It would behoove everyone born since 1960 and raised up in the US Public School system to click on the link below and learn the Real Thanksgiving story. I almost choked when I heard this. It’s really different than everything public education ever taught me about Thanksgiving!!!

RushLimbaugh.com: The Real Story of Thanksgiving

It’s even better than I had thought. It’s a story of Free Enterprise and Individual rights over collectivism and socialism. Go figure!

Then the next phase will hit when we suddenly wonder why we need our actors to starve themselves constantly to look good on screen. It is remarkable how even the men in the screen industry have to be unnaturally thin at all times just to look good on screen. Even the ones we consider “brave” or “cutting edge” because they’re a little heavier than average are actually quite on the thin side for normal people. But soon there’s going to be no need for that.

The final piece will come when we realize anyone with decent acting skills can be made to look good on screen and can do literally any role–any race, any sex, with CGI creating perfectly presentable, impossible-to-distinguish-from-real-life images.

It’ll be another decade or two I expect, but thats how I expect Hollywood to go. Pretty soon being a screen actor will be very much like being a radio actor was 60, 70 years ago. It won’t matter what you look like much at all.

Just to qualify something you said; I can think of one non-Pixar CGI feature on a par with Pixar’s offerings: Ice Age. Aside from having a well-told, engaging, and funny main storyline, the movie is interspersed with a series of vignettes featuring a non-speaking character named Sqrat. The Sqrat bits (including the “Gone Nutty” short on disc 2 of the DVD set) are hilarious: non-verbal physical comedy reminiscent of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Highly recommended.

Not that we should jack the film up to a plane where it doesn’t belong; there is no moral sophistication here that can keep pace with the technical variety, largely because that technique itself—at Pixar, at DreamWorks animation, and in the hands of every director who is tempted to tamper digitally with live actors—is, by definition, unable to cope with spontaneity. The camera no longer catches a gesture, or a play of expression, on the wing; someone has to create a program for it and patch it into place. That is why Brad Bird and his team were wise not to attempt physically authentic humans. From “Toy Story” onward, it was evident that computer animation was itself a shiny new toy, perfect for plastic cowboys and space rangers but hopeless at Homo sapiens. When I first heard about “The Incredibles,” I dreaded the prospect of a hero who would, like every other digital man so far, resemble one of Barbie’s boyfriends. Imagine my relief when Bob, Helen, and the kids, for all the nicety of their emotions, turned out to be—if I can risk a word that may be taboo in Pixar land—cartoons. Long may it stay that way.

Amen. Stars are a tried and true mechanism through which to obtain the cash to turn an idea into a product and there is zero reason to think that will change.

Genre is another such tried and true mechanism. Disney stuck with the animation genre during the out years and finally produced the animated muscials (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King) that brought the genre back. Now Pixar is one gold standard in the genre and Studio Ghibli is another. Long may it stay that way.

The movement of CGI to replace human actors is inexorable. Not only for financial reasons and because of the great quantity of entertainment that needs to be churned out, but because of the general lack of charisma of contemporary ‘stars’. Most of the up-and-comers can easily be duplicated – or even originated – by computer. A pretty face is only a pretty face.

Anyone who acts on film today had better make a damned strong impression on the public imagination quickly, because they are being rendered obsolete.

By whom?

For one, by the indelible stars of the past.

In the future, CGI will advance to the point where it can add the persona of a classic star to the lead of any contemporary film you choose.

If you ever wondered what ‘Gone With the Wind’ would look like starring Bette Davis instead of Vivian Leigh, you’ll be able to find out. I’d go so far as to predict that the consumer will be able to enjoy custom films, matching favorite films to stars of their own choosing: Spencer Tracy in Spielberg’s ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, Harrison Ford opposite Lauren Bacall in the original ‘The Big Sleep’.

And you’ll get to enjoy cultural mash-ups, too. For instance, imagine a classic musical like ‘Kiss Me Kate’ with a major dance turn by the brilliant, but urecognized, Nicolas Brothers.

Cookie-cutter acting personas to fill TV shows and B-level content will soon be the sole province of CGI. Those who look average or act average are going to have to consider a profession other than acting; the competition will be far too tight.

In short, the only actors who’ll thrive in the future will be those with real talent and real charisma. It’ll be a revolution no less profound than that inspired by the advent of sound.

You left a guy by the name of John Kerry off your list of people voted against. I’m a red state vet, and he irretrievably lost my vote when he refused to sign the Form 180 and disclose his actual military records. I agree entirely with the rest of your list except that it’s way too short. To set the record straight, I don’t go to church and I don’t hate gays.

TV is also rebelling against actors, what with the reality craze. I liked Gary Shandling’s crack at the Emmys about how he gets excited when a commercial comes on because he’ll get to see something with actors and a script.

As with any business, the competition from animated films and reality-show amateur performers is most harmful to the mediocre, replacement-level talent, just the way that bloggers threaten the domain of the weakest, most cliched pundits and sloppiest journalists, but will never replace people like Michael Barone, John Burns, Tim Russert, or Charles Krauthammer.

When the analysis of the election is complete it will return to the starting point. The so-called security moms (and Glock gals) were thought to be determinant by Rove in the beginning and he called it correctly.

Women have become much more serious concerning concerning security issues since 9/11 and they aren’t backing off. The shift was noted in the ’02 election but there was one school of thought that said that it was anomalous and that attention would return to table top issues for this election. Instead, it appears that the phenomenon has deepened rather than disappeared.

Strategists for the ’06 election are going to have a tougher time. I expect that we will see continuing improvement both in Iraq and Afghamistan which may allieve some of the security tension but I will not be surprised at all if we reduce Iran’s nuclear program to dust through a very heavy bombing campaign. It will be very interesting to see how the electorate reacts to expansion of the WoT to a third country.

No, CGI isn’t a phase. It is simply the next step in the evolution of special effects. The specific uses and style of CGI effects will go through phases, sure, but anybody suggesting that CGI will be “out of style” in X years, probably believes the same about the Internet.

Movies are entertainment. The best entertainment is achieved through “suspension of disbelief” — when the viewer recognizes that something in a movie is “fake”, the ability to entertain is severely limited. That’s where CGI comes in. When the technology (and the industry’s use of it) matures, it’s going to open up possibilities for filmmakers and storytellers that could only have been dreamed of a few years ago. Witness Lord of the Rings.

BTW, in my extremely humble opinion, Pixar currently has a monopoly on good pure-CGI movies. Dreamworks (Shrek 1 & 2, Shark Tale) relies on the same bag of tricks as your typical stand-up comedian: a rapid-fire potpourri of pop-culture references, potty humor, and sexual innuendo — lowest-common-denominator entertainment at its best. Disney can’t tell a good story from a hole in the wall; even though I have two young daughters, we don’t own or watch ANY Disney movies from the last 20 years. Pixar, on the other hand, tells a great story, gets the most from their actors, and treats their audience with respect. Pure gold.