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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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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

Blogs

During the last couple of years, as I developed my voice as an independent digital filmmaker, a majority of the content in my filmography grew under the direction of appropriation art, and in particular, the video essay form.

By Nelson Carvajal
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April 10, 2013 8:35 AM
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12 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

David Lynch could be a wonderful stage director. Crazy to say, perhaps, but perhaps not.

By Nelson Carvajal and Max Winter
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February 12, 2013 8:22 AM
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4 Comments

Video

"He used to be a big shot." That's how a gangster's girlfriend describes him as she cradles his corpse at the end of "The Roaring Twenties." But the line could be plugged into any gangster film that ends with a tough-talking, two-fisted, hot-tempered alpha male cooling his heels in prison, frying in an electric chair or bleeding out in an alley.

By Nelson Carvajal and Matt Zoller Seitz
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January 9, 2013 12:38 AM
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0 Comments

Video

Withhold information, then release it. Set up expectations, then subvert them. Tease, then gratify. This is how you construct an epic. This is how Quentin Tarantino, block by block, builds up "Kill Bill."

By Nelson Carvajal and Andreas Stoehr
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January 4, 2013 8:30 AM
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0 Comments

Blogs

Cinematographer Harris Savides, who died yesterday at 54, was a poet of light. He shot some of the stylistically striking movies of the last two decades.

By Nelson Carvajal and Matt Zoller Seitz
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October 12, 2012 11:41 AM
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1 Comment

Video

One of the most revealing statements in the book "Herzog on Herzog" appears early on, when Werner Herzog tells interviewer Paul Cronin that from the time he was a young child he has suffered a particular "communication defect": he has no sense of irony.

By Nelson Carvajal and Matthew Cheney
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September 28, 2012 8:55 AM
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15 Comments

Video

“Ugh. Where do they come up with this stuff?” groans a frustrated Raphael, the brooding, red-bandana-wearing member of the Ninja Turtles, whilst walking out of a New York movie theater that’s playing the 1980s creature feature "Critters."

By Nelson Carvajal
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July 30, 2012 10:56 AM
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1 Comment

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