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Movies

Why Do We Love R2-D2 and Not C-3PO?

With its stubby cylindrical body and playful whistles and beeps, the lovable Star Wars’ robot R2-D2 is just the right mix of man and machine

Black Orpheus: How a French Film Introduced the World to Brazil

Decades later, the movie’s legacy lives on in popular culture and in the music videos of Arcade Fire

Solomon Northup, portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years A Slave.

Vintage Headlines

The New York Times’ 1853 Coverage of Solomon Northup, the Hero of “12 Years A Slave”

Northup’s story garnered heavy press coverage and spread widely in the weeks and months after he was rescued

With Avegant Glyph, movies and games are beamed directly into the wearer's eyeballs through a patented "virtual retina" system.

Tech Watch

This Headset Can Beam Movies Directly Into Your Eyes

The Avegant Glyph is the first wearable tech that replicates an evening at the cinema

The first map of the new Hollywood development, from 1887.

Cool Finds

Hollywood Was Once an Alcohol-Free Community

Modern Hollywood is a far cry from its intrepid female founder’s “dream of beauty”

Shirley Temple with William Lyon Mackenzie King, then Prime Minister of Canada, in 1944.

Trending Today

After Retiring From Film in 1950, Shirley Temple Was the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana And Czechoslovakia

What did Shirley Temple get up to in the 63 years after her retirement from Hollywood?

Cool Finds

Hollywood Overvalues Older Male Actors And Undervalues Older Women

A female movie star’s salary peaks at age 34, and then drops off the cliff. Men hit their peak earnings at 51, and keep on making money

Cool Finds

Watch the First Ever NYC Blizzard Caught on Film

Not only is this the first ever film of a blizzard in the Big Apple, it is probably the first ever film of any American blizzard ever

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Cool Finds

This Terrifying Parasite Bears an Uncanny Resemblance to the Queen in “Aliens”

Phronima hollow out their prey and ride around in their corpse

Hustle through America’s Huckster History with a Smithsonian Curator as Your Guide

A blow by blow of the flimflams and tales of hustlers throughout history, art and literature

No, Goldfinger, You Can’t Kill Someone by Painting a Body With Gold

But surely you don’t expect us to talk about it

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Copyright Law Kept These Famous Works From Entering the Public Domain This Year

Here is a list of books, movies, music & scientific research that would have entered the public domain today had the 1978 copyright law not been passed

Tolkien’s Dwarves Would Have Needed 38 Mini-Nuclear Plants to Melt All That Gold So Quickly

Unless those dwarf furnaces were burning some sort of Middle-earth super fuel, in real life Smaug probably would have just eaten the dwarves

Evangeline Lilly plays Tauriel, an invention of Peter Jackson's, in the latest Hobbit movie.

The Tolkien Nerd’s Guide to “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”

As Peter Jackson ventures further from J.R.R. Tolkien’s original text, the source material becomes harder to pin down but is still satisfyingly nerdy

This Curious Eagle Stole a Video Camera And Filmed Its Bird’s-Eye View of the World

A feathery theif scooped up a wildlife video camera and took it on a 70-odd-mile ride

Disney’s childhood home in Chicago (on the corner), as depicted by Google Street View.

Walt Disney’s Childhood Home May Soon Be a Museum

The new owners may return the house to the same conditions it was in when young Disney ran through its halls

The Hunger Games Is Getting More People Interested in Archery

For Hunger Games fans, there’s a new hobby in town: archery

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Which Seat Should You Pick at the Movie Theater?

When you walk into a theater, you’re probably still going to argue with your friends about which seat to pick. But now you know the right answer

Here’s How Disney Animates Snow

In the Disney animation studio, different types of snow are made by tweaking a computer model. In the real world, they’re made by changing the temperature

To Dodge a Bullet, You’d Have to See It From Three Football Fields Away

Even the slowest handguns shoot a bullet at 340 meters per seconds

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