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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.

THE REGULARS

Monthly Archives

VIDEO ESSAY: Directed by De Palma

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

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

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

Video

Why do the same concepts get recycled and reinterpreted in so many different media, and what does that do to storytelling? Filmmaker Drew Morton poses that question in his video essay “From the Panel to the Frame: Style and Scott Pilgrim.”

By Drew Morton and Matt Zoller Seitz
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February 13, 2013 9:21 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

Awards

Why is a modern-day screwball comedy the best of the Oscar nominees? Because it’s a revealing reflection of the world we live in.

By Kevin B. Lee
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February 7, 2013 4:00 AM
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2 Comments

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