Robots

[TB4000]

Like I said, sucker for animation, so I'll probably be checking this one out on the weekend, hopefully.

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/ewan_mcgregor/robots3.jpg
http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/jennifer_coolidge/robots1.jpg
http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/halle_berry/robots1.jpg
http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/robin_williams/robots1.jpg
http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/drew_carey/robots1.jpg
http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/_group_photos/ewan_mcgregor4.jpg
http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/_group_photos/diane_wiest7.jpg
http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/robots/greg_kinnear/robots2.jpg

[TB4000]

Checked this out last night...very funny, man. Believe it or not, they actually use Chingy's "Right Thurr" song in a clever way that makes sense in one scene.

[Shogun Empress]

I just saw this tonight. Great movie.

[sinisterpanda]

I'm so happy that it's a good movie, I want to see it now!

[Faithless]

Interesting article that features a small interview with Greg Pak to discuss the robot genre in movies.

Society's fascination with robots pops up in movies, TV and elsewhere (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20050311-9999-lz1c11droid.html)

By James Hebert * UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER * March 11, 2005

In the new movie "Robots," the animated androids are as cute as chrome-plated teddy bears. In films like "I, Robot" and the "Matrix" trilogy, the smart machines would rather crush you than cuddle you.

As a society, we may not know exactly what we think about robots. But if the recent wave of robot-related creative works is any indication, we've been thinking about them plenty.

It's not just movies, either. The TV series "Futurama," now in reruns on the Cartoon Network, features a heavy-drinking, light-fingered robot character, while the Disney Channel's "Rolie Polie Olie" shares the lovable-robot concept (as well as some creative heritage) with the "Robots" feature film, which hits theaters today.

The works of the novelist Isaac Asimov, who coined the term "robotics," have seen fresh interest since his book "I, Robot" went Hollywood. The magazine Giant Robot uses artificial intelligence as a metaphor for its explorations of Asian culture's frontiers.

And after the lead of the '80s act Devo – the godfathers of RoboRock – bands like Britain's peppy Futureheads bring a whole different meaning to "heavy metal."

The Futureheads, who perform at the Epicentre in Mira Mesa tomorrow night, have scored a minor hit with "Robot," which offers such gleeful lyrical sentiments as: I think I'll be around forever if you don't mind / I don't mind, I have no mind.

On the same night, the Gelato Vero cafe in Mission Hills offers a set by the art-pop group The Robot Ate Me.

The members of the L.A. trio The High Speed Scene, who share the Epicentre bill with the Futureheads, seem as conflicted as anyone by the scary allure of clever metal. The robots on the band's T-shirts wear flowers and give the thumbs-up sign. But when you search for the group's Web site, you're treated to the words "Robot Attack!"

"Maybe it's just the way of our culture, everything so mechanical and brainless and automatic," High Speed Scene's singer-guitarist and lyricist Max Hart says of the fascination with intelligent machines. "Robots seem to express the way we all feel about our lives at some point or another."Also, they're just hella cool, you know?"

Who's a human?

Fear and fascination about our creations and their consequences date back way before the time of Frankenstein. What's maybe different now is that science is so much closer to realizing the prospect of artificial intelligence.

Just in recent weeks, NASA scientists working on Mars projects have unveiled robots that can rappel down cliffs, take pictures, slip through cracks and detect danger.

Even in our daily lives, as TiVos choose shows for their owners and laptops and iPods act as auxiliary brains for people on the move, the lines between humans and their tech tools seem to be getting blurred.

"I think there's a real preoccupation now with the borders of the human," says Priscilla Wald, an English professor at Duke University who studies pop-culture depictions of science.

"It's coming from all kinds of places. It's coming from the human genome project very powerfully; it's coming from robotics and artificial intelligence."

The robots we see and hear in music, books and movies are animated as much by our anxieties and hopes as they are by electronic circuitry. And the themes that play out in those depictions are all over the grid.

In films such as "Bicentennial Man" and Steven Spielberg's "A.I.," the robots "all want to become human," Wald notes. "I think that's our fantasy – that there is something really special about being human, and everything wants to become human."

On the flip side, she argues, robots make us uncomfortable by suggesting "how mechanistic we actually are. A lot of the work in artificial intelligence is making that really clear."

Hence movies such as last summer's "I, Robot," which featured Will Smith as a detective trying to nab a murderer among a new breed of startlingly humanlike robots.

"If we can get robots to reproduce human interactions, then what does it say about the predictability of our interactions?," Wald asks. "And if our interactions are predictable, what does this mean in terms of our basic definition of 'human being'?"

Then there are the machines-on-a-rampage tales such as "The Terminator" and "The Matrix," wherein humanity is besieged by soulless, lethal, often self-replicating mechanical adversaries that don't bother distinguishing good from evil.

"That's the most common robot story of all," says Greg Pak, a filmmaker whose four-part "Robot Stories" made the rounds of art-house cinemas and festivals last year (including the San Diego Asian Film Festival).

"It's actually kind of a religious warning – this idea that we're not meant to assume the prerogative of God. And I think it's partly an evolutionary fear. The fear that we'll create our own successors."

That's in stark contrast to movies like "Robots." The big-budget cartoon, directed by Chris Wedge of "Ice Age" fame and written by the team behind such comedies as "City Slickers," treats the machines as funny and lovable.

That shouldn't be a surprise, since the film is geared toward kids, notes Wald.

"For children, there isn't the same anxiety about (the technology)," she says. "This is just second nature to them. So the idea of a robot that would be their buddy is just a logical extension of their understanding of interactions with technology."

For Pak, robots can throw our own feelings of alienation into bold relief.

In one part of the film, Pak plays a benign android office worker who has been programmed to learn the social subtleties of the workplace.

"He has to interact – but he is assigned to an office where no one wants to interact with him," Pak says. "He can't fulfill his programming, so he has a sort of emotional breakdown."

Taken further, Pak says, that theme of an individual who struggles to fit in can symbolize what minority groups go through when trying to assimilate into a mainstream culture. "Robot Stories" has an all-Asian cast, and Pak is Korean-American.

"Asians are stereotyped as hyperefficient and emotionless and (as threats) to steal your job," Pak notes. "Those fears are similar to the fears about robots.

"There's a sort of debunking of that in the film, in a subliminal way."

Cultural history

Stereotypes aside, the robot does have a rich cultural history in Asia, particularly in Japanese animation.

One of the most enduring examples is "Giant Robo," which was initially a Japanese TV series in the '60s but has since spawned comics and cartoon successors. Its story focuses on a young boy who teams up with a giant robot to fight terrorism.

Eric Nakamura was such a fan of "Giant Robo" that it served as a prime inspiration for Giant Robot, the magazine he and Martin Wong founded in Los Angeles in 1994. Originally a makeshift 'zine, the publication is now a glossy and popular journal of Asian lifestyle and culture.

Nakamura believes the contrasting ways robots are depicted in Asian and Western cultures reflect their different attitudes toward technology.

"You think of American robots, and what do you get? It's R2D2," he says of the "Star Wars" droid.

"You get all these kind of goofy-looking robots. I think that's the American idea of a robot: Human important; robot not important. A robot is (just) your tool.

"Whereas in Japanese shows, you're really rooting for the robots."

Nakamura used to collect toy robots – he has about 100 Japanese robot toys from the '70s and early '80s in a glass case at home. But when it comes to the magazine, robots serve not as subject matter but as a metaphor for the whole enterprise.

"Our magazine is the robot," Nakamura says of Giant Robot, which began as a stapled-together, photocopied labor of love. "It's way bigger than what we ever imagined. And it's kind of out of control, in some ways.

"(From the start), it was this possible thing that could get out there, that we couldn't entirely control. We control what goes in it. but we can't control anything that happens after it gets out.

"And that's pretty much what a robot does."

[raacluse]

coincidentally... lately I've been looking around for books about Karel Capek, the Czech author who coined the term in his play "RUR" (written in the 20s?).

An excellent book about robots is Rodney Brooks' Flesh and Machines: how robots will change us (Pantheon, 2002).

[Irezumi Kiss]

Checked this out last night...very funny, man. Believe it or not, they actually use Chingy's "Right Thurr" song in a clever way that makes sense in one scene.
Yeah, this joint needed to be longer, really. The story & plot are rather also-ran, but what makes it funny are the characters and background details. When homie gets magnetized accidentally, I was laughing up my left lung.

[Faithless]

Probably could have stood something more roboty in the mix, like Jonzun Crew's "Pack Jam".

[Irezumi Kiss]

Probably could have stood something more roboty in the mix, like Jonzun Crew's "Pack Jam".
Had this been more "underground" I could see exactly that happening! But I doubt today's cookie-cutter screenwriters/directors would ever insert something THAT dope, unless it's a "remix" updated version featuring Lil' Bow Wow or something...