How 2001: A Space Odyssey Became “the Hardest Film Kubrick Ever Made”

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Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has been praised in all man­ner of terms since it came out more than half a cen­tu­ry ago. An ear­ly adver­tis­ing cam­paign, tap­ping into the enthu­si­asm of the con­tem­po­rary coun­ter­cul­ture, called it “the ulti­mate trip”; in the equiv­a­lent­ly trendy par­lance of the twen­ty-twen­ties, one could say that it “goes…

Bringing Tsarist Russia to Life: Vivid Color Images from 1905–1915

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His­to­ry escapes us. Events that changed the world for­ev­er, or should have, slide out of col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. If we’re point­ing fin­gers, we might point at edu­ca­tion­al sys­tems that fail to edu­cate, or at huge his­tor­i­cal blind spots in mass media. Maybe anoth­er rea­son the recent past fades like old pho­tographs may have…

Every Frame a Painting Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sustained Two-Shot Vanished from Movies

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Video essay­ists don’t nor­mal­ly retire; in most cas­es, they just drift into inac­tiv­i­ty. Hence the sur­prise and even dis­may of the inter­net’s cinephiles when Tony Zhou and Tay­lor Ramos declared the end of their respect­ed chan­nel Every Frame a Paint­ing in 2016. We here at Open Cul­ture had fea­tured their analy­ses of every­thing from…

Watch Fantasmagorie, the World’s First Animated Cartoon (1908)

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Try­ing to describe the plot of Fan­tas­magorie, the world’s first ani­mat­ed car­toon, is a fol­ly akin to putting last night’s dream into words:

I was dressed as a clown and then I was in a the­ater, except I was also hid­ing under this lady’s hat, and the guy behind us was pluck­ing out the feath­ers,…

Coursera Offers 30% Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates

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As the new school year gets under­way, mil­lions of stu­dents are head­ing back to class­rooms. And you can too. From now until Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, Cours­era is offer­ing a 30% dis­count on its annu­al sub­scrip­tion plan called “Cours­era Plus.” Nor­mal­ly priced at $399, Cours­era Plus (cur­rent­ly avail­able for $279.30) gives you…