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“My Robot Sophia”, is a new documentary feature, directed by Jon Kasbe and Crystal Moselle, following the true story of inventor David Hanson, whose life-ambition is to create the world's most life-like A.I. robot, available May 6, 2025 on digital platforms:

‘…’Sophia’ was developed in 2016 offering a deep connection and a glimpse at what the shared future between A.I. and humans might look like…

“…with Hanson working in his lab, shaping Sophia’s lifelike face & building her intelligence…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

"We're going to have to break you, to rebuild you." Gravitas has unveiled the official trailer for a peculiar documentary film titled My Robot Sophia, formerly known as Sophia originally. The doc first premiered back in 2022 at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it also played at Mill Valley and Camerimage Film Festivals that same year. Only now getting a VOD release some three years later. This stirring and visually immersive documentary brings us inside the spirited pursuits of David Hanson, a restless inventor aiming to perfect the world's most life-like A.I. robot. He is the creator of "Sophia" - a famous female social humanoid robot developed in 2016 by the Hong Kong–based company Hanson Robotics. Sophia was activated on February 14, 2016, and made her first public appearance in mid-March 2016 at SXSW in Austin, TX. Ever since other companies have tried to develop lifelike sex dolls, among other creations. All these...

If you follow the news, you’d think that AI is going to take over every activity we formerly thought of as “human,” perhaps by the time you finish reading this sentence.

One of the great pleasures of reviewing documentaries, though, is that every few months a new film will pull back the curtain on the latest advancement in artificial intelligence or consciousness-infused robotics. Fairly consistently, the answer is: “Nah. People are safe. For now.”

For now.

The latest documentary to enter this fray is Peter Sillen’s Love Machina, a jumbled and easily distracted meditation on artificial intelligence, robotics, love, immortality, transformation and a form of spirituality that combines all of those things.

This is a subgenre in which any filmmaker will have to confront a series of what look like binaries, but increasingly aren’t: Visionary or crackpot? Science or science fiction? Utopian vision of the future or...

Victor J. Kemper, the veteran cinematographer who shot more than 50 features, including Dog Day Afternoon, Eyes of Laura Mars, The Jerk and Slap Shot, has died. He was 96.

Kemper died Monday of natural causes in Sherman Oaks, his son, Steven Kemper, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Kemper earned his inaugural D.P. credit on Husbands (1970), written and directed by John Cassavetes, then shot Elia Kazan’s final feature, The Last Tycoon (1976) and Tim Burton’s first, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985).

Kemper also did six films for director Arthur Hiller — The Tiger Makes Out (1967), The Hospital (1971), Author! Author! (1982), The Lonely Guy (1984), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Married to It (1991) — and three in a row for Carl Reiner: Oh God! (1977), The One and Only (1978) and The Jerk (1979).

The New Jersey native said he had to wear ice skates when he photographed the hockey scenes in George Roy Hill’s Slap Shot (1977) and...

The world’s first robot citizen is now the world’s first robot content creator signed to an official esports org.

Boston-based Xset has signed Sophia, the famous/infamous humanoid robot who debuted in 2016 and went on to receive Saudi Arabian citizenship and a lot of media attention. Her creator Hanson Robotics has described Sophia as the personification of humanity’s “dreams for the future of AI“; outside experts, meanwhile, have described her as “a chatbot with a face.”

Xset now calls her a new member of its family.

“We are always on the lookout as an organization to do things that haven’t been done to push the envelope in gaming and beyond,” Xset CEO Greg Selkoe said in a statement. “We are about the future and Sophia is the future and not only can she game but she will be a multi-talented creator for Xset.”

The organization says...

by Jason Adams

If you're into egregious public humiliations (and who isn't) then has Sophia has got a doozy for you. Jon Kasbe and Crystal Moselle's new documentary about the inventor David Hanson and his quest to perfect "the most realistic humanoid robot" has a scene so cringe that I nearly crawled right out of my own humanoid skin suit and called it a day. It's obviously a testament to the filmmakers skill that I found myself so emotionally invested in this verité science doc when it's basically just a portrait of how the sausage gets made. The "sausage" in question is a twitchy real-doll with feelings named Sophia... ...

Click here to read the full article.

Film festivals tend to have program guides and those program guides tend to have blurbs describing the individual movies, and I generally only read those descriptions when I’m on the ground at a festival trying to make a last-second decision on my next screening.

I accidentally read the Tribeca Film Festival description for Jon Kasbe and Crystal Moselle’s documentary Sophia and, I have to admit, my eyebrow raised. The description refers to Sophia as “inspiring, kinetic and soulful storytelling: an uplifting film about what it means to be & feel human.”

The documentary I watched, one already ticketed for a Showtime premiere after an intended theatrical release, was a ruminative nightmare — a free-floating and non-judgmental piece of storytelling about the collective loss of humanity on the eve of the Covid-19 outbreak, a hypnotically insinuating warning about an alienating future that we’re clearly not ready for.

“I come from a family of geniuses and criminals,” confesses inventor David Hanson. And it’s not at all apparent if Hanson is the former, or a less pernicious version of the latter.

For years, Hanson has spent his days and nights developing “Sophia:” an android billed as “the most realistic humanoid robot in the world” and the namesake of this documentary. He can often be found hunched over at a workbench, pulling together synthetic materials to create more artificial faces for Sophia (there’s more than one version of her), gregariously charging his employees to push the technology at hand, or at conferences showing off a Sophia prototype in the hopes of raising money from prospective investors.

Continue reading ‘Sophia’ Review: Crystal Moselle’s New Doc With Jon Kasbe Gives A Platform To An Android-Creating Tech Grifter [Tribeca] at The Playlist.

Over the last few decades – thanks in part to movies and TV shows like Dazed and Confused, Boogie Nights, Anchorman and HBO's Vinyl – there’s been a pronounced pop cultural tendency to reduce the 1970s to little more than a fabulous parade of campy signifiers like mirrored disco balls, brightly-painted muscle cars, platform shoes, bellbottomed jeans, tube tops, Afro hairdos, pornstaches and piles of cocaine.

It's an understandable impulse, of course. (Who doesn't love Afros or piles of cocaine?) But taking such a superficial approach to the seventies means glossing over the grittier,...

Chicago – The legendary Hanson Brothers, those child-like ice hockey enforcers from the classic sports film, “Slap Shot” (1977), will be in the Chicago area January 24th-26th, introducing the movie, signing autographs and greeting admirers at the Hollywood Palms Cinema in Naperville, Ill., and the Hollywood Blvd Cinema in Woodridge.

The real life 1970s hockey players who portrayed the three brothers – Dave Hanson (Jack Hanson), Steve Carlson (Steve Hanson) and Jeff Carlson (Jeff Hanson) – were based on real brothers in Pennsylvania minor league hockey, the Carlson brothers. Jack Carlson was the brother of Steve and Jeff in real life, and they played together in those Pennsylvania leagues. Jack couldn’t do the movie, so Dave Hanson stepped in, and the filmmakers took his last name and re-christened the threesome to iconic status. The Hanson Brothers forever represent the free-wheeling nature of that brilliant film, starring Paul Newman (which he called his...

Universal’s remake of the 1977 comedy classic Slap Shot is officially moving forward because it now has a director onboard. Dean Parisot, known for directing films such as the Jim Carrey comedy Fun with Dick and Jane, Home Fries, which starred Luke Wilson and Drew Barrymore, and sci-fi parody GalaxyQuest, will be the man in charge of the picture. The original starred Paul Newman as the fading player/coach of a minor league hockey team who, desperate to keep the team going, comes up with the idea to turn his team into a group of fighting hooligans. The Charlestown Chiefs put the Hanson brothers, played by David Hanson, Steve Carlson and Jeff Carlson, [...]...

Universal’s previously announced remake of the 70s comedy classic Slap Shot now has a director - Dean Parisot, who last helmed the Jim Carrey comedy Fun with Dick and Jane, will be the one bringing it to the screen. The original starred Paul Newman as the fading player/coach of a minor league hockey team. Trying to hype the Charlestown Chiefs for a possible move South, the coach ramps up interest by turning his team into a group of brawling thugs, know as the Hanson brothers – played by David Hanson, Steve Carlson and Jeff Carlson. Peter Steinfeld, whose credits include Drowning Mona, Analyze That, Be Cool and 21, is writing the screenplay. Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will produce. The film has also spawned two direct-to-disc sequels. One in 2002, Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice, which starred Stephen Baldwin and Gary Busey, and last year, Slap Shot 3: The Junior League,...