Word: robotical
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...CINEMA: A retro I, Robot...
...this for I, Robot: it doesn't push the future in your face. Set in Chicago in 2035, the movie has a sensible, couple-of-years-hence look. Americans of the next '30s, the movie tells us, will still wear vintage sneakers (Converse 2004), drink Ovaltine and get home deliveries from FedEx. (We know this thanks to some of the most obtrusive product placement since Cast Away.) And morose gumshoes will obsessively patrol the streets for sophisticated robots that have an itch to be human. Yes, readers of future past, I, Robot - "suggested by" Isaac Asimov's pioneer collection...
...Robot is just an assembly-line product of a not very advanced model. Can a fantasy fan dream a little and predict that by 2035 sci-fi movies will come up with inventive new ways of frightening us about the future...
...face of Japan's latest film fashion: a slew of classic cartoons remade as live-action movies. Forget about Spider-Man 2, this summer's much-hyped American comic-book film; Spidey is just a gaijin in a tight suit. From the lithe, demon-slaying Devilman to the clunky robot Iron Man 28, Japan has its own superhero pantheon that is ripe for recycling on the big screen. The Japanese love of cartoon heroes started with the birth in 1952 of Astro Boy and has continued unabated?the average citizen can rattle off superhero names and special powers like...
...sorts of trouble. The other big-ticket remake now in the works is Tetsujin 28-go (Iron Man 28), based on one of Japan's oldest and best-loved comics, which ran from 1956-66 and was also made into a cartoon. The title character is a remote-controlled robot who looks like the Wizard of Oz's Tin Man on growth hormones. When the remote is in the hands of a schoolboy named Shotaro Kaneda?the story's real hero?the Iron Man is an unstoppable defender of justice, whooshing in ? la Mighty Mouse to foil villainous schemes...