Author: Heath

01
Jul
2008
23:10

My top 10 favorite robots

After seeing “Wall-e” (which, by the way is one of the best movies ever) my brain decided to start thinking about my favorite movie robots. So here’s my top 10 favorite Movie/TV robots (not necessarily in any particular order):

  1. Wall-E: this movie kicked so much ass in so many ways I don’t know where to begin. The virtual camerawork was better than most actual camera work in most movies. Wall-E himself was just awesome beyond words. EVE (or I-Bot as I called her) was also pretty damn awesome
  2. R2-D2 (honorable mention to C-3PO): While I think R2 is the far cooler bot, you gotta give props to his robot life mate too. These two are robot royalty. Star Wars was just full of so many great bots. The Gonk droid, the mouse droid; you could probably fill a list with just your favorite Star Wars droids.
  3. Tom Servo (honorable mention to Crow T. Robot): MST3K was just brilliant and Kevin Murphy’s version of Servo will always be one of the great bots for me.
  4. Maximillian (honorable mention to V.I.N.CENT.): “The Black Hole” is one of those movies that holds a special place of childhood nostalgia for me despite the fact that the ending is an absolute bizarre cinematic drug trip. These two bots are each worthy of their own place in robot history with more honorable mentions to Bob and S.T.A.R. but in the end I think Maximillian with his spinning blades is the more memorable and iconic robot.
  5. Yul Brenner in “Westworld”: A classic.
  6. Robot from “Lost In Space”: There was always something about him that I loved. What boy didn’t want a best friend like that!
  7. The Iron Giant: Vin Diesel’s best role to date!
  8. The Terminator: While the T-1000 may have been cooler in a lot off ways, it was the original Arnold-nator that will always be the classic.
  9. The Cylons: There was a time when I would have said the original series’ centurions but the new BSG is such an awesome show that I gotta go with those fleshjobs now. The new centurions are pretty sweet too.
  10. HAL 9000: I’ve never even actually seen this movie but that glowing red circle and eerily clam voice have so permeated pop culture that he makes it to my list

I’m sure I’ll probably think of a ton more that I’ll wish I’d put on here as soon as I publish this, but those are the ones that first came to my head so that says something about them. Keep in mind these are MY favorite robots. The ones that for whatever reason made an impact on me. Many people may cry “Where’s Johnny 5? Optimus Prime?” Etc., but there are many famous and iconic robots that just don’t hold any personal value to me. I never saw “Short Circuit”. I never watched “Transformers”. Daleks and “Blade Runner” replicants aren’t actually robots. So those are my picks. Feel free to add your own in the comments!
Random bonus tidbit:
I always thought “Gort” was cool too but I never actually saw “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” In fact I think I first became aware of Gort on the cover of a Ringo Starr Album.

21
Jun
2008
19:18

48 hour film competition

The 48 hour film competition is going on again this weekend. Once again I had a gig on Saturday so I couldn’t be in any films so instead I offered to help my friend, Greg, write his.
Last at 7:00 P.M. Greg received his info. His genre was “Road Movie”, the character we had to include was “Zack Needham, take-out delivery driver”, the prop we had to use was a baby block, and we had to use the line “That was a good one.”
Me, Jess, Larry, Greg, Hillary and Chris all went to eat and brainstorm, then we adjourned to Greg’s house to start writing.
Me, Jess, Larry and Greg then proceeded to write from about 9 P.M. to about 2 A.M. I have to say I think we wrote a pretty damn good 7 minute film. Absurd, crazy, funny, and out there. I then emailed Greg a bunch of music I’d compsed for past projects that he could use in this one for various scenes. This will be the first thing I’ve ever helped write without directing and starring in it too. It’s kind of weird but kind of cool too. can’t wait to see what we have at 7 P.M. tomorrow!

13
Jun
2008
13:12

Wonk-a-sauraus

As some may have noticed, my blog is way wonky. I have no idea how long it’s been broken since I only just noticed but for quite some time now the ability to comment has probably been broken. I am in talks with both Movable Type support and my web host trying to figure out what’s up. For the moment, comments and trackbacks are disabled to try and reduce the errors that they cause.

02
Jun
2008
0:56

A $600 impulse buy, and misc updates

Well, not exactly. We’ve been discussing getting a new bed for some time. It seems like a rarity that either one of us gets a decent nights sleep without feeling achy, crunchy or like we need to see a chiropractor. This is a bummer to us because about 2 years ago we spent a good amount getting what was supposed to be one of the best mattresses at this particular shop. I was not looking forward to trying to figure out what mattress to try next. You just never really know until you’ve slept on it for a while so “trying it out” in the shop is pretty much useless.
Cut to today. After getting an insanely great amount of clothes for both of us at Goodwill for only $100, we headed to Costco because I wanted to look for this little portable AC unit a friend had told me about to use in the room we call “The Cave” where my computer and home studio resides. For some stupid reason the AC vent going to this room is about half the size of all the others so it gets warmer than the rest of the house.
As soon as we walked in they had these queen size memory foam mattresses for only $600. Now anyone who had ever looked at a memory foam mattress will know that this is a pretty incredible price. We had always wanted to try one but had never seen them for less than a metric ton of money. We asked about their return policy and Costco has an awesome policy of “if you don’t like it, we’ll take it back. Period. Doesn’t matter how long it’s been. No time limit.” I strongly felt that this was the bed we needed to get.
So we didn’t find the AC unit I was looking for (my friend, Greg, is going to pick one up for me from Sam’s Club where he saw it), but we ended up with a memory foam mattress for about the same price we paid for our old one! And three tubs of sabra hummus which is the best hummus ever. It is THE reason we got a Costco card.
On other fronts, I’ve been hella busy with acting gigs, some Production Assistant work, our own short films, gearing up for our first feature, and many other things. Life is generally good and I hope to stop being such a crappy and infrequent blogger. I film for about a week on an independent feature this week, I’m the lead in another indie feature shooting next month and have a part in a third indie feature in July.
Grand Theft Auto IV has also sucked up a huge part of my life. It’s awesome and addicting. Rock Band still rocks We had the best Rock Band session ever Saturday night at Greg’s home theatre. Though he has it on Ps3, we brought our Xbox because, of all our friends, we by far have the most songs since we have bought almost all the downloadable content. We played for about 6 hours getting our band all the way to the Hall of Fame gig, but by that time we were all tired so our attempt at the brutal 8 song setlist to get into the Hall of Fame will have to wait until next time.
That’s about all my brain has to spit out at the moment and even all that is the highly condensed summary. Ya’ll come back now! Ya hear?

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