-Klausel-Gutachten! @kino-zeit.bsky.social @criticde.bsky.social @schoener-denken.de @sirdonnerbold.bsky.social @atrae.bsky.social @subtleuk.bsky.social @plotgewitter.bsky.social @fiteurope.bsky.social @knoerer.bsky.social @35mmhh.bsky.social @patrickheidmann.bsky.social

Guter Text über "AI" und warum vieles davon in Wirklichkeit nicht viel mehr als Betrug ist. "KI: Die vorgetäuschte Automatisierung" www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/ki-menschlic... #AbolishAI

Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark and Ida Lupino in the excellent noir thriller, “Road House” (1948)

What a headline

Buuuuuh! Pfui! BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH! Geh nach Hause und setz dich in die stille Ecke! (Erstmal abwarten, ob er das durchzieht. Soderbergh wollte ja nach 2013 auch nie wieder einen Kinofilm drehen. Das hat er sich ja zum Glück anders überlegt. Vielleicht kommt er auch hier zurück zu Sinnen.)

I feel compelled to talk about Cecil B DeMille's THE ROAD TO YESTERDAY (1925), which is an insane movie based on an insane stage play. It's a time travel romance in which two modern couples are hurtled back to Elizabethan times via a train crash and that's the more normal part of the film.

Depluralize a movie: Crow on the Orient Express

Myrna Loy and William Powell, publicity for After The Thin Man (1936).

Techbros seem to love Tolkien, so here's an analogy to help you understand what genAI is. GenAI is The One Ring. You think your use is justified, b/c you don't have evil in your heart. But it came from evil, it is intended for evil purpose, & anything you do with it will be twisted to that end.

Nach dem abartig hässlichen "Vaiana"-Remake-Trailer endlich wieder gute Neuigkeiten aus dem Haus der Maus!

Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly performing on the set of Singin' in the Rain (1952)

James Dean on the Warner Bros. lot during production of East of Eden (1955)

I guess writing an piece that says "good filmmakers use the right tools for the right job" —— which has been true since the dawn of cinema itself —— is just too boring for the trades

First Christopher Miller clarifies, now Phil Lord. I am extremely grateful for them putting out this information.

you can all stop asking me to comment now "Project Hail Mary" (2026)

This was a fun one to write over at Backstage — especially in light of this Kilmer nonsense. I got tasked with not just exploring breakups in film, but the choices that made them great. Acting isn't a recital. They're not parrots. They're performers. They shape the words.

Crime is a state of mind. Top Ten Film Noirs ... That Aren't About Crime — Part 1 #filmnoir

All an AI can do is do the next most likely thing based on all of its training. It HAS to imitate other choices, since it cannot make any. Hackman made that choice no one else would and I've never forgotten it. AI cannot act. It never will. It's a fool's mission to think otherwise.

In the film, he's talking about his marriage and how it felt apart, and at one point, Hackman takes a pause. He smiles and just says, "She left." It's almost sing-songy. It is the last way anyone would think to deliver that line. It is perfect. It sticks in my head because it's such an odd choice.

There's a performance moment I think about waaaaaaaaay more often than I should that sums up what is wonderful about human beings and acting. It's from Alan Parker's MISSISSIPPI BURNING, and involves Gene Hackman.

Do you think auto-correct is "choosing" the words they throw at you? Nope. Predictive text is not the same as a choice being made, and all genAI does is auto-fill what the algorithm calculates the most likely next thing is. That is almost exactly the opposite of human performance.

Ich lese zigtausendfach lieber eine ehrlich-authentisch-verpeilte SMS als ein unbeseeltes Copy-and-Paste vom neusten, zahnlosen Zufallsergebnis der ressourcenzerstörenden Klaumaschine. Menschen, wollt ihr wirklich nur atmend, nichts denkend in der Gegend sitzen?!

Edith Head and Elizabeth Taylor during a break from filming A Place in the Sun (1951)

Meine Oscarprognose 2025 Bester Film One Battle After Another Beste Regie Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another Bester Hauptdarsteller Michael B. Jordan – Blood & Sinners Beste Hauptdarstellerin Jessie Buckley – Hamnet Bester Nebendarsteller Sean Penn – One Battle After Another (1/4)

A genAI take I hear a lot is that the genie is already out of the bottle. “Well this crime is already happening so we may as well benefit from it.” If your argument makes you sound like a technofascist, please consider the possibility you’re being trained to talk like that.

Ein kluger Dokumentarfilm, der nicht nur das Werk der Meisterin des psychologischen Thrillers in den Blick nimmt, sondern vor allem ihre lesbischen Beziehungen, die sie Zeit ihres Lebens verstecken musste: LOVING PATRICIA HIGHSMITH läuft heute Nacht auf Arte. Die TV-Tipps: tinyurl.com/yem3jkdw

You see it, you have to share it. Them's the rules, I didn't make them.

“We were stunned [about the prescience] for a while, but we’ve really gotten to the point where it’s really sad. It’s just sad how predictable and lame and obvious and wrong it all is. Fascism is just a total fail in the end.” www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-featur...

Hell yeah!

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire on roller skates, gliding to George and Ira Gershwin’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” in Shall We Dance (1937). Inventive, effortless, and utterly magical. 🎶✨ #ClassicHollywood #FredAndGinger #ShallWeDance

On the one hand, this is marginally unfair to some stuff that's just "normal bad." On the other hand, it's a speedrun toward mortally injuring the economic viability of AI as a product and harming the career prospects of people who "work" in AI, so do it as much as possible 👍

Becky’s gonna kill more Nazis!! Hurray!

Hedy Lamarr for National Innovation Day. Lamarr co-invented frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology during WWII, which laid the groundwork for modern wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth.

Nothing like the magic of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Here they are with Irving Berlin during production of “Carefree” (1938)

I spent way too much time putting together an oral history of “Scotty Doesn’t Know” from EUROTRIP that had been erased from the internet, but now it’s back, with some added commentary