A.I. 'Buffybot'

Some say it's better than the real thing.”

With those words we are introduced to Buffybot, a robotic replica of everyone’s favorite Pointy-wielding, banter-spewing blond vampire slayer... 

Manuel continuing our Artificial Intelligence theme week.

Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains one of the best examples of how to use superpowers, monsters and villains as generative metaphors for such varied things as puberty, high school, sexual assault and the systemic misogyny that pervades our contemporary world. This latter issue is at the center of “Intervention” the 18th episode of Buffy’s fifth (and I’d argue best!) season. [more]

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Gawk-worthy: Southpaw Poster

Manuel here encouraging you to gawk at Jake Gyllenhaal in the new poster for his boxing film Southpaw (which got the YES/NO/MAYBE SO treatment a couple of weeks ago when we first saw how ripped our darling Jakey had gotten for this Antoine Fuqua film).

It’s a stunning poster.

I’m literally left with no words; I have nothing else to add. Do you?

Tim's Toons: The new short "The Alchemist's Letter"

Tim here. It's been a good few weeks for animated short films about the fluctuating nature of memories and the complex relationship we have with the past: the warm glow has hardly faded from the online premiere of World of Tomorrow, and this week has seen the premiere on Vimeo of The Alchemist's Letter, written and directed by Carlos Andre Stevens, a Student Academy Award nominee for his 2008 debut, Toumai.

It's transparently a calling card for Stevens, an employee of commercial animation studio HouseSpecial -- that's a former division of Laika, some of whose designers and effects animators have hopped over to help guide the uncommonly lush and appropriately fussy look of the short -- but what a calling card! It's a brilliant little jeweled egg of a short, evocatively sketching out a whole human life in less than five and a half minutes, and doing it through some utterly beautiful design and animation.

more...

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A.I. "WALL•E"

Dancin' Dan here to continue TFE's Artificial Intelligence Week with a little something on my favorite dancing robots.

If there’s a common thread in stories of artificial intelligence, it’s that we can think that we, the programmers/creators, can control it all we like, but if we’re truly successful - if we succeed in creating actual artificial intelligence - we can’t do a damn thing to control it. It will grow and learn and eventually decide things for itself.

In Pixar’s masterpiece WALL•E, we don’t know exactly how our hero gained what for lack of a better word we have to call a “personality,” but we can imagine. Human ingenuity can do a lot of things, but one thing it is notoriously terrible at, on the whole, is predicting the future correctly. Which, coincidentally, is one of the ideas at the heart of Pixar’s masterpiece. [More...]

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Drama Desk Nominations, Tony's More Inclusive Cousin

Lin-Manuel Miranda as "Hamilton"The Drama Desk Nominations for the 2014/2015 theater season have been announced and the Tony Awards follow suit in a week's tim (theater seasons run summer to spring). The chief difference, besides the level of fame, is that the Drama Desk categories have more nominees but also more eligible contenders since Off Broadway productions (and there are lots more of those) are also considered for the top prizes. Hamilton, the new hip-hop Off Broadway musical about the founding fathers from Lin-Manuel Miranda of "The Heights" fame dominated with 13 nominations but it's not eligible for the Tonys.

It's also impossible to get tickets to and popular with celebrities (Madonna famously was barred from going backstage after using her cel phone -ugh - but everyone's been to it including Michelle Pfeiffer). In the reverse situation, "Fun Home," which is an absolute must see and could lead the Tony nominations, is not eligible for the Drama Desk nominations since it was already eligible in its Off Broadway run last season. "Hamilton" is moving to Broadway in the summer which means it'll be eligible for the 2016 Tony Awards.

The full nominee list, which also included a lot of nominations for screen-to-stage transfer "Let the Right One In" is after the jump...

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