Press Play

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.

Monthly Archives

VIDEO ESSAY: Kevin Brownlow, Film Essay Pioneer, on D.W. Griffith

Video

Next week the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will present the complete 5 1/2 hour version of Abel Gance’s epic Napoleon. It is truly a singular event: Due to the expense, technical challenges, and complicated rights issues involved, no screenings are planned for any other American city. This monumental event is being presented by SFSFF in association with American Zoetrope, The Film Preserve, Photoplay Productions, and the British Film Institute.

By Kevin B. Lee
|
March 15, 2012 8:27 AM
|
0 Comments

Video

Analysis of the opening credits of the first season of "The Wire," exploring how the images highlight the overall themes of each season and offer predictive snippets of future plot twists.

By Andrew Dignan, Kevin B. Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz
|
March 11, 2012 1:40 PM
|
0 Comments

Video

Two European-set love stories separated by nearly a century, Lady Chatterley and In the City of Sylvia share a fascination with the art and practice of “looking.” This video essay picks up on a special connection between these two films.

By Kevin B. Lee
|
March 7, 2012 2:17 PM
|
0 Comments

Video

Hal Hartley’s newest film Meanwhile is said to be about a man who can do everything from plumbing to international finance to novel-writing, but who can’t seem to find “success.” But how do we measure success? In a quarter century of iconoclastic filmmaking, Hal Hartley has redefined the “achievement” as it pertains to film. As Meanwhile makes its debut at IFC center Wednesday, February 29, we celebrate several of Hartley’s films with a tribute to classic Hartley moments, especially from his excellent 1991 film, Surviving Desire.

By Kevin B. Lee
|
February 28, 2012 12:49 AM
|
0 Comments

Festivals

What does it take to get your film into a world class festival? That's the question asked with gleeful irreverence by "The Woman in the Septic Tank," which screened at the recently concluded 2012 Berlinale, one of the world's foremost festivals. This hilarious satire of international art filmmaking finds two aspiring auteurs sitting in a Manila café, jealously regarding a rival's Facebook photos taken at the Venice film fest. They vow to devise the ultimate movie to win festival audiences and prizes: a single mother of five suffering in the slums is forced to sell her son to a rich pedophile. But like Mel Brooks' "The Producers," the project gets out of hand, and before we know it we're watching a musical version with the pedophile singing "Is this the boy / who'll bring me endless hours of joy?" It's one of many delightful detours taken by these filmmakers seeking the road to art house glory.

By Kevin B. Lee
|
February 21, 2012 6:46 AM
|
0 Comments

Video

One of the most sublime and insightful romantic films in recent memory, Maren Ade’s Everyone Else won both Best Director and Actress awards at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. This video looks at one of the film’s key love scenes, and explores how two people struggle to express their true feelings clouded by personal insecurities, which they cloak behind a wall of smart-ass ironic statements. In other words, it’s truly a film for our time.

By Kevin B. Lee
|
February 17, 2012 3:33 PM
|
0 Comments

Festivals

Part three of my Berlinale coverage, focusing on decision points: the moment when I pretty much made up my mind about a film, and how that moment reflects on the film as a whole, capped by my Indiewire grade.

By Kevin B. Lee
|
February 14, 2012 10:50 AM
|
0 Comments

Festivals

Part two of my Berlinale coverage, focusing on decision points: the moment when I pretty much made up my mind about a film, and how that moment reflects on the film as a whole, capped by my Indiewire grade. Read Part One

By Kevin B. Lee
|
February 12, 2012 5:29 AM
|
3 Comments

Festivals

At what point do you make your mind up about a movie? It's an especially pressing question at a festival like "Berlinale," where you can watch as many as seven or eight films a day. There’s a risk of just letting these films wash over you and, to borrow a French phrase, “fall from your eyes,” so that you leave the theater with just a vague impression of what you’ve seen and few specifics to say. To fight this I’ve decided to shape my "Berlinale" coverage around decision points: the moment where I pretty much made up my mind about a film, and how that moment reflects on the film as a whole, capped by my Indiewire grade:

By Kevin B. Lee
|
February 10, 2012 7:47 AM
|
0 Comments

Video

This year's Oscar race for Best Director features an especially strong roster. The five nominees are Woody Allen for "Midnight in Paris," Michel Hazanavicius for "The Artist," Terrence Malick for "The Tree of Life," Alexander Payne for "The Descendants" and Martin Scorsese for "Hugo." Four of them did magnificent work this year, one of them less so, but in the end there will only be one winner.

By Ali Arikan & Kevin B. Lee
|
February 10, 2012 7:46 AM
|
3 Comments

start
previous
1 - 10 of 26
next
end

Disney Magic Transforms Taxi Driver

Latest Tweets

"I think we are at a point where it is more important to think about how we watch films than about which films to watch" -@PressPlayIW
Posted 2 hours ago
RT @mant_a_tangi: @alsolikelife @PressPlayIW That's only bit of that movie I'm looking forward to. Not that I love watersports, but sure don't love Daniels.
Posted 3 hours ago
RT @nelsoncarvajal: VIDEO ESSAY: Sight and Sound Film Poll - Jonathan Rosenbaum on SATANTANGO via @PressPlayIW http://t.co/2rMs9zGr
Posted 5 hours ago
VIDEO ESSAY: Sight and Sound Film Poll - Jonathan Rosenbaum on SATANTANGO via @PressPlayIW http://t.co/2rMs9zGr
Posted 5 hours ago

Blog Roll

Most "Liked"

GREY MATTERS: Black Widow Spins Webs ...

like

1121
CANNES 2012: ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA ...

like

228
VIDEO ESSAY: FAREWELL, MY LOVELY, The ...

like

202
VIDEO ESSAY: Where Experiment Meets ...

like

176
VIDEO: All the Animals Come Out at Night: ...

like

164

VIDEO ESSAY - The Sight and Sound Film ...

like

150
VIDEO ESSAY: Depp Shadows: Tim Burton's ...

like

136
MAD MEN RECAP 7: LADY LAZARUS

like

69
CANNES 2012: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's ...

like

63
CRUEL SUMMER: 1980: THE BLUES BROTH ...

like

59

Press Play