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 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. It is published by Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for New York Magazine and overseen by editor-in-chief Kevin B. Lee.

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OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Director and Cinematography

Blogs
Perhaps I should have given each of these categories its own piece, but I don't think you can separate them, and also, we're running out of time here. Let's take cinematography first.
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  • By Sarah D. Bunting
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  • February 26, 2012 5:24 AM
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  • 0 Comments
More: Oscars Death Race 2012, Sarah D. Bunting, Tree of Life, Terrence Malick

OSCARS DEATH RACE: TREE OF LIFE

Blogs
It's it fair to review a work that functions, as Roger Ebert said in his piece on "The Tree of Life," as more of a prayer than a story? Can we measure this intensely personal, individual film with traditional yardsticks? I believe it is; I believe we can. Some of the positive reviews of "The Tree of Life" seem defensive to the point of stridency, meeting charges of "but there's no narrative!" with a carpet-bombing of superlatives, and implying between salvos that such an unconventional and daring form of filmic storytelling has no use for bourgeois adjectives like "linear" and "coherent." Well…actually, on the one hand, I agree, in the sense that Malick has his ways of doing things and thinking about stories and connecting (or shuffling) dots, and that peculiar Malickian blend of compulsive control and sticky viscera either hits you or it doesn't, so no review per se is going to change your mind.
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  • By Sarah D. Bunting
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  • February 24, 2012 12:35 PM
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  • 0 Comments
More: Sarah D. Bunting, Oscars Death Race 2012, Terrence Malick, Tree of Life

'SHOULD WIN' VIDEO ESSAY SERIES: Best Picture TREE OF LIFE

Video
All of the 2011 Best Picture nominees have their merits, but one towers above the rest: "The Tree of Life," writer/director Terrence Malick's film about...well what is "The Tree of Life" about, anyway? For a free-associative non-linear movie that skips back and forth through time and space, and that includes a lengthy early section recounting the creation of the universe, the movie was a surprising commercial success, dominating discussion among cinephiles throughout a summer moviegoing season that is usually overshadowed by much louder, dumber movies. And at the center of the discussion were very basic questions about writing and direction – about storytelling generally – that cut to the heart of what movies are and what they can be.
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  • By Matt Zoller Seitz & Serena Bramble
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  • February 21, 2012 12:13 PM
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  • 26 Comments
More: Terrence Malick, Tree of Life, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Should Win, Academy Awards, Matt Zoller Seitz, Serena Bramble, video essay

TRAILER: Terrence Malick's TREE OF LULZ (Hey, it could have happened. . .)

Video
Annals of film history are filled with masterpieces that never were. Cineastes spend many a sleepless night thinking of Stanley Kubrick’s unproduced epic on Napoleon’s life. Film historians still search every nook and cranny to possibly locate Orson Welles’ first cut of The Magnificent Ambersons. Then there is the original script for John Huston’s Freud: The Secret passion that a little known philosopher by the name of Jean-Paul Sartre wrote; and Aldous Huxley’s Alice and the Mysterious Mr. Carroll, which was an amalgam of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and the biography of Lewis Carroll, of which Walt Disney said: “[The script] was so literary I could understand only every third word.” There are many, many more, and probably none of these intriguing projects will ever get to see the light of day. But don’t despair, gentle reader. As a late Christmas present, PressPlay is proud to offer you a glimpse of another masterpiece that could have been. Drown your cinephile sorrows in this.
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  • By Kevin B. Lee & Ali Arikan
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  • December 28, 2011 3:27 AM
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  • 0 Comments
More: Terrence Malick, Kevin B. Lee, Ali Arikan, video essay

VERTIGOED: THE THIN RED LINE

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  • By Cole Smith
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  • May 1, 2011 12:25 AM
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  • 0 Comments
More: The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick, Vertigoed

VERTIGOED: BADLANDS

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  • By Emma Phelps
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  • May 1, 2011 12:08 AM
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  • 0 Comments
More: Vertigoed, Terrence Malick, Badlands

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