Before Neill Blomkamp brought us District 9, he directed this awesome short film.

Although Tempbot was written by Mark Fitzloff, you can see a lot of the common threads between this and Blomkamp’s District 9 -most notably the themes of (ha ha) alienation. Tempbot is certainly more accepted (and ignored) than the Prawns were, and even though I really really liked Christopher and his son in D9 I felt a lot closer to this guy. (to be fair though, that might have just been some latent emotion left over from WALL-E/a recent viewing of Short Circuit)

Together with really well done (especially for a short film budget in 2006) CG incorporation, the production design on the Tempbot is freaking great. That fan is such a nice touch. As much as I like our robot, Tempbot’s busy cobbled together look makes me want to go out to the junkyard and weld together one of my own.

To give all credit where credit is due, the IMDB page for Tempbot is here.