I was on my way to see The Tower at the State Theatre at 11 am. on Sunday, March 13 when I ducked into the IBM house thinking I would do a few minutes on one of their virtual reality exercise bike set-ups and then hightail it to the movie. The visit turned into an hour-long journey through a brave new world.

IBM turned the Vince Young Steakhouse (at East 3^rd and San Jacinto Blvd) into a dedicated site of robots and interactive exhibits.

First of all the VR exercise bike will change the way you work out. When you put on the goggles and headset and feel yourself propelling down a hill at 35 m.p.h. you know that you’re on a stationary workout device yet your brain is tricked into the reality of an imagined situation. You feel the motion as if you were on a bicycle hurling down an idyllic path. Another simulation has the virtual rider going north on Congress toward the State Capitol.

When you enter the building you are asked a series of questions that determine what your experience will be. Basically are you a Millennial or Generation X or one of the oldsters that populate the world’s largest convention. This one fact can be easily ascertained by naming what kind of phone you grew up with.

For instance, based on my taste for alcohol (never before dark) and sour and sweet (more alkaline that acid) the house had a custom bar that made me the following blend: Ginger Ale, Mint, Cayenne Pepper, Pineapple and Lime Juice.

After my VR bike ride I was introduced to Dave Haase who was busy on a bike two bikes down. Haase is known for his ultraendurance bike riding. On a stationary exercise bike outfitted with a video screen that depicts an accurate topographical outlay, Haase is able to peddle across the United States. It takes him eight days to go 3000 miles. Haase, on a liquid diet, burns 315 calories an hour, and rides 23 hours a day, sleeping one hour. Haase is 48 years old.

A team of experts monitor Haase during his rides and an ingested pill monitors and transmits his core body temperature. This bit of athletic excellence only brought my measly sweat to a stand off. Here’s a guy who walks the walk and, ah, pedals the pedal.

The building has an interactive art wall of sorts where people stick and paste giant post-it notes. IBM now owns the Weather Channel so there was a room with a live weather display.

Another area had robots that played games with humans. “Okay human I don’t know how you’re cheating,” intones the mini robot that handed me my ass at a game of rock paper scissors.

Yet a different line offered an emotive headset that actually looks like a thin crown that when placed on your head connects your brain’s electrical impulses to a computer. Said computer uses your thoughts to move a BB-8 toy in any direction you desire. Frankly as cool as this demo was the wait was long due to constant rebooting of the laptop computers that were running the application.

How ironic that a film playing at SXSW, Silicon Cowboys, tells the story of how Compaq computers overtook IBM in the late ‘80s. Now IBM has Watson, a robotic entity that will thrust your life into a cognitive era that your intelligence will have to start jogging just to keep up with the concept.

— Michael Bergeron

Flash-forward to 1952 and the second wave of 3D moviemaking caught filmmaker’s fancy. For the next couple of years films of all genres were made in 3D, from John Wayne movies (Hondo) to killer robots. The latter subject was main plot of Gog, made at the end of the ‘50s 3D cycle and basically buried upon release and not seen in its pristine 3D form until now.

Gog 3D (3/1, Kino Lorber) was produced by Ivan Tors who was known for his sense of scientific accuracy in his productions. Of course even the most fastidious modern sci-fiers like Apollo 13 or Gravity or The Martian will have detractors that point out how this or that couldn’t happen. Previously Tors had made similarly themed atomic generation tales of wonder The Magnetic Monster (1953) and Riders to the Stars (1954) and all three films constitute a trilogy known as the Office of Scientific Investigation. During this period Tors also was the showrunner for the television series Science Fiction Theatre.

The 3D process gives Gog a very deep look. Every scene has its layers and the bright colors used for costumes only add to the sense that things are popping out of the screen and into your eyes. The cameras used for the 3D effects are different that one used for contemporary films and subsequently the look is divergent. Watching Gog I never felt that sense of staring into a forced perspective like modern 3D so much as being thrust into the space that the characters, and robots, inhabit.

A group of scientists are planning space travel research from an underground laboratory. When an accident occurs the investigators come up against the mind of a supercomputer (NOVAC) and its robots Gog and Magog that really seem to run the secret base. Destruction with a camp sensibility ensues. Richard Egan and Constance Dowling (who later married Tors) star. Themes are played out that would become a staple in later sci-fi movies from Colossus: The Forbin Project to The Andromeda Strain to The Terminator.

Extras are superb and include audio commentary by film historians Tom Weaver, Bob Furmanek and David Schecter. At one point they mention that actor William Shallert makes his first appearance in a sci-fi film here but Shallert also co-stared in The Man From Planet X, a cult classic helmed by Edgar G. Ulmer from 1951. There’s also an excellent interview with the director Herbert Strock as well as a 20-minute featurette with Natural Vision 3D co-creator (also the director of photography on Gog) Lothrop Worth that contains as much lore about Hollywood as you can cram into a reel.

As for Gog the robot, the mechanical fury moves around more like one of those automated vacuum cleaners than a humanoid C-3PO. And that fact alone moves Gog a few notches up on the essential viewing list.

— Michael Bergeron

There’s sci-fi and then there’s intelligent sci-fi. Isaac Asimov wrote about the three laws of robotics in his 1942 story Runaround. 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In the film Ex Machina writer/director Alex Garland throws the rules out the window. “I completely ignored them. It’s a set of self-declared laws. I don’t feel obliged by the court of sci-fi,” says Garland during last month’s SXSW Film Festival to a group of film reporters.” I don’t think Asimov would expect that either because he was a writer.”

Garland wrote the novel The Beach, which was also made into a movie directed by Danny Boyle. Subsequently Garland wrote the screenplay for Boyle’s Sunshine (2007). Additionally Garland adapted the movies Never Let Me Go (2010, from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro) and Dredd (2012). While Ex Machina marks his debut as a director Garland is quick to add: “The concept of a first time director is misleading. The problem for me is it presupposes I wasn’t making films before, that you don’t make films until you become a director. I dispute that. I’ve been doing this for years and actually with many of the same people; some of them actors and some of them crew. That’s not a land grab from directors, it’s just a fact that writers, cinematographers, and producers are all filmmakers.”

What makes Ex Machina above average and a cut above a modern effects-laden sci-fier comes from the depth of the interaction between the three principals. “It is essentially a product of drama that comes from conversation. That’s theatrical. Part of the challenge in cinema is something that’s using the theater form but making sure it doesn’t feel like a stage play with cameras,” says Garland. “It’s about finding the cinematic within that, it needs to feel like cinema.”

Isaac, also present, adds “The language, the wit, the condescension, the sardonic humor, that was all in the script. There’s so much that’s not being said. There’s so much doubletalk. People present something that’s not necessarily the truth. Being the hammy actor that I am I was looking for places where I could add more of it.”

“The current crop of AI related narratives and also public pronunciations of concern, I feel don’t address AI’s direction,” says Garland. “It’s more to do with privacy issues; more of a sense that we have given up something of ourselves to machines.

“We understand less about the machines and the tech companies than they understand about us, and that makes us feel uneasy. I was trying to acknowledge that in the script. A strange thing happened when trying to get this film financed. One of the financiers we showed the script to said ‘this whole thing about tech companies getting information from mobile phones and such is just too ridiculous.’ And I remember thinking so you’re going to buy a story about a thinking and talking robot but not that tech companies are gathering information. And then Snowden came along and blew the lid on that stuff.”

Geoff Barrow (Portishead) and Ben Salisbury provide an electronic soundtrack that gives off a pulsating and living atmosphere. Ex Machina opens in Houston on April 24.

— Michael Bergeron