Trailer for The Theory of Everything, the spectacular new film about Stephen Hawking and his wife, Jane. Complement with Hawking’s actual theory of everything, animated in 150 seconds. Also see Errol Morris’s excellent documentary about the iconic physicist. 

Wonderful cinematic profile of Old Town Music Hall, an original silent film theater in El Segundo, California, from This Must Be The Place, who also gave us the spectacular This Is My Home. 

Stanley Kubrick, born on this day in 1928, on the meaning of life in a rare Playboy interview he gave when he was 30.

Trailer for 20,000 Days on Earth, the documentary about creative polymath Nick Cave. Pair with Cave’s eclectic list of influences, which suddenly makes so much sense.

(via Coudal)

In exploration, there need to be the set of people who have no rules, and they are going into the frontier.

Particle Fever, fascinating new documentary about the discovery of the Higgs boson, now available on iTunes.

The Art of Silence – a montage of Martin Scorsese’s “deliberate and powerful use of silence.” Pair with the origin and cultural evolution of silence.

What would it be like to read your own obituary? That’s precisely what legendary designer Massimo Vignelli got to do when thousands of the people he touched throughout his illustrious career (myself included) mailed him letters of appreciation in the week before his death. 

Here’s more of what made Vignelli so remarkable. Also see Julie Lasky’s beautiful remembrance on The New York Times. 

Open Culture digs up a 1954 animated adaptation of Orwell’s Animal Farm, funded by the CIA – the best thing since Ralph Steadman’s brilliant illustrations for it.

Read the story here.

Hauntingly beautiful trailer for Internet Machine, Timo Arnall’s multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet – the cinematic counterpart to Andrew Blum’s journey to the center of the internet.

Trailer for the film about legendary political theorist Hannah Arendt. 

Why you should care.

(via Progressive Geographies) 

Gentlemen of Letters, a beautiful microducmentary about Dublin’s sign painters. For a deeper (and less male-centric) dive into the whimsical world of sign-painting, go here.

(via Quipsologies)

Slow Life – a magnificent look at marine life under high magnification by photographer Daniel Stoupin, who writes:

Corals and sponges are very mobile creatures, but their motion is only detectable at different time scales compared to ours and requires time lapses to be seen. These animals build coral reefs and play crucial roles in the biosphere, yet we know almost nothing about their daily lives.

Pair with a very analog, very artistic counterpart in the gorgeous Waterlife. 

(HT swissmiss)

No Your City – an 8-part documentary by Nicolas Heller exploring NYC’s vibrant characters. Pair with the wonderful Humans of New York and famous writers’ reflections on Gotham.

A somewhat bombastic claim from this otherwise fascinating New Yorker piece on how Stefan Zweig inspired Wes Anderson. 

To draw your own conclusions, see some more candidates for “the greatest machine for sudden and drastic stylistic innovation” among the 100 ideas that changed film, as well as among those that changed photography.