Indiewire Browse the indiewire network

Press Play

 "The best video essay source on the web." (Roger Ebert) This is a web site built around original video essays and critical, personal writing about movies, TV, music, comics and whatever else interests its contributors. Co-founded by Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for New York Magazine, and Ken Cancelosi, it is published by Seitz and Cancelosi and overseen by editor-in-chief Kevin B. Lee and managing editor Max Winter.

Video Essays

  • Raised in Fear: The Superdynamational Horrors of Ray Ha...
  • CANNES 2013: Jia Zhang-ke's A TOUCH OF SIN
  • CANNES 2013: Joel and Ethan Coen's INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
  • CANNES 2013: Images, Part 1
  • VIDEO ESSAY: Wong Kar-Wai's Lust for Life

THE REGULARS

Monthly Archives

Press Play

A Far-Flung Memory of Roger

Blogs
Roger Ebert’s prose was instantly accessible and inviting. He came off as a super-knowledgeable guy who happened to want to simply talk movies with you.
Read More »
  • By Michal Oleszczyk
  • |
  • April 8, 2013 2:35 AM
  • |
  • 2 Comments
More: Michał Oleszczyk, Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

Speaking for the assembly: the genius of Roger Ebert, 1942-2013

Blogs
Read More »
  • By Matt Zoller Seitz
  • |
  • April 5, 2013 1:32 PM
  • |
  • 6 Comments

Remembering Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

Blogs
It was the same ritual every year. It was usually late October, maybe early November. You’d go to the mall where there was a bookstore, usually a Walden Books. (This was before Borders and Barnes & Noble were in every shopping center.) The section devoted to “Film” was one shelf, not a wall.
Read More »
  • By Aaron Aradillas
  • |
  • April 5, 2013 12:34 PM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
More: Aaron Aradillas, Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

VIDEO ESSAY: Siskel and Ebert: Screen Fighting Men

News
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were journalists, film reviewers, TV personalities and friends. They disliked each other and loved each other. They needled each other on the air and put on a great show, but it was always in the service of film criticism and education, a means of exciting viewers and drawing them in.
Read More »
  • By Ken Cancelosi
  • |
  • April 5, 2013 12:01 PM
  • |
  • 2 Comments
More: Roger Ebert (1942-2013), Ken Cancelosi, video essay, Video

Raised in Fear: POLTERGEIST and the Culture of Forgetting

Blogs
Poltergeist is a film about the repressed traumas and anxieties underlying the American dream.
Read More »
  • By Jed Mayer
  • |
  • April 4, 2013 12:14 PM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
More: Jed Mayer

The Big Lebowski a Masterpiece? That's Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man

Blogs
Quite simply, The Big Lebowski does not belong among the canon of the Coens’ best films, no matter how much its fans and urban achievers protest.
Read More »
  • By Alan Zilberman
  • |
  • April 1, 2013 8:35 AM
  • |
  • 7 Comments
More: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Alan Zilberman

O Coen Brothers, Where Art God? A Conversation Between Matt Zoller Seitz and Jeffrey Overstreet

Blogs
Do the Coens believe in God? Can we even say that for sure? Do they believe in the non-rational, the supernatural? Or are they just pranksters pulling our chains and hoping to spark conversation pieces like this one, while they sit there snickering?
Read More »
  • By Jeffrey Overstreet and Matt Zoller Seitz
  • |
  • March 31, 2013 2:36 AM
  • |
  • 5 Comments
More: Jeffrey Overstreet, Matt Zoller Seitz, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

The Circle of Life: THE HUDSUCKER PROXY

Blogs
"The Hudsucker Proxy" is one of the Coens’ most outwardly frivolous movies, part of a group of ill-received farces that includes "Intolerable Cruelty," "The Ladykillers" and "Burn After Reading." But it’s often in their farces that the brothers grapple with some of their darkest themes.
Read More »
  • By Sam Adams
  • |
  • March 29, 2013 1:04 PM
  • |
  • 2 Comments
More: Sam Adams, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

The Five Best Uses of Music in Coen Brothers Films

Blogs
The Coen brothers' relationship to source music is as integral to their vision as recurring themes and subject matter. Like a signature shot or the way certain characters speak, a director’s song selection can reverberate throughout an oeuvre.
Read More »
  • By Aaron Aradillas
  • |
  • March 29, 2013 12:14 PM
  • |
  • 4 Comments
More: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Aaron Aradillas

The Bleak Spaces and Blank Faces of FARGO

Blogs
When Fargo was released, I felt that my home state of Minnesota had finally been given its "Oresteia," its "Njal's Saga," its "Double Indemnity." Over the ensuing years, however, the popular image created by the Coen Brothers' regional epic has been a questionable inheritance.
Read More »
  • By Jed Mayer
  • |
  • March 28, 2013 8:35 AM
  • |
  • 1 Comment
More: Jed Mayer, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Follow Us

Blog Roll

Most "Liked"

  • Raised in Fear: The Superdynamational ...
  • CANNES 2013: Jia Zhang-ke's A TOUCH ...
  • CANNES 2013: Joel and Ethan Coen's INSIDE ...
  • CANNES 2013: Images, Part 1
  • VIDEO ESSAY: Wong Kar-Wai's Lust for ...
  • VIDEO ESSAY: Directed by De Palma
  • "The First, The Last, My Everything" ...
  • On an Animation of a Sentence by Nathan ...
  • CANNES 2013: Images: Part 2
  • CANNES 2013: Nicholas Winding Refn's ...

Latest Tweets

Follow us

Around The Network

the network

indiewire

categories