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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

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Press Play

GREY MATTERS: With ALPHAS, TEEN WOLF and FALLING SKIES, genre TV mourns the loss of family

EDITOR'S NOTE: This week, contributor Ian Grey looks at how genre TV is reflecting and transforming the idea of family. Warning: This piece contains spoilers.
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 21, 2011 9:13 AM
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  • 0 Comments
More: Television, GREY MATTERS (Ian Grey)

SLIDE SHOW: Ten underrated actresses we'd watch in anything

By Matt Zoller SeitzPress Play Contributor
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 20, 2011 7:52 AM
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  • 0 Comments

INTERVIEW: Matt Zoller Seitz on the metaphysical cinema of Terrence Malick

EDITOR'S NOTE: Press Play would like to thank Alef Magazine, an art, culture and design magazine based in Tehran (Iran), for giving us permission to reprint this interview Matt Zoller Seitz gave to writer Liliane Anjo about the films of Terrence Malick. It was conducted in May 2011, shortly before the release of The Tree of Life. Interspersed amid the text are the five chapters of Matt's video essay series All Things Shining: The Films of Terrence Malick, which he created for the Museum of Moving Image. In addition, Matt introduced Malick's The New World at a showing in the main theater of the Museum of Moving Image on May 15, 2011; video of the introduction is included below.
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 19, 2011 10:38 AM
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  • 2 Comments

REELING AND SPINNING: Pharrell Williams' DESPICABLE ME soundtrack

By Craig D. LindseyPress Play Contributor
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 19, 2011 10:00 AM
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  • 3 Comments

TOPIC: Reality TV is a blood sport that must change

EDITOR'S NOTE: Matt Zoller Seitz sees the suicide of a Real Housewives husband as the first crack in the glossy veneer of a ruthless franchise.
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 19, 2011 7:26 AM
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  • 1 Comment
More: Television

ROBERT NISHIMURA'S THREE REASONS: Ken Russell's THE DEVILS

Three Reasons: The Devils from For Criterion Consideration on Vimeo.
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 17, 2011 2:21 AM
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  • 3 Comments
More: THREE REASONS (Robert Nishimura)

DVD REVIEWS: PRIEST, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, CLASH and the Criterion CUL-DE-SAC

By Simon AbramsPress Play Contributor
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 16, 2011 10:00 AM
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  • 0 Comments

DEEP FOCUS: Sidney Lumet's PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981)

Video
"Prince of the City" was released on August 19, 1981. Like so many of Sidney Lumet's movies, this one lives and breathes New York City, showing us everything from tenements to court rooms and everyone from drug addicts to district attorneys. The film has well over a hundred speaking roles and what I would consider one of the best casting of authentic New Yorkers in film, mixing professional and non-professional actors throughout. The look and feel of the movie would influence many films and television shows in subsequent decades, ones that strove for realism and a more procedural approach to the cop genre. One of those shows, "Law & Order", even used one of the film's most prominent cast members, Jerry Orbach.
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  • By Steven Santos
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  • August 15, 2011 11:00 AM
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  • 1 Comment
More: video essay, Steven Santos, Sidney Lumet

GROUNDED IN MUSIC: MANHUNTER and the Michael Mann soundtrack

By Aaron AradillasPress Play Contributor
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 15, 2011 9:00 AM
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  • 6 Comments

"DO YOU SEE?": ZEN PULP, PART 4; composition and psychology in Michael Mann's MANHUNTER

  By Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas Press Play contributors
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  • By Matthew Seitz
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  • August 15, 2011 8:30 AM
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  • 2 Comments

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