Pete Fraser: I am watching Steven Spielberg’s AI with motion smoothing switched on. There is no surer way to utterly destroy a film. Always astonished that they have this on in hotels, with absolutely no way of disabling it. Who decided this was good? It’s inexplicable to me.

I am watching Steven Spielberg’s AI with motion smoothing switched on. There is no surer way to utterly destroy a film. Always astonished that they have this on in hotels, with absolutely no way of disabling it. Who decided this was good? It’s inexplicable to me.

They’re like ‘yes, this Spielberg is quite the film maker, but what if all his work looked like the outdoor scenes from Neighbours in the 1980s put through a very early Instagram filter? Wouldn’t that be marvellous?’

“But it’s better for sports.” But it just isn’t! There isn’t a sport I can think of that’s helped by this crap. It’s a solution in search of a problem.

And then why not just play sports in HFR? It’s just so bizarre to watch.

Yeah that’s the real head-scratcher, especially as we’ve now had multiple 60fps blockbusters and even YouTube supports it

(And isn’t AI impressive? There are better Spielberg films, but it and Empire of the Sun are his most revealing work, I think.)

It’s much much better than people think. Flawed in a way only Old Hollywood can be, but also brilliant in the same ways.

The use case for motion-smoothing is live sport, something I discovered to some amusement watching Euro 2024 at home. I have to assume that a hard-to-reverse decision was taken at a point when most Big Tellies were being sold to Yes, We Have Sky bars

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