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Press Play

 "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.

Video Essays

  • VIDEO ESSAY: Wong Kar-Wai's Lust for Life
  • VIDEO ESSAY: Directed by De Palma
  • "The First, The Last, My Everything" : Tilda Swinton Da...
  • BADLANDS: Terrence Malick’s “early, funny film”
  • On an Animation of a Sentence by Nathan Englander

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Press Play

VIDEO ESSAY: Critic Manohla Dargis on Poetry by Lee Chang-dong

EDITOR'S NOTE: To commemorate today’s release of Lee Chang-dong's Poetry on the site Fandor, Fandor editor-in-chief and Press Play contributor Kevin B. Lee has produced the following video essay on the film. This text for the narration comes from Manohla Dargis' review of the film for the New York Times. So with all due acknowledgments to the author and the Times, here’s the video inspired by her words inspired by the film.
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • August 23, 2011 5:33 AM
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VIDEO ESSAY: CHAOS CINEMA: The decline and fall of action filmmaking

Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.
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  • By Matthias Stork
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  • August 22, 2011 8:30 AM
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  • 107 Comments
More: video essay, Matthias Stork, Chaos Cinema, CHAOS CINEMA

DEEP FOCUS: Sidney Lumet's PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981)

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"Prince of the City" was released on August 19, 1981. Like so many of Sidney Lumet's movies, this one lives and breathes New York City, showing us everything from tenements to court rooms and everyone from drug addicts to district attorneys. The film has well over a hundred speaking roles and what I would consider one of the best casting of authentic New Yorkers in film, mixing professional and non-professional actors throughout. The look and feel of the movie would influence many films and television shows in subsequent decades, ones that strove for realism and a more procedural approach to the cop genre. One of those shows, "Law & Order", even used one of the film's most prominent cast members, Jerry Orbach.
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  • By Steven Santos
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  • August 15, 2011 11:00 AM
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  • 1 Comment
More: video essay, Steven Santos, Sidney Lumet

VIDEO ESSAY: The Inception of Movie Editing: The Art of D.W. Griffith

By Michael Joshua Rowin Press Play Special Contributor
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  • July 23, 2011 1:06 AM
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  • 1 Comment
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VIDEO ESSAY: THREE REASONS why Criterion should release THE MAN WITHOUT A MAP

Three Reasons: The Man Without a Map from For Criterion Consideration on Vimeo.
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  • By Robert Nishimura
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  • July 20, 2011 3:48 AM
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  • 3 Comments
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VIDEO ESSAY: Robert Nishimura's THREE REASONS series is a Criterion buff's fantasy

The Criterion Collection is known for delivering the highest quality standard in video distribution. Their mission statement says it all; it sells “important classic and contemporary films” to cinephiles of all genres and interests. For many DVD collectors, having the Criterion edition of certain titles justifies throwing other versions in the bin. From digital transferring to final package design, Criterion strives to bring the best possible elements to their buyers, often with the director’s own seal of approval. Naturally this kind of attention to detail inspires fanatical devotion among the company's audience. -- and in the sincerest form of flattery, it has inspired imitators. Part of the appeal in seeing a Criterion release is its ornate packaging. The company has an amazing team of in-house designers, as well as a keen eye for independent illustrators who are brought in to give their own unique spin on projects. It truly feels like the golden age of DVD cover design, and with that, Internet forums and tumblr blogs sprang up seemingly overnight with their own fake Criterion covers; simply typing those three words in any search engine will provide hours of visual enjoyment (or disgust, if you are a cover art snob like myself).
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  • By Robert Nishimura
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  • July 15, 2011 11:21 AM
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  • 1 Comment
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VIDEO ESSAY: ART GOES ON FOREVER: A Tribute to The Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Art Goes On Forever--A Tribute to The Archers from Serena Bramble on Vimeo.
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  • By Serena Bramble
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  • July 11, 2011 1:00 AM
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  • 0 Comments
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DEEP FOCUS: War Against the Machines: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Terminator 2 Video Essay

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James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day opened on July 3, 1991. It was a sequel to his surprise hit The Terminator, which was released 7 years earlier; in the original, Cameron was clearly working with a limited budget, but "Terminator 2" was designed to be more ambitious, as he had made both Aliens and the personal but financially unsuccessful The Abyss in between. Perhaps in response to that failure, Cameron fully subscribed to the "Bigger is Better" school of filmmaking to guarantee audiences would not reject his future work. He decided to revisit his earlier hit to not only expand on that story, but to realize a vision that was limited years before by both technology and budget. Cameron was given a then-astronomical budget of $102 million. What did that money buy, you may ask? A turning point in photorealistic, computer-generated images -- or what we call today, in the post-Terminator land of films, "CGI".

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  • By Steven Santos
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  • June 28, 2011 6:16 AM
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  • 7 Comments
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