The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 2009, Brooklyn-based Web developer Casey Pugh was looking for a new way to explore the potential of crowd-sourcing when he hit upon an idea of galactic proportions. He took the original 1977 Star Wars film (later known as Episode IV: A New Hope in the chronologically ordered six-part series) and chopped it into 15-second [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, e-books, Sci Fi | ≅ 5 Comments
Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) published 44 novels and 121 short stories during his lifetime and solidified his position as arguably the most literary of science fiction writers. His novel Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels, and Dick is the only science fiction [...]
≡ Category: Sci Fi, Television | ≅ Leave a Comment
Let’s do the time warp today and revisit the Not-S0-Golden Age of American Television. The year was 1978. Star Wars fever still gripped America, and the Variety Show TV format wouldn’t say die. So, producing The Star Wars Holiday Special was a no-brainer. The two-hour show takes you inside the domestic world of Chewbacca and his [...]
≡ Category: Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | ≅ 1 Comment
In 1941, director Dave Fleischer and Paramount Pictures animators Steve Muffati and George Germanetti produced Superman: The Mechanical Monsters — a big-budget animated adaptation of the popular Superman comics of that period, in which a mad scientist unleashes robots to rob banks and loot museums, and Superman, naturally, saves the day. It was one of [...]
≡ Category: Sci Fi | ≅ 10 Comments
In 1964, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the futurist and sci-fi writer best known for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, peered into the future, to the year 2000, and described what he saw. And a pretty good guess it was. Ours would be a world in which… We could be in instant contact with each other, wherever [...]
≡ Category: Film, Sci Fi | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick addition to yesterday’s look back at Siskel & Ebert’s 1982 review of Blade Runner. As we were saying, the film got off to a very shaky start. The production was a mess. Critics panned the film. Filmgoers went to see ET. And all of the rest. It was time to pull out the stops. So, M. [...]
≡ Category: Film, Sci Fi | ≅ 2 Comments
It’s perhaps hard to imagine now, but Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi film, Blade Runner, saw some hard days when it was first released in 1982. Preview screenings went badly. Crowds flocked instead to see Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster, ET. The film lost money. And critics gave the film mixed reviews. Case in point, Siskel & Ebert’s [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Psychology, Sci Fi | ≅ 2 Comments
Ray Bradbury, one of America’s beloved sci-fi writers, turns 91 today. So how about a little party favor: This retro clip takes you back to the 1970s (we believe) and it features Bradbury giving a rather intriguing take on the role of literature and art. For the author of Fahrenheit 451, literature has more than [...]
≡ Category: Film, Sci Fi | ≅ 8 Comments
You know George Lucas’ classic, The Empire Strikes Back. Now roll it back a good 60 years and imagine the silent version. It works unexpectedly well. H/T to @wesalwan. And don’t miss many landmark silent films in our collection of Free Movies Online. Chaplin, early Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, the first sci-fi and western films – [...]
≡ Category: Film, Sci Fi, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Ever since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created the very first installment of the The Uncanny X-Men for Marvel in 1963, the beloved team of mutant superheroes known as the X-Men have conquered almost every medium in popular culture from television to video games, to movies and of course comic books. Their enduring popularity isn’t [...]
Get updates as soon as they go live, via RSS feed, email and now Twitter!
Get the latest from our Twitter Stream.
Why can't we be friends?
Got a link we should post? Send it our way!
©2006-2012 Open Culture. All rights reserved.
