The Criterion Collection

[concolt]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

I have to admit, after the AI thing, I'm a little bothered Brody won the Oscar, especially against Ralph Fiennes for Conclave, Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice, Timothée Chalamet for A Complete Unknown, and Colman Domingo for Sing Sing. They're four solid actors, and at least the four of them didn't have AI to help them out, they stood on their own two feet.

What if he had used prosthetics to change his appearance? Or cgi? Or they used some kind of filter while filming? Why does it matter if AI was used when movies use all kinds of tricks. You can look at other categories this year and they have people nominated that don’t even fit the category.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by concolt

What if he had used prosthetics to change his appearance? Or cgi? Or they used some kind of filter while filming? Why does it matter if AI was used when movies use all kinds of tricks. You can look at other categories this year and they have people nominated that don’t even fit the category.

I think it's more of a moral ground than anything.

When a team sits down and edits a person's voice, that's people doing that.

When a team mixes the voice of a singer into a movie, people again.

Using prosthetics, people have to do them.

CGI, for the longest time (don't know if things have changed), but even though CGI cuts a lot of jobs out, there's still people sitting at computers rendering the CGI.

Using a filter while filming, a person put that filter on the camera, a person filmed through that camera, and a person took that filter off.




AI literally means the computer's doing the work, and no people are involved behind a few people typing prompts into a program, then sitting and playing pocketball while the AI does people's jobs, people who are now out shaking coffee cups on the corner because AI is doing their job for them for peanuts. (Fun fact: with the exception of maybe a few hundred people, most in the film and television industry live hand-to-mouth, it's not a rich, pretty life.)




And I think that's what disturbs me about this whole Adrian Brody thing, not what was done, but the fact that the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

From the outside looking in, he didn't even deliver the performance he won Best Actor for. He plus AI delivered the performance. (And in my opinion, the accent wasn't even convincing, but was very over the top. Having heard born-and-raised Hungarians and descendants of Hungarians speak, even Brody's AI-assisted Hungarian accent isn't that good. Al Pacino in Scarface and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins had more convincing accents than Brody did, and that's saying less about them and more about him.)

I'm worried that by allowing AI into movies (after it was a major point of contention in the actors' and writers' strikes, and rightly so), and by literally giving an acting award to someone whose performance was assisted by AI, we're opening Pandora's box. It's easy to say "no one's going to make a full-AI movie, no one will ever do that", but if that's the end of the spectrum, and we're already giving an AI-assisted performance an acting Oscar, where is the line drawn?

That's not rhetorical, that's a real question. Where is the line?

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

AI literally means the computer's doing the work, and no people are involved behind a few people typing prompts into a program, then sitting and playing pocketball while the AI does people's jobs, people who are now out shaking coffee cups on the corner because AI is doing their job for them for peanuts. (Fun fact: with the exception of maybe a few hundred people, most in the film and television industry live hand-to-mouth, it's not a rich, pretty life.)

And I think that's what disturbs me about this whole Adrian Brody thing, not what was done, but the fact that the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

That’s not what was done here. This wasn’t prompts creating images out of scratch. This was an audio engineer analyzing Brody’s voice, providing a reference sample of the correct pronunciation, and then reprocessing certain syllables so they basically “tented” Brody’s performance over the correct pronunciation. This is an intensely human activity with lots and lots of trial-and-error. It’s the same concept as pitch correction (analog or digital).

I guess that’s what bugs me about this whole debate, because the whole notion of AI has been reduced to “this job has been killed by someone typing beep-boop,” when in many, many cases, it’s just enhanced a toolset so the machine understands better what the professional is trying to do. It’s like when The Beatles got hammered for using “AI” on their last new song. “Oh no, it’s a robot John Lennon! They sold out!” And…no. It was just an upgrade of the same tech used in the 90s to clean up the songs for the Anthology albums, but able to understand you want to lift a voice off a noisy track instead of destructively nuking problematic frequencies. It was still an audio engineer behind a console doing all of that.

There are many despicable uses for AI and I’m right with you. But adding precision to a professional’s toolbox is not one of them. I’ll give you a personal example - I do a lot of real estate videography. I had one good shot from a particular angle from my quadcopter, which was sort of a miracle because I was fighting winds all day. And then going over the footage, on the lawn, I saw a big dog poop that I missed on the day because sun was blowing out my phone screen. Enough that it would’ve ruined the shot. Couldn’t cut around it, couldn’t crop it out. I’ve used After Effects enough that I could’ve probably spent a couple of hours tracking it over and applying the patch, though it probably wouldn’t have looked great because of the shifting perspective. The new AE tools for removing objects took care of it in about 15 minutes and with far greater precision. Should I have refused to use it to prove my “humanness?” I personally don’t think so.

[concolt]

From what I can tell this has way more human involvement than what people would usually associate with “AI” doing something. To me it seems like even more human involvement than what they did for de-aging in the Fableman and no one seemed upset about that.

[dwk]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

So do we have any predictions yet for Flow? Criterion proper or Janus Contemporaries?

For date, I'm thinking it's got to be July, since it'll still be riding high on April 15th, when the July slate gets announced.

No date or details, but Flow is up for pre-order at Amazon

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by dwk

No date or details, but Flow is up for pre-order at Amazon

$30 for DVD, $40 for Blu-ray, $50 for 4K...what are we thinking for disc count, 1, 1, and 2?

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

$30 for DVD, $40 for Blu-ray, $50 for 4K...what are we thinking for disc count, 1, 1, and 2?

That would be my guess too, though considering the importance the title has now taken in the whole Janus/Criterion story, I could see a 3 disc set if the English-language materials were there.

[dwk]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

$30 for DVD, $40 for Blu-ray, $50 for 4K...what are we thinking for disc count, 1, 1, and 2?

Yeah, those are the standard MSRPs, Amazon just hasn't discounted them any.

[darrellmaclaine]

Haven't seen Anora or Conclave so I can't comment, and *adored* Flow when I did - a worthy winner - but... did anybody's cynicism get the inkling that the Oscars worked out almost suspiciously well for Steven Rales?

Best Picture/Best Director/Best Actress/Best Writing/Best Editing - a film he has global home video rights on
Best Animated Film - a film he has US distribution and home video rights on
Best Adapted Writing - a film he financed and owns

He seems to have more power than some of the actual studios these days, shades of Selznick/Weinstein. I can't work out whether to be grateful or fearful. He's supporting film when it needs it, but I'm not sure we need another super-rich puppetmaster either.

[Ishai]

Originally Posted by darrellmaclaine

He seems to have more power than some of the actual studios these days, shades of Selznick/Weinstein.

More power than some studios? Maybe if he had big box office numbers as well.

It's a good thing when someone actually cares about good films has the power/money to support filmmakers, something the big studios mostly forgot about.

[take1leave1]

The best film of the year was Here, and it wasn't even nominated. Hoping that Criterion will bring it out in 4K as it is an actual experimental movie, something that is rare even in the arthouse circuit in today's age.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by take1leave1

The best film of the year was Here, and it wasn't even nominated. Hoping that Criterion will bring it out in 4K as it is an actual experimental movie, something that is rare even in the arthouse circuit in today's age.

I'm personally fond of it, but a film that was THAT savaged by critics and audiences isn't getting anywhere near the collection unless a reassessment happens in a couple of decades. People *haaaated* it. Which is fine, Soderbergh's Solaris got a F rating on Cinemascore and I adore that film to pieces, but there's gotta be at least something of a consensus or movement defending an excoriated film first.

(Interestingly, I'm pretty sure Megalopolis is going to hit despite some reviews utterly savaging it, but there was an extremely strong cohort calling it brilliant.)

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by darrellmaclaine

Haven't seen Anora or Conclave so I can't comment, and *adored* Flow when I did - a worthy winner - but... did anybody's cynicism get the inkling that the Oscars worked out almost suspiciously well for Steven Rales?

Best Picture/Best Director/Best Actress/Best Writing/Best Editing - a film he has global home video rights on
Best Animated Film - a film he has US distribution and home video rights on
Best Adapted Writing - a film he financed and owns

I mean, it was just his year. But I mean, he also produced Conclave - a glorious film - and it only limped out with a single win. I'm sure that Conclave winning would've meant a lot more for him and Indian Paintbrush than Flow's lower profile wins, and certainly more than Anora.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by Ishai

More power than some studios? Maybe if he had big box office numbers as well.

Conclave did do 100 million. Pretty impressive on a 20 million budget. It didn't result in a win, but still, something you want to see.

[darrellmaclaine]

Originally Posted by Ishai

More power than some studios? Maybe if he had big box office numbers as well.

It's a good thing when someone actually cares about good films has the power/money to support filmmakers, something the big studios mostly forgot about.

I do agree with this too. I think I am just wary of wise men bearing gifts. It has never ended well before!

Originally Posted by DimitriL

I mean, it was just his year. But I mean, he also produced Conclave - a glorious film - and it only limped out with a single win. I'm sure that Conclave winning would've meant a lot more for him and Indian Paintbrush than Flow's lower profile wins, and certainly more than Anora.

You are probably right. He has objectively done a lot of good in his film philanthropy (less so in his day job of rinsing the sick and dying but hey).

[take1leave1]

Originally Posted by DimitriL

I'm personally fond of it, but a film that was THAT savaged by critics and audiences isn't getting anywhere near the collection unless a reassessment happens in a couple of decades. People *haaaated* it. Which is fine, Soderbergh's Solaris got a F rating on Cinemascore and I adore that film to pieces, but there's gotta be at least something of a consensus or movement defending an excoriated film first.

(Interestingly, I'm pretty sure Megalopolis is going to hit despite some reviews utterly savaging it, but there was an extremely strong cohort calling it brilliant.)

I'm a fan of the Soderbergh Solaris too and thought it should be released. We are onto something with these movies considered mediocre by the critical establishment, but are highly experimental, like Here, Megalopolis, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas... The company should take more risks with films like those, instead of waiting until they're safe, they can come out and say here are daring modern films.

[darrellmaclaine]

Originally Posted by take1leave1

I'm a fan of the Soderbergh Solaris too and thought it should be released. We are onto something with these movies considered mediocre by the critical establishment, but are highly experimental, like Here, Megalopolis, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas... The company should take more risks with films like those, instead of waiting until they're safe, they can come out and say here are daring modern films.

Agree to all this. To be fair that's what Paramount have done by putting Better Man into its Presents line and the feedback from some on here has been depressingly conservative.

I can sense something in the air is changing though generally. Indie, experimental and non-franchise/blockbuster films generally seem to be taking up a lot more of the conversation than they were doing not so long ago, and the idea of film as a creative artform (and directors as names, which briefly disappeared) seems to be back on the table, along with the parallel idea that 'easy money' studio commissions like reboots and sequels are as reputationally expensive as they are financially profitable and can't sustain a studio alone.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by DimitriL

I'm personally fond of it, but a film that was THAT savaged by critics and audiences isn't getting anywhere near the collection unless a reassessment happens in a couple of decades. People *haaaated* it. Which is fine, Soderbergh's Solaris got a F rating on Cinemascore and I adore that film to pieces, but there's gotta be at least something of a consensus or movement defending an excoriated film first.

(Interestingly, I'm pretty sure Megalopolis is going to hit despite some reviews utterly savaging it, but there was an extremely strong cohort calling it brilliant.)

I haven't seen Megalopolis yet, but it reminds me a lot of Heaven's Gate. Half said it was a masterpiece, the other half said it was a turkey. Film bombed miserably. It got rereleased and everyone said it was a masterpiece.

I can see Megalopolis coming to Criterion, both because Coppola has a relationship with Criterion and because the story of the film is very similar to Heaven's Gate.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by take1leave1

I'm a fan of the Soderbergh Solaris too and thought it should be released. We are onto something with these movies considered mediocre by the critical establishment, but are highly experimental, like Here, Megalopolis, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas... The company should take more risks with films like those, instead of waiting until they're safe, they can come out and say here are daring modern films.

Originally Posted by darrellmaclaine

Agree to all this. To be fair that's what Paramount have done by putting Better Man into its Presents line and the feedback from some on here has been depressingly conservative.

I can sense something in the air is changing though generally. Indie, experimental and non-franchise/blockbuster films generally seem to be taking up a lot more of the conversation than they were doing not so long ago, and the idea of film as a creative artform (and directors as names, which briefly disappeared) seems to be back on the table, along with the parallel idea that 'easy money' studio commissions like reboots and sequels are as reputationally expensive as they are financially profitable and can't sustain a studio alone.

While I think Criterion wrongly has the arthouse label attached to them, they have done some rather daring films over the years. Freaks, Robinson Crusoe On Mars, The Blob, Heaven's Gate (a film a lot of people still consider awful), the entire filmographies of Cronenberg and Waters, they've put stuff out that the stuffier types may regard as outside their oeuvre.

I, too, would love to see Criterion favoring daring, experimental films, as well as newer, independent films, since many of them are currently either direct-to-streaming or just fall through the cracks.

Anora is one of the lowest-budgeted ($6 million) and lowest-grossing ($51 million) Best Picture-winners in years. Those numbers unadjusted haven't been seen in decades, and after adjustment it's one of the lowest-budgeted and lowest-grossing ever. Aside from Sean Baker, who is solid but bubbled under the radar for years, and Mikey Madison, who had several good performances but for whom this was her big break, none of the names were known at all.

This is one of the first indie films to win in years.

Compare this to last year's winner, the highly-budget, highly-grossing, absolutely stacked in terms of cast and crew Oppenheimer. Anora climbed the same mountain, with much less money and much less big names.

I'm happy to see Anora get the praise it deserves, and I hope Hollywood, the general public, the Academy, and the boutiques continue to show low-budget and indie films the praise they deserve.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

I, too, would love to see Criterion favoring daring, experimental films, as well as newer, independent films, since many of them are currently either direct-to-streaming or just fall through the cracks.

I think a lot of this can be said about Flow as well. It was budgeted at 3 million, has grossed all of 15 million, and doesn’t feel like any other animated film - Latvian! - but somehow has become a burgeoning classic with an Oscar and a prized slot in the Criterion collection. It’s a feather in their cap for their whole mission.