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"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.

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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.

By Jed Mayer
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March 28, 2013 8:35 AM
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1 Comment

Blogs

Though many consider "No Country for Old Men" to be an untouchable classic in the Coens’ oeuvre, it remains tonally flawed.

By Lincoln Flynn, Stacia Kissick Jones, and Alan Pyke
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March 27, 2013 8:35 AM
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7 Comments

Blogs

I think the Coens are among the most moral (even moralistic) directors alive. Most (but not all) of their pictures are morality plays that deflate the selfishness and pomposity of individuals while finding good even in the most flawed social orders.

By Matt Zoller Seitz
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March 26, 2013 12:31 PM
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0 Comments

Blogs

"Burn After Reading" is a film about containment and knowledge, or, to put it another way, a tale of wars against chaos. Necessarily, it is a farce.

By Matthew Cheney
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March 26, 2013 12:03 PM
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3 Comments

Video

I could not stop laughing as I watched Nelson Carvajal's "Al Pacino: Full Roar"—not just because it's the most entertaining collection of over-the-top moments since Harry Hanrahan's "Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit," but because Pacino is and always has been a theatrical actor, delightfully so.

By Nelson Carvajal and Matt Zoller Seitz
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March 25, 2013 10:30 AM
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1 Comment

Blogs

“There’s been class warfare going on for the last twenty years and my class has won.” —Warren Buffett "I'm about to get my ass kicked by crawfish."—Steve-O

By Drew Gardner
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March 22, 2013 8:35 AM
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5 Comments

Video

“My policy is to have my name on a movie only once,” says Steven Soderbergh, so quoted by video essayist Nelson Carvajal. “Having your name once increases the impact of that credit because I think every time you put your name up there, you’re actually diluting it.”

By Nelson Carvajal and Matt Zoller Seitz
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March 21, 2013 8:42 AM
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0 Comments

Blogs

Publisher’s Note: I’ve been arguing with film and TV critic Tom Carson for over a decade, over all sorts of issues. One is the relative merit, or lack thereof, of the films of Steven Spielberg, about whom I’m quite enthusiastic; Tom, not so much.

By Tom Carson and Matt Zoller Seitz
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March 19, 2013 8:30 AM
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12 Comments

Video

Dave Bunting Jr.’s video essay on Season 3 of "Breaking Bad" opens with time-lapse landscapes, which are de rigueur establishing shots in TV these days. Here, though, they are uniquely awe-inspiring, in part for their exotic nature, and in part for how they seem to breathe life into everything.

By Dave Bunting, Jr. and Gary Sullivan
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March 15, 2013 8:35 AM
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1 Comment

Blogs

Though it is as flush with moral ambiguity as its predecessors, Joe Weisberg’s creation offers an altogether different breed of protagonist. What separates "The Americans" is its foregrounding of the simplest device in the history of narrative: love. In effect, The Americans is an extended remarriage plot.

By Jesse Damiani
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March 14, 2013 9:03 AM
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3 Comments

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