Robots in the Movies - Film History: Throughout cinematic history, especially in science-fiction tales, robots have always played a primary role. Throughout history and popular culture, robots have reflected the mood, social and cultural issues, and technology of their times. For example, in the Cold War 1950s, robots were generally viewed as threatening forces, but in later years reflected both the conflict and the continuity between man and machine. Robots have also functioned as both servant-helpers or oppressors of humanity, portraying the good and evil sides.

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Annie Hall (1977), from director-actor-co-writer Woody Allen, is a quintessential masterpiece of priceless, witty and quotable one-liners within a matured, focused and thoughtful film. It is a bittersweet romantic comedy of modern contemporary love and urban relationships (a great successor to classic Hollywood films such as The Awful Truth (1937) and The Philadelphia Story (1940)), that explores the interaction of past and present, and the rise and fall of Allen's own challenging, ambivalent New York romance with his opposite - an equally-insecure, shy, flighty Midwestern WASP female (who blossoms out in a Pygmalion-like story).

Annie Hall clearly has semi-autobiographical elements - it is the free-wheeling, stream-of-consciousness story of an inept, angst-ridden, pessimistic, Brooklyn-born and Jewish stand-up comedian - much like Allen himself (who started out as a joke writer for The Tonight Show) - who experiences crises related to his relationships and family. His unstable love affair with aspiring singer Annie Hall begins to disintegrate when she moves to Los Angeles and discovers herself - and a new life.

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The action/adventure film first became popular with weekly Saturday serials, running in installments that often had 'cliff-hanging' endings to entice viewers to return for the next show. Heroine Pearl White in the 20-episode The Perils of Pauline (1914) was the first major super-star of the silent serials. Besides Pearl White, there were other queens of the sound serials, including Kay Aldridge (as jungle Queen Nyoka in Nyoka and the Tigermen (1942)) and Linda Stirling (in the 12 part serial Zorro's Black Whip (1944) and as the "Tiger Woman" in another 12-episode serial, Perils of the Darkest Jungle (1944)).

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A wide variety of romantic melodramas in gaudy, lush, super-saturated Technicolor - classic, histrionic-laden, exaggerated, glossy, tear-jerking soaps, appeared from director Douglas Sirk. Since these overwrought films appeared during a time of Hollywood censorship, all of the sexual transgressions, ungratified desires, illegitimacies, psycho-sexual disorders (impotence, frigidity, nymphomania, Oedipal problems, etc.), rapes, adulteries, domestically-oppressed women, abuses, abortions, and affairs were not made entirely explicit. These potentially-subversive topics, nonetheless, were brought to the screen. Today, they are sometimes considered over-the-top, but should be viewed with irony for the hidden meanings contained within:

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To Hitchcock's tribute, there are a number of Hitchcock-like thrillers from other notable directors. All of these films serve up thrilling tales of terror, intrigue, menace, revenge, obsession, and insanity:

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Cast
Rhys Ifans as Howard Marks
Chloë Sevigny as Judy Marks
David Thewlis as Jim McCann
Elsa Pataky as Ilze
Andrew Tiernan as Alan Marcuson
Omid Djalili as Saleem Malik
Jamie Harris as Patrick Lane
Christian McKay as Hamilton McMillan
Ken Russell as Russell Miegs

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Soon after Naomie Harris confirmed her role as the new Miss Moneypenny, the sassy assistant to Bond's Boss M, played by Judi Dench, First Showing reported on Amazing Spider-Man villain Rhys Ifans joining the upcoming Bond 23.

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A major cast shake-up confirmed that Sienna Miller, William H. Macy, Brendan Fraser, Matt Dillon and Craig Robinson have left writer/director Charles Matthau’s adaptation of the Elmore Leonard crime novel Freaky Deaky.

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Prep work continued on David O. Russell’s adaptation of Matthew Quick’s novel The Silver Linings Playbook with Winter’s Bone and X-Men: First Class actress Jennifer Lawrence in talks for the role of an eccentric neighbor who befriends a former high school teacher trying to restart his life after being institutionalized for depression.

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