Wednesday, October 21, 2026

LINK: Can AI slop even have an aesthetic?

This is a well-written and interesting read. It's not a review bashing Houdini: Back from the Dead per se. It even acknowledges there are good moments. But it does take on the idea of an all-AI documentary. It makes me think. Depending on where this all goes, Houdini: Back from the Dead could actually be a watershed moment in the history of documentary filmmaking (for good or bad). Harry on the cutting edge as always!

Sometimes, in Fox Nation’s Houdini: Back From The Dead, I can see the future of documentaries like the Ken Burns ones. Fox advertised the documentary as using AI to bring Houdini back to life, and there are moments where you do feel like the dead have been resurrected. Then a Scarlet Johansson lookalike flashes some distinctively ahistorical cleavage to make Houdini’s wife jealous and that marvelous vision of the future of documentaries disappears as neatly as Houdini would disappear an elephant.

Click to read the full article at AV Club 


Houdini: Back from the Dead is available now to watch on FOX Nation if you are a subscriber. If you are not, know you can get a 7-day free trial via Amazon.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousOctober 21, 2026 at 10:21 AM

    Interesting points about Ai and the Fox Nation show. A reminder how spoken words were used in Ken Burns documentaries and also radio actors recreated scenes for documentaries that were heard on radio or record players, (remember those?)
    But actually other docs have used actors and animation to recreate/dramatize history so Ai is simply the latest, (if more annoying) method to be used by some. Ai has gotten better, it's not going away soon, but still annoying when allowed to be more than it is without disclaimers.
    Diego Domingo

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