2,178 Occult Books Now Digitized & Put Online, Thanks to the Ritman Library and Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown

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In 2018 we brought you some excit­ing news. Thanks to a gen­er­ous dona­tion from Da Vin­ci Code author Dan Brown, Amsterdam’s Rit­man Library—a siz­able col­lec­tion of pre-1900 books on alche­my, astrol­o­gy, mag­ic, and oth­er occult subjects—has been dig­i­tiz­ing thou­sands of its rare texts under a dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion project cheek­i­ly called “Her­met­i­cal­ly Open.”…

The Stunt That Ended Buster Keaton’s Brilliant Career

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoT_Qch7jE

Buster Keaton’s pen­chant and skill for comedic stunts made him one of the biggest stars of the silent-film era.  Nobody at the time imag­ined that he would still be engag­ing in dan­ger­ous-look­ing prat­falls 40 years lat­er in his sev­en­ties, espe­cial­ly since his career seemed to have come to an end in 1926. That…

Tim Burton Visits a Paris Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies

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Tim Bur­ton grew up watch­ing Japan­ese mon­ster movies in Bur­bank, which must explain a good deal about his artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty. It seems to be for that rea­son, in any case, that the new Kon­bi­ni “Vidéo Club” episode above takes him first to the Asian cin­e­ma sec­tion of JM Vidéo, one of Paris’ last…

Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist & Poet James Clerk Maxwell

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Since its ancient ori­gins as the cam­era obscu­ra, the pho­to­graph­ic cam­era has always mim­ic­ked the human eye, allow­ing light to enter an aper­ture, then pro­ject­ing an image upside down. Renais­sance artists relied on the cam­era obscu­ra to sharp­en their own visu­al per­spec­tives. But it wasn’t until photography—the abil­i­ty to repro­duce the obscu­ra’s…

The Only Time Prince & Miles Davis Jammed Together Onstage: Watch the New Year’s Eve, 1987 Concert

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A too-pre­cious genre of inter­net meme depicts depart­ed pub­lic fig­ures who did not know each oth­er in life meet­ing in heav­en with hugs, high-fives, and winc­ing­ly earnest exchanges. These sen­ti­men­tal vignettes are almost too easy to par­o­dy, a kitschy ver­sion of the “what if” game, as in: what if two cre­ative genius­es could col­lab­o­rate in…