Press Play

"The best video essay source on the web." (Roger Ebert) This web site is built on a mix of original video essays and critical, personal writing about film, TV, and their connection to broader cultural concerns. Co-founded by Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for New York Magazine, and Ken Cancelosi, it is overseen by Editor-in-Chief Max Winter.

THE REGULARS

Monthly Archives

VIDEO ESSAY: Wong Kar-Wai's Lust for Life

Video

Wong Kar-Wai, whose long-awaited The Grandmaster opens in August, is not about plot. Wong Kar-wai is about motion and emotion. As my friend Nelson Carvajal's new video suggests, he's about the moment within the moment, the eternal in the now. Beautiful neighbors pass in a stairwell and exchange lingering looks, or talk more softly than they need to so that they can be face-to-face. The camera (usually Chris Doyle's) doesn't merely record or represent: it scopes out, insinuates, measures and caresses. All is texture. Physical texture. Emotional texture. What it feels like. What it really is. What you dream it is. What you dream it was.

By Nelson Carvajal and Matt Zoller Seitz
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April 25, 2013 2:09 PM
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1 Comment

Video

It seems that video essayists are emerging every day—and if it isn't a new talent crossing our radar, it's someone whose extraordinary work we've somehow missed. The latter is the case with Joel Bocko, who's been making video essays since 2009.

By Joel Bocko and Kevin B. Lee
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April 24, 2013 2:39 PM
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0 Comments

Video

Ladies and gentlemen, as far as I'm concerned, this was the emotional highlight of EbertFest 2013.

By Luke Boyce and Matt Zoller Seitz
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April 24, 2013 1:13 AM
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2 Comments

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.

By Ken Cancelosi
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April 5, 2013 12:01 PM
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2 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

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

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

Video

In a time when social media allow us to be constantly inundated with discoveries of unsung heroes and their unappreciated films, please allow me to harangue you with praise for one such director who belongs among the pantheon of Japanese masters.

By Robert Nishimura
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March 13, 2013 8:45 AM
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0 Comments

VIDEO ESSAY: The End of Violence: The Conclusions of Clint Eastwood

Video

It took me years to learn how to watch a Clint Eastwood movie. For one thing, I tended to watch them far apart and to rely on memory of earlier films to prepare myself for current ones. But given the gaps in time between viewings, I should have been more suspicious of how I remembered them.

By Matthew Cheney
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March 8, 2013 9:05 AM
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0 Comments

Video

Oh, hello there, reader. I know why you’ve come. You’re here at Press Play to watch Leigh Singer’s awesome supercut of fourth-wall-breaking moments in cinema, aren’t you?

By Leigh Singer and Matt Zoller Seitz
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March 7, 2013 9:30 AM
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31 Comments

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