Movie Review: CHAPPiE

As it turns out, I'm pretty sure 2015 may end up being the year of "Robots doing what they shouldn't" on film - with movies like Ex Machina and Avengers: Age of Ultron around the corner, I started my year of robot films (not actually a planned thing, just sort of turned out that way) with Neill Blomkamp's CHAPPiE.

To be fair, let's begin by saying that a story about a robot gaining sentience is something I'm pretty familiar with: with all of your Short Circuits, Not Quite Humans, WALL-E's and let's not forget Star Trek: The Next Generation touching on fairly similar ground.

So going into the film, I'm looking for something new, perhaps a little different, and something that gets me caring about the characters.

CHAPPiE actually does a pretty good job at this: the robot is one of the neatest visuals I've seen in a long time and actually had me questioning "how did they do that?" more than once.  As CHAPPiE begins his story at a small child's level of intelligence and awareness, the film allows the viewer to quickly connect with the character, and finally the movie did something I wasn't quite expecting.

It focused an awful lot on how people (regular joes likes you and me) may react if suddenly something genuinely new showed up, like say, artificial intelligence.  

The picture may not necessarily be the most flattering to us, but it did make for an intriguing film.

Although some of the plot points seemed a little strange to me, I did find the film was well worth seeing and for the effects alone a big screen viewing may be the best way.

Genre Character of the Week: Mr. Hublot

Last night I went out with friends and family to see the live action and animated short film nominations for this years Oscars.  The films are all pretty great and well worth watching, but the standout for me was the animated short, Mr. Hublot. 

The film focuses on a robotic citizen of a future city, who clearly has a few issues, (OCD being one of them), and his attempts to live a quiet life.

As the film was only 11 minutes long, I don't really want to spoil it past that, but the animation was great, the film created a wonderful world for its characters and I couldn't stop smiling all the way through.

Things I've Noticed: Where are all the robots on TV?

When I was a kid there were a bunch of robots on TV, Rosie from the Jetsons, The Six Million Dollar Man, heck, even all those lady-robots from the Star Trek episode "I, Mudd"

(A Quick side note - I'm not actually old enough to have seen any of these live - except the Six Million Dollar Man, I'm just Canadian and therefore grew up on American re-runs and episodes of The Littlest Hobo)

As a younger kid in the '80s there was KITT, Chip Carson, The Transformers, Data and Astroboy.

In the '90s as a young parent, at least I had the Noo Noo from Teletubbies, and for a large chunk of the last ten years I've had the comfort of the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica.

A week ago while talking to my BFF Mike about this very problem the only current robot we could come up with was DJ Roomba from Parks and Recreation (who is awesome by the way and one of the only TV robots I've ever seen as a ghost).

If television was to be belived I thought that we'd all have robot butlers by now but the closest thing I have is my daughter's old Tekno sitting in a box somewhere in our basement.

All I'm saying here is, where are all of my robots on TV?!?

Thing's I've Noticed: Robots make music videos better

This morning I was watching one of my current favourite music videos; I Feel Better by Hot Chip, when I noticed something - the best part of this video involves Laser Eyes and a floating head. Now I don't know about you, but for me lasers and floating heads mean one thing - Robots (pictured left).

It was at this point that I also realized robots added a significant cool factor to virtually any music video, and that I could spend today's post listing my favourite robot-based music videos.

Larger than Life, Backstreet Boys

Woken up by a robot, the band proceeds to sing and dance in their usual style - but unlike the majority of their videos, I honestly like this one, the visuals are cool and the yellow robots dancing with Nick definitely gave this video a pretty high cool factor. If you take into account that I heard all of this band's music constantly when my oldest daughter was in grade six, the fact that I could find any joy in a video by the band shows just how cool the robots in it were.

Stylo - Gorillaz

For a video featuring significant levels of awesomeness already (a high speed car chase and Bruce Willis!?!), I didn't think that the addition of a robot could do much, but then you make the robot short out and you get something very very cool.

Flight of the Conchords - Robots

Telling the honest story of a post-human, robot contolled world, this high-concept / low-budget video shows many of our societies fears of technology, as well as the super-coolness that is Flight of the Conchords.

Yazoo - Only You

Alright, I'll admit that the two lovers in this video are probably mannequins rather than traditional robots, but you know what - too bad! I grew up thinking they were robots so as far as I'm concerned that's exactly what they are.

Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside

Like virtually all of the rest of videos I've looked at, this one focuses on electronica music, and the robot in question might be a cyborg, but you know what, it's still pretty cool. In addition to robots this video has spaceships, so you get twice the Sci-Fi bang for your buck. Also it's new enough you might not have seen it yet, so there you go.

If I've missed any major robot-themed music videos let me know, I'm sure somewhere out there is a comprehensive list of all robots appearing in music videos, these are just my favourites (sorry Daft Punk, but the robot you have in your Technologic video gives me a major case of the heebie jeebies),