The human body is a machine which winds its own springs.
It is the living image of perpetual movement.

-Julien Offroy de La Mettrie, Man a Machine


Vaucanson

Vaucanson’s duck

Vaucanson and his remarkable automata

Video of a contemporary replica of Vaucanson’s duck
(at the Museé des Automates de Grenoble)

When first presented to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1928, the automaton was of unknown origin. Once restored to working order, the automaton itself provided the answer when it penned the words "written by the automaton of Maillardet". – Wikipedia

The Jaquet-Droz Automata - a very detailed webpage

Automotamania – For all Your Automaton-Restoration Needs
Maintains great images and videos

The Turk – not an automaton but a hoax: a man hidden inside played chess

The Turk at Wikipedia

Charles Babbage, the father of computing, at Wikipedia

Babbage’s Difference Engine was not constructed during his lifetime
but replicas were later made.
It's also the subject of a collaborative novel by
the cyberpunk pioneers William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Ada Lovelace, “the first programmer”

Alan Turing, who proposed the “Turing test”
for artificial intelligence, and the man behind the Enigma machine,
which is said to have won World War II.

The first robot? A scene from the original production of Karel Capek’s R.U.R.

R.U.R.

The Golem

Mickey Mouse: Mickey’s Mechanical Man

The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz

Elektro and his robot dog Sparko

Pinocchio’s now a boy

Who wants to turn back into a toy . . .

-Rufus Wainwright

Talos, the living bronze statue of Greek mythology,
as imagined by Ray Harryhausen in his 1953 film,
Jason and the Argonauts

Forbidden Planet: Robby the Robot with his creator Morbius

The Day the Earth Stood Still: Gort, the robot from outer space,
sent to enforce worldwide peace with the threat of
total annihilation

Audio-animatronic Abraham Lincoln at Disneyland

Star Wars: C3PO and R2-D2

Blade Runner: Rachael, a replicant

RoboCop

RoboCop: The ED-209

The Terminator: A human face

The Terminator: The machine beneath the skin

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Data, a fully functional android with a positronic brain

Real Robots

Genghis

Rodney Brooks’ homepage at MIT

Cog is not quite sure what to think of you

Naveed Ahmad, “The Humanoid Robot Cog”

Cog has its own homepage

Cog on YouTube

Cog tries out for a garage band

Interesting Robotics/AI Information on the Web – a pretty exhaustive site

ASIMO wants to say hi

Asimo on YouTube running

More Asimo – Cool if you speak Japanese

Asimo climbs stairs, kind of

AIBO the Robot Dog

Kismet’s homepage, including plenty of video of Kismet displaying facial expressions

Say Hello to QRIO! (the “next generation” after ASIMO—both now discontinued

Robonova Ballet

Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley at Wikipedia

Charting the Uncanny Valley: Part 1 of 7

Karl F. McDorman presents a lecture on the Uncanny Valley – Part 1 of 7

the very justly famous Lady from Shanghai Mirror Maze scene, granddaddy of all mirror mazes

Where are the great alcoholic Jewish characters of American literature?

Arnost Lustig

Arnost Lustig has passed away in Prague at the age of 84. He had cancer for several years. He became a family friend not long after his arrival in Washington DC in the early '70s. He grew up in Prague and was sent to concentration camps in his teen years; he escaped for a while when American planes mistakenly bombed a train on which he was being transported to Dachau. Much of his work as a writer and filmmaker for decades returned to those experiences, in books like "Diamonds of the Night" and "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova." In the '60s he was a prominent artist, working with most of the great Czech filmmakers of the time like Milos Forman and Jan Nemec, but finally resigned the Communist Party in 1967, and left the country during the Prague Spring of 1968. In the years since the Velvet Revolution, Vaclav Havel provided him with an apartment in the Prague Castle, where he spent much of his time. He was something of a national hero; I remember the family saying that he never seemed to pay for a meal or a cab ride; everyone wanted to talk to him. There's a documentary called "Fighter" about his long friendship with another Czech writer; their careers are contrasted, as Jan Wiener opposed the Communist regime early on and thought of Arnost as a collaborator.

I remember Arnost wearing an ascot and calling people "darling" until he realized that American film insiders didn't really do that; and calling me (and most other people) "you beast!); and telling me about getting drunk with Chou En-lai; and getting up from the table at our Passover seder, picking up the phone and saying, "Mr. President, we are eating matzo ball soup!"; and writing in my copy of "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova," "For Bernard--the poet almost the best!"

Kenneth Mars RIP

The Producers (1968) - Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars)

Betty Garrett RIP

Betty Garrett discusses the Hollywood Blacklist - EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG

Poem

All of a sudden I’m feeling that traffic-

light yellow is really a beautiful color. Is it

the tint, do you think, or the luminosity, with all its

terrible and endearing associations--“the force that through the green

fuse drives the flower”? Quotation is just plagiarism with a human face.

I began by thinking I might actually have an idea there, but I wrote something instead.

The more I hear American politicians and commentators extolling the virtues of democracy, the more I feel like I'm in East Germany in the 1960s.

The Sheik

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema



The plot of The Sheik is very different from that of Our Modern Maidens, but the mixed message about women and sexuality is the same.
Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayres) is admired for her independence, high spirit and modern ideas, but when she is kidnapped by an Arab sheik, Ahmed Ben Hassan (Rudolph Valentino), she finds herself falling under the spell of his exotic masculinity. In the popular  novel on which the film is based, Lady Diana learns to appreciate the sheik only after he takes her by force; in the film, he restrains himself and wins her with his consideration and respect for her. (When the film was re-released during the Code years, a scene of attempted rape had to be cut.)

Even so, the character of the sheik is recast for the film as the child of European parents, adopted by an Arab sheik; anti-miscegenation laws of the time would have precluded scenes suggesting romance and kisses between a European lady and an Arab man. The film was banned in Kansas City all the same.

  The Sheik was crucial to Valentino's career as the greatest male sex symbol of the time--and created a huge backlash among American men, who boycotted the film and railed against the "effeminacy" of his screen image. He died at 31 in 1926, setting off a mass outpouring of grief among American women that was a significant moment in the history of Hollywood's power over the public imagination.

Our Modern Maidens - After the Wedding

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema



Right after the wedding, Billie discovers Kentucky in tears, and puts it all together: Kentucky is pregnant by Gil! She resolves to free Gil by pretending that she herself is a fallen woman.
Note the gay friend who comes forward, offering to stand by Billie when everyone else spurns her (at the end of this clip). As Vito Russo shows in The Celluloid Closet, such clearly gay characters--especially sympathetically portrayed, as here--virtually disappeared from Hollywood movies under the Code. Now, of course, they're a recognized convention.

Heiress Billie Brown, (Crawford), is engaged to marry her long-time sweetheart, budding diplomat, Gil Jordan, (Fairbanks). When Billie goes to see senior diplomat, Glenn Abbott, (La Rocque), about ensuring that Gil get a favorable assignment, Billie and Glenn are undeniably attracted to one another. Gil is likewise attracted to Kentucky Strafford, (Page), Billie's houseguest, who becomes pregnant by Gil. Gil finds that he loves Kentucky, but marries Billie instead. Once Gil finds that Billie really loves Glenn and Billie finds that Gil loves Kentucky, their marriage is annulled and both are paired up with the people they truly love.
-Wikipedia synopsis.

Our Modern Maidens - Billie and Glenn

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema



When Glenn realizes Billie has been using him, he takes his revenge by pretending to believe she is as "modern" as she says, and then rejecting her. The scene exemplifies the great paradox of sexual innocence and seduction in Hollywood cinema: A woman is insulted if a man attempts to seduce her, and just as insulted if he doesn't want to.

Heiress Billie Brown, (Crawford), is engaged to marry her long-time sweetheart, budding diplomat, Gil Jordan, (Fairbanks). When Billie goes to see senior diplomat, Glenn Abbott, (La Rocque), about ensuring that Gil get a favorable assignment, Billie and Glenn are undeniably attracted to one another. Gil is likewise attracted to Kentucky Strafford, (Page), Billie's houseguest, who becomes pregnant by Gil. Gil finds that he loves Kentucky, but marries Billie instead. Once Gil finds that Billie really loves Glenn and Billie finds that Gil loves Kentucky, their marriage is annulled and both are paired up with the people they truly love.
-Wikipedia synopsis

Our Modern Maidens - The Seven 'Leven

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema



The world depicted in Our Modern Maidens (1929) was collapsing even as the film was completing production--the Depression ended the era of flappers and college hijinks. Audiences soon lost their taste for stories of the carefree rich. And within a year of the introduction of sound in 1927, they would no longer go to silent pictures. (Our Modern Maidens was filmed without sound, music and sound effects being added later.)
The film's treatment of sexuality is typical of the period: The audience is teased with the image of a woman who is daring and "modern," and refuses to be bound by conventional morality. But of course it's a pose. The female lead can't be allowed to be a truly "bad" girl. Still, there are several elements that would never have gotten past the Code a few years later.

Heiress Billie Brown, (Joan Crawford), is engaged to marry her long-time sweetheart, budding diplomat, Gil Jordan, (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). When Billie goes to see senior diplomat, Glenn Abbott, (Rod La Rocque), about ensuring that Gil get a favorable assignment, Billie and Glenn are undeniably attracted to one another. Gil is likewise attracted to Kentucky Strafford, (Anita Page), Billie's houseguest, who becomes pregnant by Gil. Gil finds that he loves Kentucky, but marries Billie instead. Once Gil finds that Billie really loves Glenn and Billie finds that Gil loves Kentucky, their marriage is annulled and both are paired up with the people they truly love.
-Wikipedia synopsis

In this early scene, Billie sets out to fascinate Glenn because she believes he can advance her fiance Gil's diplomatic career.

Old Wives for New - Cecil B. DeMille, 1918

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema



DeMille became famous making slightly provocative films about beautiful women and "modern" love affairs. In Old Wives for New, Charles Murdock feels trapped in an unhappy marriage. His wife Sophy has "let herself go" and takes no interest in the world beyond her home. On a camping trip he meets the fascinating Juliet Raeburn, a beautiful young self-made woman he feels is his true soulmate. When rumors circulate that Charles has found a lover, he throws suspicion upon a less reputable woman who has pursued him in order to spare Juliet from social disgrace.

The Big Heat (1953)

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema




Another film noir classic from Fritz Lang. In The Big Heat, Gloria Grahame is not a temptress--well, only a little, anyway. Instead, she's the gangster's girl with her own moral code. When she steps outside the gangster's influence, she's punished with shocking violence.

Scarlet Street (1945)

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema:




Another pairing of Fritz Lang as director with Edward G. Robinson as the "little man" who turns murderous under the influence of a temptress. Scarlet Street was considered so dark and sordid that it was actually banned in several American states and cities, despite passing the Code board.

Film Noir: The Woman in the Window

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema:




The German director Fritz Lang was a very direct link between the German expressionist films of the '20s and film noir. Lang claimed that he fled Germany immediately after Joseph Goebbels invited him to become the head of a nationalized film industry under Nazism. In the US, he directed some of the classics of noir. It's possible that the genre reflects the disillusionment of German refugees like Lang and Billy Wilder when they discovered the same struggles for power in the promised land of America that corrupted their native European world.
  In The Woman in the Window, a mild-mannered professor falls under a woman's spell and finds himself enmeshed in a web of criminality, deception, and homicide. (The professor is our friend Edward G. Robinson, Keyes in Double Indemnity.) Lang got around some of the strictures of the Code by framing the main action as a dream.
  (You can find the rest of the film on YouTube following this initial excerpt.)

More Film Noir - Maltese Falcon trailer

From my class blog at Sex in American Cinema:

Come closer . . . I'm going to tell you an astounding story . . .

The Maltese Falcon is, like Double Indemnity, one of the sources and pillars of film noir as style and genre. Even in the trailer you can see another of the hallmarks of film noir: Deception, duplicity, lies, and deceit. The typical film noir not only appears cynical and "dark," it unravels a complex plot in which nothing is as it first appears. (This may be another reason why retrospective narration is common in film noir.)

At the heart of the mystery, spinning out webs of deceit, there always seems to be a woman.
Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaugnessy is one of the great deceitful femmes fatales of noir.

Sam: Was there any truth at all in that whole story?
Brigid: Some . . . not very much.

Film Noir

From my class blog, Sex in American Cinema:

All Hollywood genres are significantly defined by their treatment of sexual themes and imagery. Musicals are traditionally built on fairy-tale romances and the display of women's bodies; the western often personifies the opposition between nature and culture as a complex heterosexual love story, troubled by an undercurrent of homosexual attraction.
   But film noir is an especially provocative case. Film noir plots are defined by their cynical view of corrupted heterosexual love, and by seductive female figures who betray male heroes--and arouse unsettling, ambivalent feelings in the audience. The dialogue in film noir is allusive and elliptical, and often comes across as more dirty-minded than any explicit depiction could be. The lighting characteristically suggests obscure forces lurking in the shadows. The world of film noir is steeped in fetishism: nothing is what it appears to be, and more importantly, nothing is as it should be. The prevailing moral order is both threatened and challenged by the eruption of desires that are usually repressed and unacknowledged. It's not a sunny picture.
   For our purposes, perhaps the most interesting aspect of film noir is that it constitutes a counter-tradition within Hollywood film: a self-conscious subversion of the image of American life that the studios generally sought to present. Central to that image is an abiding faith that men and women can find their deepest needs satisfied in romance, courtship and lasting marriage. Film noir proposes instead that sexuality is dangerous, unpredictable and often destructive.

A pretty good introduction to film noir can be found in the Wikipedia article on the topic.
A more extended treatment can be found at John and Stephanie Blaser's Film Noir Studies.

Golden Boys #4 at Dennis Cooper's blog

More at DC's

I just think the name Jimmy Hughes is as suggestive as any photograph.

I have received a solicitation to join a Romanian fitness club. At least that's what I think it is; my Romanian's a bit rusty.

Another sanctity-of-marriage Republican has been discovered soliciting women for sex online and has had to resign. Yawn.

I am spending the afternoon with Mae West and Busby Berkeley. Last week I thought I was Barbara Stanwyck (Baby Face); this week I think I'm Mae West (I'm No Angel). My life as a playlist of classic film titles.

Cary Grant: Do you mind if I get personal?
Mae West: I don't mind if you get familiar.

It's all in how she says it--which applies to me, too, of course.