Word: robots
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Both are remarkable works. Opus 200 is a cornucopia: for sci-fi buffs there are excerpts from the 1972 novel The Gods Themselves and the award-winning robot story The Bicentennial Man. For those who prefer Asimov's other talents, there are such tours de force as an introduction to binary numbers; an explanation, in language that even Dick and Jane can follow, of why it is possible (but not practical) to reverse the basic nuclear reaction and convert energy into matter; some witty Asimovian annotations on Shakespeare, the Bible and the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and Lord Byron...
...dialogue, but otherwise Catherine Deneuve and her current costar, Manfred, get along fine. "I give him orders," she says, "and, thank God, he has no initiative." To be that way around Deneuve, any man would have to be a robot, which is exactly what Manfred is. In Deneuve's latest film (working title: It's All Dad's Fault), now being shot in Nice, Manfred serves drinks, cleans house and also helps French Actor Claude Brasseur escape from jail. Even though she finds her sidekick's metallic utterances and mechanical behavior a bit offputting, Deneuve...
...movies highlight the half-hour. They always illustrate points made by the surrounding narrative but they break up the audience nonetheless. There on the screen is the Woody Allen we have come to know (maybe) and love--Woody flying over the battlefield in Love and Death, Woody as a robot of sorts in Sleeper, Woody talking to Diane Keaton in Annie Hall--and these scenes alone carry the film...
...plot differs from Star Wars only in detail: by some devilish mischief, a race of robots has zapped twelve of the 13 planets harboring the human race. Led by a human renegade called Count Baltar, a first cousin to Darth Vader, the robots take off in hot pursuit of the survivors of the dozen planets, who are manning a ragtag fleet hovering around the "battlestar" Galactica. The humans are desperately searching for the 13th planet, a lost, legendary human colony called Earth. Lorne Greene is the wise old man in charge, and Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch play Han Solo...
Star Wars fans will recognize his touch in some fierce space battle scenes and seemingly three-dimensional images of stars and planets. Similar tricks were also used to move the various robots. Whereas Artoo Detoo was powered by a midget, Galactica's Muffit hides a chimpanzee, which Dykstra figured could more easily reproduce the unpredictable, jumpy actions of another animal, or robot animal. The formidable Lucifer, Count Baltar's aptly named robot assistant, however, does house a man. Since Actor Bobby Porter is only 4 ft. 11 in., the towering Lucifer has 18 unoccupied inches...