[+] 5 June 2024

Welcome to the month of June! It's getting 🔥hot🔥 here in Napa as we hit 100 yesterday (and likely today as well).

I've been experimenting a bit with a podcast version of foofaraw and I'd love your feedback. I have a beta episode of Monday's Media Guide and one of this newsletter as well. I'll link out to those files Below the Fold for [+] supporters to check out and (hopefully) provide some feedback so if you are interested in listening to this instead of reading, jump down a bit.

Kicking things off with some videos again this week.

First up, the music video for Chrystabell and David Lynch's "Sublime Eternal Love":

Very spooky, eery vibe and the video directed by David Lynch is a great example of how to capture something with a low budget.

Then we have a new trailer for Dropout's Dimension 20: Never Stop Blowing Up:

I've been watching more and more Dropout lately, and while I haven't watched a D20 season yet, given my recent interest, this might be the first one I try to keep up with.

Now we get to some of the depressing news of the week...

Tribeca to Screen AI-Generated Short Films Created by OpenAI’s Sora

Tribeca will screen five short films all created by OpenAI’s Sora, including one created by ‘Nanny’ director Nikyatu Jusu.

IndieWireBrian Welk

The 2024 Tribeca Festival announced Friday it will host Sora Shorts, a new program featuring five original short films all made using OpenAI’s text-to-video AI model Sora. It’s not the first time AI films have made their way to a major film festival, but it is the first time movies made with Sora have.

Another short-sighted move by a short-sighted industry. I imagine OpenAI is sponsoring the festival with lots of $$$ to fund this award. I don't necessarily mind AI as a tool, but when it's actually making the frames, that's where I think we start to run into some really weird and scary potentials.

Hollywood Nightmare? New Streaming Service Lets Viewers Create Their Own Shows Using AI

Fable, the studio behind the viral AI-generated ‘South Park’ clips, has announced a streaming platform that allows users to create their own content.

The Hollywood ReporterWinston Cho

Fable Studio, an Emmy-winning San Francisco startup, on Thursday announced Showrunner, a platform the company says can write, voice and animate episodes of shows it carries. Under the initial release, users will be able to watch AI-generated series and create their own content — complete with the ability to control dialogue, characters and shot types, among other controls.

Staying in the apocalyptic zone here... Why go to an AI film festival when you can just log-on to a streaming service that lets you generate a series as the snap of a finger right from your couch... I don't understand how anyone could ever want something like this.

Let's move on to two new trailers to close out this section before we head Below the Fold:

This looks pretty scary. It's no surprise that it's directed by the Don't Breathe director either given it has a very similar vibe of playing hide and seek on a ship from killer aliens.

And last, but certainly not least, MaXXXine, the long awaited follow-up to X and Pearl:

Mia Goth looks incredible once again for this finale to the X trilogy. And boy oh boy does it have a huge cast this time around after Goth and Ti West made a splash with the first two.