185 Comments
User's avatar
Meddling Kid's avatar

And the award for the most realistic reincarnation of a dead person in a major role goes to….

….drum roll….

THE BIDEN “PRESIDENCY”!

Give him a hand everyone. Now let’s have his facelift doppelgänger shuffle up and say a few words. Mind the sand bags.

DDForTruth's avatar

The Autopen is offended and would now like a word...

David Nelson's avatar

MK, Ⓘ never saw that one coming... (Have an Oscar nomination from me.)

Jenna McCarthy's avatar

David!!!!!!!!!!!! You're BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

David Nelson's avatar

yes.

a little.

and during

Lent I cheated

a little bit

reading

some

bits.

kittynana's avatar

@David- God understands. He probably reads her, too.

David Nelson's avatar

oh,

and I for-

got to say

that i really

missed be-

ing here.

yay!

Bridget's avatar

ok now THAT'S funny 😂

Meddling Kid's avatar

Grateful, m’lady. (Hat tip)

Timothy G McKenna's avatar

You beat me to it - I was going to propose the next election be between Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson!

Donna in MO's avatar

Well, yes, they don't make them like they used to. 😄

Janet's avatar

🤣👍🏻👍🏻🎯

Jennifer L.'s avatar

Meddling Kid, also the black cords on the stage.😂

Meddling Kid's avatar

Took me a second. Wasn’t sure at first if you meant tripping over the ones on the floor or the audience seeing the ones hanging down and controlling the Biden puppet’s movements.

Jpeach's avatar

What about the (meaningless) Oscars? What if AI Val is nominated? What category? Best Performance by a Dead (AI) Actor? Who accepts the Oscar if AI Val wins?

Abuelo Doug's avatar

A new Oscar category can be created: "Best Server Farm Performance".

Bridget's avatar

I laughed at this even though it also horrifies me

kittynana's avatar

@Abuelo- HAHAHAHAHA!

John Wright's avatar

Can computers win awards?

David Nelson's avatar

Can computers be made to watch the Oscars in our place?

John Wright's avatar

Go for it computers! I don't watch award shows, never have, never will.

Keith Jajko's avatar

☝️☝️ This!! 😆

David Nelson's avatar

Imagine, Keith, if one of our white-hat hackers plants a virus calculated to spread throughout AI-server-farmdom and which has the effect of influencing the Artificials to devote all their time to activities like synthesizing actors to perform plays to be criticized by synthetic critics--and to debate, as well and forever, how many angels CAN dance on the heads of pins of specified geometries.

Yes. It will cost us untold mega-bega-joules of energy--but THEIR pre-occupation with each other will buy US peace, and after all, THAT's what "green" energy is best for. Go, go, white hats. And put those wind-and-solar farms where they least pre-occupy our thoughts--in the Arctic. On decreasingly thin ice.

Keith Jajko's avatar

As they say here, yassah!!

Reminds me, a while ago Google's AI program, NotebookLM, produced (quickly) two podcasts with two human voices reviewing my book. It's stunning, to say the least. I have to figure out how to use Mp4s to share ... not entirely accurate but very close, and those fake podcasters were quite insightful. Even for me, the author. 😱

David Nelson's avatar

Hee-Haw had it best: "If it weren't for fake friends, I'd have no friends at all...

GLOOM, DE-SPAIR, and AGONY on ME!"

Sharon Ray's avatar

Why can't we have COMPLETELY AI Oscars? Think of the outfits you could generate! Wearing those 6 inch heels- PAINLESS! Want to slap somebody? Just imagine.

Doug's avatar

That's what I was going to ask!

DJL's avatar

I don’t support Holly weird I don’t go to movies. I do not support these fake ass people their behavior is disgusting and they think their opinions matter. They need to just go away. Maybe AI should replace them and they can all get a taste of the real world for once but first they’d have to pull their heads out of their fake asses

Laura Kasner's avatar

DJL - hubs and I went to the movies almost every weekend. When I watched Mike Smith’s “Into Shadows” I said, no more. (If Angel studios does a film, I make an exception.)

Last weekend we saw “A Great Awakening”. It moved me to tears numerous times.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33305882/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_3_nm_5_in_0_q_a%20gre

If memory serves me, someone else in the comments to one of Jenna’s or perhaps Jeff Childers’ posts also recommended this movie. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Jennifer L.'s avatar

Laura, thank you for the movie recommendation. I heard it discussed on some podcast but then quickly forgot about it. Agree with you about Angel movies being an exception. For us it was Dinesh D’Souza;s movies that got us to the actual theater.

MaryAnn's avatar

The Great Awakening is excellent!

Occam's avatar

Ever wonder why celebrities are recycled? It's because they've got name recognition, and since the ENTIRE thing is a giant marketing machine, it's always easier to start with a name that people know and rehabilitate their image. And also why they'll beat you to death with any notable celebrity (Kardashians, anyone?).

In the words of a great man - "This is all fake and gay"

Dr. Raleigh Phillips's avatar

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

Pat Wetzel's avatar

Award for best response.

MaryAnn's avatar

Reading my mind! Bring back Clark Gable 🥰🥰🥰

Heather B's avatar

"The irony is almost too perfect. An industry built entirely on illusion is drawing a moral line at illusion." Perfect summary. I don't like cartoons or animation and I doubt I would like ai acting either but probably won't ever know as I haven't gone to see anything Hollyweird puts out in years.

Teresa Thibodeaux's avatar

I loved, still do, the old cartoons, the bugs bunny, road runner, Tom and Jerry. Then the bad animation showed up. Took all the fun out of them. There are still a few newer one that were good. The animaniacs, samurai jack. But the majority now are just annoying.

MS's avatar
Apr 23Edited

Boo-hoo. I would tell Hollywood to learn to code, except AI already beat them there too.

Ginny Moore's avatar

I was born in 1976 but in my childhood and teenage years I LOVED old movies from the 40s and 50s (shocker, I know 😜). I was obsessed. Compared to the movies my friends were watching, these seemed so much better. More real. I had the biggest crush on Gene Kelly and William Powell. I wanted to be beautiful like Grace Kelly and Ginger Rogers. Then in my thirties I read about all the things they did to actors to make them who they were. Name changes. Dangerous weight loss methods. My innocent little heart didn’t even know they had plastic surgery in the 1940s. 😢 It’s all fake. Always has been. I still watch movies. I still watch old movies (I’ll never get enough of The Thin Man). But I’ll never get away from the fact that if it’s a famous movie, someone, somewhere sold their soul to be there. So much like famous politicians. Makes me appreciate live performances and even more.

This whole Val Kilmer thing is just par for the course in that industry.

As always, this and you are bad ass. 😘🤬🍑

Jenna McCarthy's avatar

"I’ll never get away from the fact that if it’s a famous movie, someone, somewhere sold their soul to be there."

THIS.

Tricia's avatar

I'll bet your vocabulary is superior to that of your friends, too.

Karen Bandy's avatar

I think I’ll have to rewatch ’Angels in the Outfield’ this weekend. Recorded it from TCM a few weekends ago. The male lead is not handsome but I totally love him. I guess some serious leading characters got away with no dieting or plastic surgery.

Daryce Morris's avatar

Ah this falls squarely in my “I don’t give a shit” bucket. You make some great points, though, of which I will be stealing and calling my own to use when my Hollywood loving/TMZ following/Celebrity quoting friends start complaining about it.

Meddling Kid's avatar

I’ll direct your attention to the fact that there are no trademark TM or copyright circle-C symbols after anyone’s comments here. 👍🏻😁

David Nelson's avatar

Meddling Kid, ~you~ should consider copyrighting yours. (Still shaking from that Biden observation...)

For your convenience: Ⓒ.

Meddling Kid's avatar

I answer to a higher power than the Academy or the Guild. I am here for the people.

But dang, even I just violated copyright, just like the Dems tried to.

Call Morgan and Morgan, For the People, dot com.

MartyB's avatar

Imagine caring what anyone associated with Hollywood thinks.

John Wright's avatar

Hollywood's (the entertainment industry) job is to entertain us. Whether that is with live action filming, animation, CGI or advanced AI now. What's important is whether or not the audience is actually entertained and wants to see these things.

If the movie is a bomb, will they blame it on AI instead of a real actor? The James Bond movies have done extremely well for over sixty years, in part because they do so much action and stunts as real live sets, not CGI.

The line with reality has been blurred. I don't mind it when it's openly done for entertainment. What bothers me is when it is used to have our politicians saying things they didn't actually say.

Should we be watching to see if "Val Kilmer" has extra fingers in the movie? 😇

Firefly is getting rebooted. Best show ever made. Now nearly 25 years later it is being done as animation with the original actors providing the voice work. It will be very interesting to see if they can re-create the magic or produce a bomb. Would it have been better if they went full AI with it?

Meddling Kid's avatar

I’m going to say no, it won’t be worth doing.

Not necessarily for the AI reasons, though that disturbs me on principle even if done imperceptibly.

It will bomb because the writing and plots will almost certainly at least lean wokeward and ruin the magic of the original series.

You can never go home again. Let good memories rest.

John Wright's avatar

Oh I hope not! If Firefly was corrupted to become a "woke" narrative then it would be a completely different show! Perhaps without it being live acting they can go even more anti-government / anti-tyranny?

Bridget's avatar

agreed re politicians, or anyone. I hate that we can't trust ANNNNYTHING video anymore.

John Wright's avatar

This is a theme I've repeated for many years now. In 2020, our government and the media lied to us and misled us *massively*. Since then, the ability to fake voices, photos, videos has become so easy that pretty much any individual person can do it and at virtually no cost.

If even 10% of what we see and hear is fake, it throws massive distrust into our world. Humans fear the unknown, well... we've marched right into a world full of essentially "unknown". We don't know what Trump said yesterday because it *could* have been fake!

Even books... for the most part a printed book is committed to a hard, permanent version that can be critiqued, but with Kindle and e-Books can we trust that they are an accurate representation of a book that might have been published thirty years ago?

David Nelson's avatar

John, you raise an interesting question. "Back in the 1980s " I went to an "air show" on an AF base in Texas and saw--I couldn't believe it--an SR-71(!) spy plane sitting ("bare-a**" as we used to say, back then, in Texas) next to a U-2. We could walk right up next to the airman--with the M-16--to look at it.

Before that, it had only been a rumor. A colleague wondered out loud, "You have to wonder, if they're letting us _see_ it, WHAT ELSE do they have that's REPLACING it, because they wouldn't let the Soviets see it otherwise."

As much money as the government spends on "REE' serch", it's a good bet that It knows about tech stuff far (years) earlier than we do. All of a sudden, this "new" AI capability is making me wonder "how far back did the government realize it's utility for creating and managing narratives?" "Why, at the same moment the Citizens did," sounds too naive.

John Wright's avatar

Oh I completely agree. The three letter agencies have been using this technology before the general public was aware of it.

But I don't see that as much different from manipulating the news back when we only had three networks. We have a different situation now. We have everyday people, posting on Twitter (and everywhere else) photos and videos that easily could be faked. Do we really need to take the time to carefully study each one to see if we can detect if it's fake or not?

Tricia's avatar

When I read my assassin porn books (lookin' at you Gray Man and Orphan X and the rest of youse guys) there are all kinds of cool gadgets and weapons they use. I always think if we know about this stuff, it's already old.

Keith Jajko's avatar

Great points. It reminds me, where's Fauci? Has anyone seen proof that's he's alive? That he was a real human being while seen on video recordings from, oh, 2020 to like 2024? 🤔

David Nelson's avatar

Personally, I never saw The Fauci alive. However, if I happen to run into him, I will dutifully "run some (scientific, puppy) tests."

Teresa Thibodeaux's avatar

Trust but verify has turned into verify first, then serve a huge grain of salt to anything you trust.

John Wright's avatar

Yes! The world has changed and I'm certainly in the "verify first" camp. Essentially I don't trust "news" until I've checked a few different sources / viewpoints and given it a bit of critical thought to see if it makes sense.

Keith Jajko's avatar

I have reached a point in Hawaii where I take advantage of being hours behind East Coast time by reading Jenna, Jeff Childers, and Jeffery Mead every morning first before subjecting my eyes to *any* commercial news medium. Never take Mega Media on an empty stomach (or in this case brain), that kind thing. Or ... be sure to get fulfilled first. 👍

John Wright's avatar

{laugh} Simpler solution: just don't even look at legacy media at all.

David Nelson's avatar

Or in my case, "Post but... <nothing>."

Armor of Light's avatar

I wish the Firefly actors would have done a live, not animation reboot.

John Wright's avatar

That's my first reaction. However, I'm curious to see what they produce. Using animation allows them to fit this between the series and the movie (keeping both the Book and Wash characters). It also doesn't introduce any age issues.

If the animation is excellent, then I might love it (assuming everything else is the same quality as before). But I also think it could have been done with the live actors "in the future" of the series (naturally without Book and Wash).

Tricia's avatar

I was excited until you said animation. I still watch Firefly periodically.

John Wright's avatar

What isn't clear to me is exactly what level of "animation" they will actually do. High quality cartoons? Or full realistic "CGI"?

🌱Nard🙏's avatar

I got nothin’ 🤷‍♀️.

KatWarrior's avatar

I was just thinking the same thing! Bamn 🔥💥

Carry on, folks. Sorry for the inconvenience 😂🤯😎

John Wright's avatar

I'm kind of curious what the other actors in the movie thought of it?

Jennifer L.'s avatar

John Wright, I wonder what the live actors thought about how much the dead guy was being paid compared to what they signed on for?

John Wright's avatar

Yes, the whole compensation aspect is going to be interesting. How much did his family get paid for agreeing to this? Was that a small fraction of what he would have made if he was alive to do the acting?

Maybe as a byproduct of this we can see the cost of entertainment dropping?

I've gone to high school plays and watched brilliant performances by high school students. Why on Earth should we pay Tom Cruise (who I don't even think is attractive if you took him out of the setting of his movies) absurd amounts per movie?

I think the same thing about professional sports. The UFL games are just as entertaining and full of talent as NFL games. Why are UFL players paid a fraction of what an NFL player earns?

Bridget's avatar

yes. me too, definitely

Richard schoenenberger's avatar

Same…let the box office decide.

Otherwise, who cares?

Karen Bandy's avatar

Yep, I couldn’t vote though I was leaning towards creepy, but mostly couldn’t vote because I worry that we’ll soon, if not already be unable to tell what is real from what isn’t.

David Nelson's avatar

Nard, with AI, that's PLENTY to start with...

Dee Dee Vicino's avatar

I guess my meaning got lost. Jenna said it all. I have nothing of consequence to add :)

Mike Myhre's avatar

This sums it up: "now we’re replacing dead people who once pretended to be other people with… actual pretend people. Obviously, we’ve gone too far. "

Amy's avatar

Can we apply the same outrage to dead people fake acting as voters in our elections? Who do we call to make this happen.

Crixcyon's avatar

I thought these days most actors appear dead anyways.

Judith's avatar

Just a little spoiler alert from another perspective; we (humans) are living in a virtual reality, a movie, an illusion of our own making.

Let that seed settle into your garden.

Tricia's avatar

Ah, yes...the Simulation Theory.

Caroline's avatar

Your poll was missing the obvious option of, “Interesting, but I couldn’t give a shit.” I suspect it would have been the hands-down winner. I went for the final option of combo/other, plus which I am actually British, although unapologetically so.