BoingBoing is all excited about this trailer for KINO’s new Houdini: The Movie Star DVD set, because it features “THE FIRST EVER ROBOT IN A MOTION PICTURE.” And the robot is, admittedly, exciting, but I’m pretty much a sucker for silent era special effects of any kind. More on the DVDs here.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon recently gave a lengthy interview to the GeeksOn podcast, and half the blogs in my Google Reader are talking about it (yes, the mostly the nerdy ones). You’d assume that the geeks would be most excited about what Whedon had to say about future movie projects, or maybe the his new TV series, which stars Buffy/Angel vet Eliza Dushku. Wrong. All anyone is talking about is a throwaway diss from Whedon on the subject of John Hughes’ Weird Science:

I hate Weird Science not a little. I find it offensive. The boy fantasy of building a girl. Obviously, we were doing the nasty version of it, because I find it grotesque.

When Whedon says “we”, he’s talking about a storyline on a late season of Buffy, in which ancillary character Warren built a robot version of Buffy for the sexual gratification of Spike. Warren eventually got flayed by Buffy’s lesbian witch friend Willow, and the Buffybot was destroyed by demons, so I guess everyone got their comeupance for engaging in the “grotesquerie” of the robot girlfriend game. Except for Spike, who moved to LA and partnered with Buffy’s other vampire ex-boyfriend to fight evil lawyers. But whatever. Back to Weird Science…

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