Consider The God Of Salmon.

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i feel like we don’t talk about things like this enough

Paizo, AI Art, and Copyright

So you may have seen that Paizo, the (unionized) tabletop roleplaying company behind Pathfinder, has decided to ban AI art and writing from both its own products and its community-created marketplaces. As you might expect, this has caused a certain amount of righteous indignation among pro-AI tech bro types. 

I think one thing that the tech bros who are screaming about Luddites and the inevitability of market forces and blah blah are completely ignoring is that we’re not talking about personal use of AI art and text - we’re talking about commercial uses of AI art and text. That means what really matters here is contracts and copyrights.

In case you haven’t heard, it is very well-settled law that art produced by non-humans cannot be copyrighted. More specifically, the U.S Copyright Office has repeatedly ruled that AI-generated pictures and comic book art cannot be copyrighted.

No matter how much you say that you “created” something by typing into a search bar and hit a button over and over again, if you don’t own the copyright to a piece of art, you can’t sell it because you don’t actually own it. Which means that Paizo isn’t going to buy it, because they can’t purchase the copyright to it as part of the contract, which means they can’t sell any products that use it.

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

Obligatory Oscar Predictions (now with gratuitous gifs!)

I’ll be belatedly posting my reviews of various movies including a top ten list over the next few weeks, but if I’m going to turn this into a consistent (mostly) movie review blog, I may as well start with the obvious.

BEST PICTURE

There are about a half-dozen that seem to be locks at this point -- Three Billboards, The Shape of Water, Dunkirk, The Post, Lady Bird, and Get Out. (if one is missing tomorrow morning, expect it to be the last, but I doubt it) 

First off, let’s pour one out for 2017, a year so bizarre and awesome that a fantasy about a mute woman having an affair with a fish-monster and a horror-comedy are front-runners. That’s like if the 1987 Best Picture nominees had been The Last Emperor, Hope and Glory, Broadcast News, Evil Dead II, and The Witches of Eastwick.

The remaining 3 or 4 slots are where it gets trickier.

Now, the Academy obviously isn’t cool enough to go for Wonder Woman, Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and The Last Jedi. That said, if they do go for one of the critically beloved blockbusters, I’d bank on the first one, with Logan being an extremely dark horse. 

The remaining probable options are: Call Me By Your Name, I Tonya, The Darkest Hour, The Big Sick, Mudbound and Molly’s Game. All should get screenplay nominations and at least one acting nod; the question is just which of them are going to carry over to the big prize. 

The Big Sick mostly has the problem that there’s already three comedy slots taken between Three Billboards, Lady Bird, and Get  Out; they don’t typically go for one comedy, let alone a whole slate. Still, it was widely embraced enough that it certainly will have some momentum.

Call Me By Your Name is a good bet simply on the cynical account of being the serious gay romance of the year. I suspect its support will be better than for The Danish Girl but not as strong as Moonlight simply on account of it being much better than the former but not as great as the latter; that said, it’s lovingly crafted enough to push over the line, I suspect.

I, Tonya is probably a lock for Actress, and seems like the sort of film to get an extra boost on the power of that incredible lead performance; it helps that it’s a really good film that scores very strongly on feminist scales in a year where that’s going to be the groundswell in the Academy.

The Darkest Hour is trickier to guess; similarly, it’s a film built around one astounding performance, but isn’t nearly as strong as I, Tonya outside of Oldman Oldmaning the hell out of his best role in years.

Molly’s Game falls in the same category; Chastain is sensational, and I’m surprised Idris Elba doesn’t have more buzz and Costner doesn’t have any, but the movie itself is good, not great. Aaron Sorkin truly has a way with words, but as director, he’s a little too in love with his words, and too often doesn’t trust his visual telling of the story to carry it when he can dilute the impact with a 500 word speech explaining the images.

Finally, Mudbound has the severe disadvantage of Netflix’s hostility toward theaters and the traditional film business, which I suspect keeps them from really effectively campaigning. Although it’ll probably get noticed somewhere, the big prize will likely elude it.

FINAL CHOICE FOR BEST PICTURE: 

(in decreasing order of likeliness)

Three Billboards

The Shape of Water

Dunkirk

The Post

Lady Bird

Get Out

Call Me By Your Name

I, Tonya

The Big Sick

Wonder Woman

BEST DIRECTOR

The picture pool largely shows who’s in line, with the bottom three films unlikely to show up here. McDonough and Del Toro are locks, and Greta Gerwig probably is, as well. Christopher Nolan seems like he should be a lock, but you would have thought so for The Dark Knight and Inception, too; has the director’s branch has gotten over whatever their Nolan-hate? Conversely, Spielberg would normally seem to be a lock, but he has so many nominations over the years that he might seem too obvious a choice; would they be voting because he did such a great job, or just because he’s frickin’ Spielberg? (in this case, definitely the former; his work in The Post is masterful) Then there’s the question of whether Jordan Peele has even more momentum than he seems to have, and if Luca Guadagnino manages a spoiler. Peele and Nolan getting DGA nods suggests they have the strongest support among the directors; I’ll chose them, but won’t be shocked to see wither Spielberg or Gaudagnino on there. (call Patty Jenkins the one-in-a-million longshot)

Martin McDonough - Three Billboards

Guillermo Del Toro - The Shape of Water

Greta Gerwig - Lady Bird

Christopher Nolan - Dunkirk

Jordan Peele - Get Out

BEST ACTOR

Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread

Timothy Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name

Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out

Tom Hanks, The Post

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Denzel - Roman J Israel Esq. (though nobody seemed to like anything else about the movie); James Franco - The Disaster Artist (reports of his long-known douchey, misogynist behavior may keep him down, but then again, Casey Affleck); Hugh Jackman - either The Greatest Shomwan or Logan (having both in the mix probably kills his chances, and with The Greatest Showman embraced by audiences but loathed by critics, and Logan being a superhero movie released way back in Spring, it’s a hell of a longshot either way. I just really want him to get it for Logan.)

BEST ACTRESS

Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water

Frances McDormand, Three Billboards

Margot Robbie, I, Tonya

Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

Meryl Streep, The Post

SPOILERS: Jessica Chastain, Molly’s Game (honestly a tossup between her and Streep); Jude Dench, Victoria and Abdul (minor, barely seen film, but it’s Dench); Michelle Williams, All the Money in the World; Diane Kruger, In the Fade

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World

Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name

Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards

SPOILERS: Richard Jenkins or, less likely, Michael Shannon, The Shape of Water; Michael Stuhlberg, Call Me By Your Name; Idris Elba, Molly’s Game; Patrick Stewart, Logan (I will mention Logan every chance I get in an effort to will nominations into existence) 

(and yes, that gif is from Iron Man 2)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Allison Janey, I, Tonya

Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird

Mary J. Blige, Mudbound

Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water

Holly Hunter, The Big Sick

SPOILERS: Hong Chau, Downsizing (but everyone seems to have hated the movie otherwise); Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread; Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip (if there’s an out of nowhere nod); Kristin Scott Thomas, The Darkest Hour; Michelle Pfieffer, mother!; Dafne Keene, Logan (see above)

OTHER VARIOUS NOTES

Murder on the Orient Express was one of my favorite films this year, but it seems to have been largely forgotten by the various awards communities. Still, it should at least get nominations for Costume Design and Production Design, and just possibly Cinematography. Tragically, there is no category for “Best Mustache”, a category this film would not only win but fill all the nominations.

The Shape of Water, apparently, is not even being considered for best makeup for reasons that I can’t possibly fathom. It will be one of the films that really cleans up in the tech categories, though.

Star Wars, Wonder Woman, Beauty and the Beast, and Dunkirk will dominate the technical awards. War For the Planet of the Apes, the best in the series since the original in ‘68 and one of the highlights of the year, will be ghettoed into just Visual Effects.

I should probably point out that I’m someone who likes the TV show, even if I think the books are largely superior, so we obviously don’t entirely agree on a lot of these points. (I do love your metas, Gotgifsandmusings, regardless of my enjoyment of the show; they’re consistently insightful and witty.)

As far as the Emmys go, a lot of it has to do with the nature of awards shows. Deserving winners get missed all the time because there’s competition that can’t be ignored. This is how you end up with awards that feel like “lifetime achievement awards” or whatnot.

So Game of Thrones Season 4, which (whatever its adaptational or sexism issues) really was spectacular television, lost all its awards to the final season of Breaking Bad, except for directing, which it lost to True Detective. Same thing for GOT Season 3, which, again, was terrific television. But it lost all of its nominations to other shows (including, again, Breaking Bad).

The thing is, no matter how great Game of Thrones was those years (and, again, as TV, it’s pretty great, and I think it improves on the books in a few areas, albeit definitely not in all areas), it was never going to beat Breaking Bad. There was just no possible way to ignore it.

And so when Season 5 rolled around, for all its flaws, it still tends to be entertaining and technically superb television when it wasn’t in Dorne or Winterfell (both plotlines were heavily criticized even among those who still love the show, and at least in the latter case, it’s certainly exceptionally well-made in a technical sense). And this time, there wasn’t a strong frontrunner to beat it (its competition is strong, but it’s not terribly obvious what the best choice there actually is), so it got all the awards it’s been nominated for all these years but never managed to actually win, even if it was the weakest season.

That’s just how these things work. Sometimes something wins that really deserves it -- Robert Donat won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1939 for Goodbye Mr. Chips. But he beat someone else who also really deserved it - Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. So the next year, Stewart won Actor for The Philadelphia Story, and while he’s great in that, should he really have beaten Chaplin, Fonda, and Olivier?

So this year, Game of Thrones took a couple of massive misteps, and badly exposed all its underlying flaws in really ugly ways. It’s also, often, compelling, complex, fun, and dazzling. So even if it isn’t those things to any consistent degree, it still represents enough of what’s loved about the show that it’s able to pull off a sweep when it’s not up against anything that can’t be beat.

And Winterhell helped win the show an Emmy... What a great message to send to viewers and creators... "If you want to make good TV and win what is considered the most prestigious television award, rape someone! Have shocking things that make no sense happen! Cynicism and everything sucks! DARKNESS! Oh and viewers who don't like this stuff and are triggered by it? FUCK THEM AM I RIGHT?" Ugh...

Is Winterhell what helped them win their Emmys? I mean it was just so, so, so bad.

I’m pretty sure everyone and their mothers got distracted by HARDHOME, the BEST HOUR OF TELEVISION (if we turn our brains off and don’t bother thinking about context or like…why are arrows stopping wights, or anything).

But like…I have to hope that’s what one them the votes. Because I think it is actually physically impossible to enjoy Winterhell. Then again, the finale won “best writing,” and the first 20 minutes centered on Satannis’s farcical defeat.

@itsalwayslydia said to gotgifsandmusings:Hey, so I just finished reading your post on Winterhell, which was so good it made me angry. (Not at you but at what’s happened to these characters for the purpose of TV ratings.) Anyways, I was wondering if you’d seen the Huffington post article where it’s pointed out that Theon is wearing Robb Stark’s outfit from the Red Wedding? Sophie Turner confirmed that was true on her Comic Con panel: “Just to make that a little more brutal.” Seven hells.

I had seen that, yeah. And like…that’s you know. Nifty that they wanted to use costuming to “make it more brutal.” But it also makes no fucking sense? Like, why in Seven Hells is he wearing Robb’s outfit? He’s not disguising himself as a Stark. Why isn’t that outfit full of arrow-holes? How did they even get that outfit? Was it when Sansa had passed out from the Xanax Batfinger gave her so she failed to notice them passing through the Twins?

But like, at least it wasn’t as horribly out of place as the sith lord and the dude with the conquistador helmet:

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings:What’s the proper way to compliment your Winterhell Retrospective? I enjoyed it? It made me angry about that whole plot line all over again? Anyway, it did make me angry again, but I also enjoyed it. I still fail to understand how professional writers of TV could put together such a stupid arc, they have huge books to help them!! Why do they think they are better at telling this story than GRRM? Why did they retcon the Others? Why can’t we call them the Others, instead of the white walkers? ???

Well one quick correction: they don’t think they are better at telling “this story,” because they have no interest in telling the same story. They think they are better storytellers.

That aside…

Hereditary [2018]

After the rather abysmal showing for the genre in the 'aughts, horror has made a major resurgence in the last decade. Part of the trend ...

My review of the well-made, exceedingly well-acted, but long and profoundly unpleasant Hereditary.

The first I ever watched of Firefly was seeing Serenity in the theater after a friend told me it was pretty much the greatest thing ever. (It was actually the first 'pure' Whedon I watched. I had seen Toy Story, Speed, Alien Resurrection, and Titan AE, but all of those are heavily filtered through other visions.)

Without having seen the show, I absolutely loved the movie; it's self-contained enough for the story to make sense, and sets up the characters with extraordinary efficiency. Of course it worked even better after catching up with the show, given that it follows through on a bunch of arcs there, but it holds together on its own extremely well.

It really does play a little more like a season finale with a huge budget than a movie; I don't think any of the show's charms are lost as a film in that case.

There's a movie, is the thing, where the Reavers are super-important. So.

I’ve heard they play a sizable role in the movie.

I’m honestly considering not watching Serenity. I’m loving the show, but I also love it as television - so much of what Firefly does well is done on the episodic level, to the extent that I can’t imagine that a tie-in movie - which are prone to trying to make the “definitive” take on a franchise - will do the series justice. I have to assume that “my Firefly" will basically be ignored in favor of trying to fit in as much of the iconography and answering as many of the unanswered questions (that I don’t particularly care about) as possible.

I mean, realistically, I’ll probably watch it, because I only have one episode of Firefly left and I want to squeeze out as much of this show as I possibly can, but I’m not optimistic.

So, when you achieve victory over Straight Island, are you going to let us rebuild, or is this a “No prisoners!” kill us all situation? Because I’m totally down with aiding the revolution from the inside, but if I’m going to have to convert afterwards, I should probably start planning.

Being gay is natural? Okay.

You have three islands. Divide them into groups of one. The straight island, the gay island, and the lesbian island. The straight island is going to reproduce and keep going strong for millions of generations to come. The gay and lesbian islands will both wipe out in not even one century. This isn’t just about religion or morals, it’s just simple common sense. Being gay is unnatural, and not just because God said so, but because you yourself wouldn’t even be born without a REAL natural man and woman. And no, there is no such thing as a lesbian bone marrow “thing” to have children. That’s a biased fact that came from a lesbian scientist who has false opinions. If it’s not a real penis or vagina, then it’s fucking false and you’re just opinionated by dumb facts. I’m done here. Read over what I said and if you still think that being gay is normal and natural, then I hope you achieve some common sense one day. Bye