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When we first caught sight of Sega Toys' meowing, purring robo-feline, we fervently hoped Lucky the robo-dog or some other bigger, stronger robot would come along and scare the creepy cat out of the neighborhood. Alas, that's not to be. "Yume-Neko Venus," or "Dream Cat Venus," is slated for a July 30 release, according to Sega (PDF in Japanese). The fake feline will cost 10,000 yen (about $108)--not bad considering you'll be saving a bundle on kitty litter and toy mice. The battery-operated robo-cat is equipped with five touch sensors that let it engage in real-life behavior like rolling on...

BLADE RUNNER and THE THING are a quarter-century old today Twenty-five years ago today, two movies debuted in theaters: Blade Runner and The Thing. Personally, I think these are two of the most classic movies ever made. That a quarter-century later we are still debating so much about each of these films should say something about their timelessness. For what it's worth, I've never thought that Deckard was a Replicant in Blade Runner. I'm really looking forward to the definitive release of this movie on DVD (including Ridley Scott's "final cut") later this fall. And so far as the ending...

Twenty-five years ago, the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner became an instant science fiction classic. Set in a sodden, squalid Los Angeles of 2019, the neo-noir masterpiece influenced a generation of filmmakers and video-game designers. Long before I teamed up with Jamie Hyneman to form the MythBusters, I was a special-effects modelmaker, and Scott's cyberpunk gem almost instantly became the most important film in the canon of movies I love. I'm still such a big Blade Runner fan that I watch it at least once every 18 months. I also own pretty convincing replicas of the "blade runner blaster" wielded...

It was a tension-filled shoot. The rising star and the director didn’t get along. When the test screenings were disastrous the producers added a voiceover narration, hoping to make the story comprehensible to baffled audiences. It was a flop when it opened in theaters on June 25, 1982. Yet 25 years later “Blade Runner” is on many lists of the top sci-fi movies of all time. It has become a cult favorite of hundreds of thousands of young adults who weren’t old enough to see the R-rated movie when it played commercially but have watched it repeatedly on home video....

London -- A British newspaper survey of scientists has chosen Blade Runner as the world's best science-fiction film. The 1982 movie was the favourite when 60 scientists were questioned by The Guardian, including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, the newspaper said Wednesday. In the film, a retired cop played by Harrison Ford hunts down renegade human replicates in a dark futuristic vision of Los Angeles. Stephen Minger, a stem-cell biologist at King's College, London, said the movie was the best he had ever seen. "It was so far ahead of its time and the whole premise...

The NY Times has named names on why the Blade Runner Special Edition 3-DVD set is on hold. It is their report, not mine. They say, "The avidly awaited, definitive version of Ridley Scott's science-fiction classic, "Blade Runner," won't be out on DVD anytime soon for stranger reasons. When "Blade Runner" was being shot in the early 1980's, Bud Yorkin, a veteran television comedy producer, and Jerry Perenchio, now the C.E.O. of Univision, were the film's bond-completion guarantors. When the film went over budget, by contract they assumed ownership of the film. Paul Sammon wrote in his book "Future Noir:...