At the encouragement of Fakerbot, I listened to several of the AI-songs out there before they all got yanked after a couple of days. But some of them are back up!
Hearing early Beach Boys”I Get Around” era Brian Wilson falsetto on “Be My Baby” – the song that drove his entire professional career – is sublime. Listen before they take it down again.
I also heard some pretty bad AI Nirvana.
The best of the lot is definitely Elvis singing Iggy Pop.
You can’t even tell it’s simulated!
I’ll be watching Glass Onion, on account of I liked the first one in the series. Netflix blew $450 million on two installments of the Knives Out franchise, presumably because the initial film cost $40 million to make, and did over $300 million box office.
Good luck recouping your investment!
Netflix also shelled out $1 billion with a “B” for The Rings of Power, which is Tolkien content from his sparse writing about the Second Age. I can’t imagine how much The Silmarillion would set them back.
Anyway, as a true Tolkien nerd I’ll say it’s comically off. Not just “hey we’ll edit George RR Martin a bit and Game of Thrones will really zip!” but “we’ll compress centuries of characters into shit that never happened or makes sense and people that never interacted and throw Weta Digital and 20 VFX houses at it.”
Supposedly the Tolkien estate signed off on it but it’s hard to believe. Maybe as a non-Tolkien story it’s fine for some people, but I wouldn’t know as I already know who the major characters are and bring all that baggage to it.
[n.b. I realize you all hate Tolkien, but I love his prose and his attention to detail, layers, and backstory. The Elven languages were created because he felt that gave a “whole cloth” feeling to the stories. For me, it works. I appreciated LOTR more after reading The Silmarillion.]
Pitch Meeting, as always, succinctly captures whatever the hell is supposed to be happening.
My mother gave me an Amazon gift certificate, and rather than spend it on something useful like a Nic Cage pillow, I decided I’d buy something really stupid and overpriced. Kidding. I’ve been looking for this for awhile, and haven’t run across one anywhere, so I pulled the trigger because it was free money. Not in the best shape (record plays great, but cover is a little beat), but I’m happy to finally have it.
Collectors collect.
The nice thing about buying used records is the artists get fuck all from it. If I ever happen to meet any of the contributors to this very good record, I will at least buy them a beer or other beverage of their choice, but that’ll probably never happen.
This is ridiculous, and I can’t believe those people applauded after having their eardrums assaulted. Everyone knows that the best Billy Joel covers were done by the Subteens…
I’m sure it’s old news to Makerbot, but I was not aware there was an alternate ending to Army of Darkness. Rather, an original ending that test audiences hated, prompting a rewrite / reshoot.
Bruce Campbell Twitter is also great Twitter, if there is such a thing.
Army of Darkness flashback. The ending that never was. Ash swallows the wrong amount of magic drops trying to get back home, oversleeps and awakes to a world destroyed. Typical Ash. Test audiences said this version was a “downer,” so we re-shot a “happy” ending. Go figure. pic.twitter.com/PBAn5BHbVi
Do proto-punks like the Stranglers think they could possibly be as hip as “the world’s coolest insurance salesmen”? Don’t they know it’s all mistakes? Who wins a fight between 5/4 and 6/8 time signatures?
Directed by Zack King-of-Plot-Holes Snyder, cribbed from Escape From New York, American Werewolf In London, Aliens, Ocean’s 11, and Raider’s Of The Lost Ark. And probably others I missed.
