Neurobiology of zombies and other movie science, coming soon to a theater near you

I love it when cool, region-exclusive events expand to a wider audience. The Coolidge Corner Theater in Boston has a program called Science on Screen, which pairs movies with related lectures on the sciences. For instance, in this video from 2009, you can watch a Harvard psychologist talk about the neuroanatomy of zombies before a showing of Night of the Living Dead. Pretty fabulous. Now, thanks to a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Science on Screen series is going to expand to 6-8 other non-profit theaters nationwide. No word yet on which theaters will get the series, but I'll keep you updated.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Cochituate

A bunch of us in Southern New England, about 35 years ago packed a picnic lunch and went to a screening of Nigh of the Living Dead. We sat in the front, and passed sticks of bread, and hard salamis and cheeses and that sort of thing, and it horrified the folks around us to the point that they complained about it to management. Two ushers came out and laughed at what we were doing and left us alone, after we’d shared some of our goodies with them. I have no memory of what the movie was like; that was the only time I’ve ever seen it.
Cochituate

May I suggest pairing Alton Brown and Eat Drink Man Woman? I loved that movie.
- petroleum
  
  Your NotLD story is cool, but you should do yourself a favor and watch the film. It’s very, very good — plus, you’ll have the nostalgia factory.
  
  The Alton Brown suggestion is a fantastic one! They could run a series showing Like Water for Chocolate, The Age of Innocence, Cilantro y Perejil, just to name a few.
davejenk1ns

I would pay a lot of money to attend a lecture from a NASA scientist on current space station tech and then watch “2001: A Space Odyssey” with the commentary on where we might be going with tech.
lectroid

May I suggest a lecture on relativistic physics prior to ‘Primer’, a short course on gene therapy and cloning paired with ‘Splice’, and guest-lecturer Oliver Sacks to accompany a screening of Memento.

I wonder if pairing up numerical methods with ‘Pi’ would make the film more or less understandable?
- petroleum
  
  Short of Adrien Brody fighting a wave of Nazi Predators with a mechanized-military-grade battle piano, I don’t think there is anything that could make me watch Splice again. Well, that or a halloween party with friends. Same difference.
sickstep

This is excellent! Science On Screen has always been great.