Press Play

CANNES 2013: Images, Part 1

Glenn Heath Jr. — Sat, 18 May 2013 23:39:10 GMT

Thick grey clouds paint the coastal horizon, and rain keeps falling. Massive yachts bob up and down in the choppy water while scattering festival attendees take cover under umbrella canopies....

CANNES 2013: Jia Zhang-ke's A TOUCH OF SIN

Glenn Heath Jr. — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:04:12 GMT

Jia Zhang-ke sees modern day China as an expansive minefield of potential narratives, each one ready to trigger its own perspective on the countless institutional and societal issues that...

On an Animation of a Sentence by Nathan Englander

Max Winter — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:46:00 GMT

It seems to me there are several different things going on in Drew Christie's animation of a sentence from the Nathan Englander story “The Reader.” The sentence itself runs as follows: And...

Raised in Fear: The Superdynamational Horrors of Ray Harryhausen

Jed Mayer — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:40:00 GMT

You never forget the first time you fall in love, especially in the movies. My moment came when I was eight years old, at a Saturday matinee in a cramped multiplex theater. Setting my sights...

VIDEO ESSAY: Wong Kar-Wai's Lust for Life

Nelson Carvajal and Matt Zoller Seitz — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:09:14 GMT

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,...

VIDEO ESSAY: Directed by De Palma

Joel Bocko and Kevin B. Lee — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:39:26 GMT

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...

"The First, The Last, My Everything" : Tilda Swinton Dancing to Barry White at EbertFest 2013

Luke Boyce and Matt Zoller Seitz — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:13:39 GMT

Ladies and gentlemen, as far as I'm concerned, this was the emotional highlight of EbertFest 2013: Tilda Swinton, at the festival to represent her movie Julia, joined Roger Ebert's widow Chaz...

BADLANDS: Terrence Malick’s “early, funny film”

Lincoln Flynn — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:35:00 GMT

"You know, when we showed [Badlands] at the New York Film Festival—for the very first time—you could just hear a pin drop. No one laughed. Now when Badlands is screened, people laugh because . . ....

Nobody Gets Out of Life Alive: THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE

Drew Gardner — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:56:30 GMT

"Nobody gets out of life alive. The world's so full of crap a man's going to get into it sooner or later, whether he's careful or not."--Hud Originally an advertisement for professional...

Are Animated Gifs a Type of Cinema?

A.D. Jameson — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:35:00 GMT

Well, are they? I’m inclined to argue that they are. Indeed, I’ve already done so, in two posts I wrote a couple years ago elsewhere: “How Many Cinemas Are There?” and “Why Do You Need So Many...

Raised in Fear: The Self-Help Horror of Todd Haynes’ SAFE

Jed Mayer — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:35:04 GMT

Todd Haynes works well in a variety of genres, but his most distinctive films are those that were once described as “women’s pictures,” before the inane phrase “chick flick” gained currency. Widely...

42: A Conversation Between Odie Henderson and Steven Boone

Steven Boone and Odie Henderson — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:48:24 GMT

Odie Henderson: Well, Mr. Boone, once again, we're engaging in a Black Man Talk. After American Gangstas, Tyler Perry, and Django Unchained, we're now setting our sights on the Jackie Robinson...

Sell Out the Hallway—Room 237 and the Stakes of Found Footage

Kevin B. Lee — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:35:01 GMT

On a routine visit to the indispensible film blog Observations on Film Art, I was surprised and flattered to see that film scholar David Bordwell linked to the video essay work of myself and fellow...

Between Fair Use and Infringement: The Perils of the Video Essay Form

Nelson Carvajal — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:35:01 GMT

"In its intent the video essay is no different from its print counterpart, which for thousands of years has been a means for writers to confront hard questions on the page. The essayist pushes...

Roger Ebert: End of Message

Ali Arikan — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:01:35 GMT

Last weekend, the BBC published an article titled “How to write the perfect obituary” following the brouhaha around the New York Times’ recent obituary of Yvonne Brill. The Times piece had been...

ROOM 237 and the Attack of the Id Critic

Robert Greene — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:35:00 GMT

Room 237 is the first great comedy about film criticism. Or maybe it’s the first great horror-comedy. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Rodney Ascher’s obsessive exploration of a collection of...

Excerpts from a Critic’s Screening Notes for UPSTREAM COLOR, Arranged as Free Verse

Nelson Kim — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:40:33 GMT

Warning: plot spoilers ahead. “It won’t come out.” Pig. Tent. Surgery. Pulling worm out, putting into pig. Worms in dirt. Pig tagged in ear. Pig w/ other pigs. ...

A Far-Flung Memory of Roger

Michal Oleszczyk — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 06:35:58 GMT

Back when I was a kid, every now and then my Dad would go on a business trip abroad. This was a huge deal back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, since every item coming from the world stretching to...

Speaking for the assembly: the genius of Roger Ebert, 1942-2013

Matt Zoller Seitz — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:32:29 GMT

No one was better at describing the emotional experience of watching a film than Roger Ebert. Few were better at describing the emotional experience of life. Roger knew the two experiences...

Remembering Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

Aaron Aradillas — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:34:06 GMT

It was the same ritual every year. It was usually late October, maybe early November. You’d go to the mall where there was a bookstore, usually a Walden Books. (This was before Borders and Barnes...

VIDEO ESSAY: Siskel and Ebert: Screen Fighting Men

Ken Cancelosi — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:01:30 GMT

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,...

Raised in Fear: POLTERGEIST and the Culture of Forgetting

Jed Mayer — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:14:59 GMT

Poltergeist begins with the national anthem, once played by television networks late at night before they ended their daily broadcasts. The montage of patriotic images that regularly...

The Big Lebowski a Masterpiece? That's Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man

Alan Zilberman — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:35:00 GMT

Without question, The Big Lebowski is the most popular movie the Coen brothers ever made. I’m not talking about box office receipts—Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou had higher domestic grosses—but...

O Coen Brothers, Where Art God? A Conversation Between Matt Zoller Seitz and Jeffrey Overstreet

Jeffrey Overstreet and Matt Zoller Seitz — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 06:36:04 GMT

Editor’s note: So, I was watching Raising Arizona for the 400th time the other night, and laughing at the sheer Freudian-Jungian comic bookish-ness of having the lone biker of the apocalypse appear...

The Circle of Life: THE HUDSUCKER PROXY

Sam Adams — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:04:18 GMT

More than anything, Joel and Ethan Coen fear being taken seriously. Barton Fink’s pompous playwright is superficially styled as a parody of Clifford Odets, but in retrospect—and particularly in light...