robots Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It was just last week that anime fans the world over breathed a sigh of relief that Leonardo DiCaprio's live-action Akira was no more. But, that doesn't mean Hollywood has lost its taste for anime, and there are still plenty of other reboots headed our way. So while most of them have stayed in development limbo, two of the more popular titles: Cowboy Bebop and Robotech have started to make new ground, and some of the people involved are starting to talk.

Cowboy Bebop:
When the live action film of the beloved anime was first announced, fans were not thrilled with the idea. Plus, it probably didn't help that Keanu Reeves was taking the role of Spike. But, maybe we shouldn't count out the film yet, because when it comes to the film's screenwriter, there is good news and some bad news. But, let's start with the good news. In an interview with Anime Vice, Craig was asked about whether or not he was familiar with the series, and to his credit, Craig went into full fan-boy mode, telling them about some of his favorite episodes and that both he and Reeves have been meeting with Sunrise studio (the creator of the anime) to make sure that the original 'feel' of the show remains intact. According to Craig, "they [Sunrise] were very specific about their vision for the series, and how it might convert to a live-action film." -- sounds promising, right? Well, the bad news is that Craig has zero experience with sci-fi, and made his name writing about con-men and dysfunctional families. But, I'm going to remain hopeful that with Sunrise watching over the flick, there might be a chance we get something a little better than expected.

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad

Just the other night, I saw a giant robot smashing things. Of course, it was only a movie, but what if actual giant robots, like that giant mechanical monster glimpsed in the Terminator Salvation trailer, might stomp through your neighborhood in the not too distant future?

If that sounds too unrealistic, what about the prospect of "a robotic team of football players [taking] on the human World Cup champions" and winning, all by 2050? As reported by AFP and published at Breitbart.com, Osaka University professor Minoru Asada has high aspirations for his team of robotics experts, which first presented their project, Child-robot with Biomimetic Body (AKA CB2), in 2007. They've made good progress, claiming their baby Terminator is "slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship." We've embedded a video below of the baby robot in action, which more closely resembles the Star-Child in 2001: A Space Odyssey than The Terminator. Creepy or cool?

"Public opinion in Japan may be more open to robots than in the West," the article notes, "where dark science fiction visions from movies such as [Blade Runner] and [The Terminator] have conjured images of robo-soldiers taking over the world. Thanks to such benign cartoon characters as Astro Boy, 'Japanese people have a friendly image towards robots,'" said one research scientist.

By the end of the year, US audiences will have seen competing visions: the robo-soldiers of Terminator Salvation and the much friendlier Astro Boy. Are you looking forward to a future filled with intelligent robots?

So, of course, this year's most popular animated robot would have to be WALL-E -- and as that particular Pixar flick continues to find itself on top ten "best of" lists (as well as juggling plenty of award nominations), we here at Cinematical thought you should consider another animated robot; one that's, well, a bit more aggressive. Below we've posted a short film called World War, which was created by animation student Vincent Chai for a final project. The film takes place 100 years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and it follows a robot who's trying to bomb the city once again. However, when something goes wrong, it leads to a major square off between robots ... and a pretty cool fight at that. Kudos to Chai for putting this together; it looks rad. Something tells me we'll see more from this kid in the future.

Check it out below and let us know what you think.


World War - 3D Animation @ University Of Hertfordshire 2008 from Digital Animation Herts Uni UK on Vimeo.

Okay, so the truth is a bit less exciting than the headline might suggest, since David Lindsay-Abaire, who is signing on to write the screenplay for Spider-Man 4, also wrote Inkheart and had a hand in the awful, low-rent Robots. So we're not exactly getting John Updike, here. Still, Lindsay-Abaire did win a real, honest-to-goodness pulitzer for his 2007 Broadway play Rabbit Hole, which he's also currently adapting for the screen. (He got a Tony, too.)

This means they'll be scrapping a previous draft by Zodiac's James Vanderbilt -- or whatever he had managed to write, since just a short while ago Sam Raimi was claiming that he still didn't have a script. Of course, we have no idea what the plot is, though it hasn't stopped us from speculating. Will it be Lizard? Maybe it'll be Lizard.

Anyway, Raimi is excitedly returning, as we know, and Tobey Maguire has signed on too. The Hollywood Reporter story insists that Kirsten Dunst is "expected to return" as well. My stance on all of this is pretty clear-cut: I love this character and Raimi's take on him, think the third film was criminally underappreciated, and want more, as soon as possible. And I'm glad that they've brought on a serious, thoughtful writer, Robots or no Robots. This franchise deserves it.

" ... and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place."

-- Horace Smith, Ozymandias

WALL-E, from Pixar studios, shows us a ruined city, centuries from now, where a single (and singular) robot toils to cube trash and, it seems, will never lack for work. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth-Class)), a two-treaded solitary worker robot, spends his days cubing trash and his nights shut in safe from the cataclysmic garbage-gales that sweep the planet, inside a repair truck he's filled with things that have fascinated him; garden gnomes, butane lighters, a copy of Hello, Dolly! And in WALL-E's nearly-silent opening minutes, we get a sense of the world he lives in. Everything is ruined; there are no signs of life but for cockroaches; the only voices you hear come when the motion-activated Buy 'n' Large holo-billboards go off. WALL-E strips his broken-down brethren for parts and recharges by the sun's rays and stacks trash-cubes to imitate the skyscrapers decaying all around him, garbage as a pale reflection of glory.

Even with The Golden Compass sort of flaming out last fall, kids' fantasy continues to be a hot commodity. Witness the treatment that Brian Selznick's highly acclaimed illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret is currently receiving. The adaptation is being ushered into production by GK Films, whose last project was The Departed. They've recruited in-demand screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd) to write the screenplay. And the film will be directed by Chris Wedge (Ice Age, Robots), trying to make an Andrew Adamson-like break into live-action having mastered CGI animation. The plan is to start filming this fall, presumably with an eye toward getting the movie out by Christmas of next year.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret isn't just any old children's book. Its author says that it's "not exactly a novel, and it's not quite a picture book, and it's not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things." The New York Times called it "a silent film on paper." It's about an orphaned boy working as a clock cleaner in a Paris train station who gets embroiled in a mystery involving another of the train station's denizens. Sounds like fun, and also like an opportunity to make something generic out of something unique. Ah, but that's unfairly pessimistic (even if Robots was awful) -- I'm actually a sucker for this tyke-fantasy stuff. Another one for the ole' reading list...

Warner Bros. is wicked smart: They looked and they said, "What's some of the hottest stuff out there right now that we don't have?" The answers: Giant f**king robots and Tobey f**king Maguire. And so Warner Bros. did what they do best -- they went out and picked up the rights to the anime classic Robotech, brought Maguire on to produce through his Maguire Entertainment and are currently seducing him into starring in the lead role. Better yet -- they're also eying this as their next tentpole sci-fi franchise. Whether or not this means Maguire will not reprise his role as Peter Parker in a Spider-Man 4 is hard to say; yet, if he does decide to star in the film (with plans on making it a franchise), I'd imagine chances of him donning the Spidey outfit for a fourth go-round are pretty slim.

I'm not too familiar with Robotech; The Hollywood Reporter tell us it was a "cartoon series during the 1980s from Harmony Gold USA and Tatsunoki Prods. It was re-edited and re-dialogued to combine three Japanese anime series to give the producers enough episodes to air as a daily syndicated series." The story apparently takes place during a time when the Earth has used alien technology to create giant robots in order to use as defense against three successive waves of alien invasions. Giant robots versus aliens, with Tobey Maguire using his small-town charms to kick tons of ass? Yup, I dig it. Craig Zahler will write the script, although there's no indication whether Warners will want to go live-action with this or stick with something in the CGI realm. Which would you rather see: Tobey in Robotech, Tobey in Spidey 4 or Tobey in both?

20th Century Fox staked a claim to join the "top toon" ranks, currently held by Dreamworks SKG and the Disney/Pixar teaming, with the bow of CGI pic Robots which cleaned up with an estimated $36.5 million on just under 3,800 screens with an average of $9, 666 according to Box Office Mojo. The film is receiving generally positive reviews, achieving a Metacritic.com rating of 63 out of 100 tops among major releases. On Robots, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman remarks: " Robots is a high-tech marvel of low-tech love. The fluky charm of its chop-shop aesthetic is the embodiment of its theme, which is that individuality in robots is a good thing..."