Our L.A. spies tell us, that Robot Stories is a great movie. They should know, after all they live in L.A. Here the synopsis:
Winner of over 30 awards, "Robot Stories" is science fiction from the heart, four stories in which utterly human characters struggle to connect in a world of robot babies, robot toys, android office workers, and digital immortality.
Sounds like a Future Salon kind of movie. Although, last time I thought that was, when we went to see A.I. and somehow that was a bit disappointing. If I recall correctly there were no negative signals coming from the Hollywood crowd, but this time we have real actionable intelligence non of this artificial stuff :-).
The people behind this independent film are doing an excellent job of grassroots promotion. Check out their Webpage. They have everything, from downloads, to Blogs to call for action. Next stop start a revolution.
They were on Fresh Air with Terry Gross the other day and Greg Pak said, that they taped all these machine noises to bring across emotions. In the "Machine Love" story for example they would use the sound of a hard drive starting or stopping to bring across the emotional state of the robot. For that alone I want to see the movie.
Here is the plan: The Future Salon has been up and down the Peninsula and also in San Francisco. Therefore this is Berkeley time.
On Saturday around 6pm I will get my lazy ass over to the Jupiter on Shattuck for some Pizza and Beer hopefully in their sunny Beergarden. 7:15 leisurely stroll over to the Landmark Act theater around the corner on Center Street for the 7:30 show. Get your tickets here.
After the show we will see what else a warm Berkeley Spring Night has to offer.
Come on out and join us, add a comment to this Weblog if you do.
Gosh, you guys are going to be in my neck of the woods, but I'm already committed to something else Saturday evening :-(
Enjoy the movie, I'll probably be seeing it on Sunday.
Posted by: Christopher Allen | April 15, 2004 at 00:45
I forgot to mention, that the screen writer, director and actor Greg Pak will be there and you can ask him about the emotional hard drive sounds. After the movie the switching on of your computer will never be the same, or so I hope :-)
Posted by: Mark Finnern | April 15, 2004 at 06:53
The Berkeley evening also offered post-movie ice cream at Naia (formerly Mondo Gelato); mmmm good. Liked the movie -- of the four vignettes I found the second (the robot fixer) most touching. Least robotic/futuristic of the stories, but to me, all four were in essence about profoundly human experiences and human relationships, using robots/technology/toys as metaphors. Then again, isn't that often the case with good/memorable science fiction?
Posted by: Nina Davis | April 19, 2004 at 01:07