I am quite excited about this film due to be released in theaters on November 23rd, 2011. The movie titled, Hugo, is based on the excellent book The Invention of Hugo Cabret.If you've read any of my earlier posts on the the book, you'll know that an automaton inspired by Maillardet's drawing automaton is a central part of the story. I posted about the first trailer for Hugo back in July. This new trailer shows more glimpses of the automaton as a well as more about Ben Kingsley's role as the real magician and film pioneer he plays, Georges Méliès. After the death of the great magician and automaton-maker Robert-Houdin, it was Méliès who purchased his theater and acquired about ten of Robert-Houdin's autoamta. While he didn't have any of the writing automata created by Robert-Houdin or that of Maillardet, he was an accomplished mechanician and thoroughly fascinating character in his own right.
This promises to be an amazing movie and I simply cannot wait for its release. If you are impatient as I am and have not yet read the book, the story is about a young boy who lives in the walls of a Paris train station. A bit of the book's description sums it up nicely: "A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo's dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery." I highly recommend it (for children and automata-obsessed adults alike). It is a delightful mixture of text and images, fact and fiction, history and fantasy. I read it myself and have to agree with the high ratings that amazon buyers have given it -- 4.5 of 5 starts.
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