Film & TV
Just don’t expect the apocalypse to look like it does in the movies.
Hit shows are like societal mirrors, capable of reflecting the cultural zeitgeist whose likeness they try to record.
In spreading politics, videos may not be much more persuasive than their text-based counterparts.
What value does wit hold in genres defined by brute strength?
Released in 1972, “Ways of Seeing” has proven to be as worthy of study as the artistic traditions it investigates.
Although equal parts Hollywood blockbuster and Putinist propaganda, “Trotsky” still manages to capture the good, the bad, and the ugly of Russia’s revolutionary past.
Winner takes all, losers die, and participants have no choice but to play.
Tighten your ‘thopter seatbelts and get those worm-hooks ready: we’re going to unpack the hype surrounding Dune, both the book and the movie.
Before Herbert came along and wrote Dune, few if any sci-fi stories were set in fully realized universes.
Frank Herbert’s “Dune” refers to a religious desert people who are desperate for a savior to overthrow an evil empire. Sound familiar?
One of the scariest films of the 1970s didn’t set out to be a horror film at all.
The more horror we consume, the harder it becomes to find a good scare. These genuinely unsettling movies should get you in the mood for Halloween.
William Shatner is going to space because Jeff Bezos loves Star Trek.
Societal breakdown, whether real or imagined, can lead to dramatic responses — like blood-sucking vampires.
Studio Ghibli movies celebrate the natural world using a very Japanese mixture of Shinto, Buddhist, and Daoist themes.
In 1966, Disney announced his intention to build Epcot, an acronym for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.”
The “Foundation” series, recently adapted into a show by Apple TV, was inspired by a fascinating, real-life academic discipline.
Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series helped inspire the field of social physics, which uses math to understand crowd behavior.
For some people, the emotional pull of fictional characters is profoundly strong.
“The name’s Bond. Jane Bond.”
Journey to the West is rightly considered one of the most influential novels ever written, but the real reason for its success may be its charismatic poster-boy: The Monkey King.
The world is full of great mysteries. This is one of them.
Russian movies continue to be used as a mouthpiece for the country’s political leadership.
Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York is the kind of film that makes you laugh and cry at the same time.
Higher education, particularly for fields like filmmaking, is in big trouble when a world-class education can be found online cheaply or even for free.
The few seconds of nuclear explosion opening shots in Godzilla alone required more than 6.5 times the entire budget of the monster movie they ended up in.
Ultimately, this is a fight between a giant reptile and a giant primate.
A curated list of must-watch films from Big Think readers.
Scans show similar activity to what occurs when you think about yourself.
What happens when simulation theory becomes more than a fascinating thought experiment?