A LIE AGREED UPON: DAVID MILCH'S DEADWOOD (2014)
A video essay to mark the 10th anniversary of David Milch's landmark HBO series "Deadwood".
Presented by RogerEbert.com and Hitfix.com
Narrated by Jim Beaver
Written & Produced by Matt Zoller Seitz
Edited by Steven Santos
Presented by RogerEbert.com and Hitfix.com
Narrated by Jim Beaver
Written & Produced by Matt Zoller Seitz
Edited by Steven Santos
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2013)
CHAPTER 1: BOTTLE ROCKET
Part 1 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2013)
CHAPTER 2: RUSHMORE
Part 2 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2013)
CHAPTER 3: THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS
Part 3 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2013)
CHAPTER 4: THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
Part 4 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2013)
CHAPTER 5: THE DARJEELING LIMITED
Part 5 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2013)
CHAPTER 6: FANTASTIC MR. FOX
Part 6 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2013)
CHAPTER 7: MOONRISE KINGDOM
Part 7 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION (2015)
CHAPTER 8: THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
Part 8 of a video essay series based on Matt Seitz's book The Wes Anderson Collection. Adapted from the book The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel by Matt Zoller Seitz. Scripted and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz, edited by Steven Santos.
Private Property: Joseph Losey's "The Prowler" (2010)Video essay about Joseph Losey's 1951 film noir, about a married woman who falls for an unhinged cop. Originally published at The L Magazine.
Love and Kisses (2010)Montage of kisses, embraces, flirtations and other sexy movie moments. Created for The L Magazine's Valentine's Day issue, 2010.
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Review: Flooding with Love for the Kid (2010)
Essay on Zachary Oberzan's one-man, $95.51 movie adaptation of "First Blood," the David Morrell novel that introduced John Rambo. Originally published at The L Magazine.
Unreal Estate: Scariest Movie Locations (2010)
From Michael Meyer's family abode to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre House to Lord Sauron's Castle and the Death Star, a tour of some very creepy real estate. Titles and release dates included. Originally published at The L Magazine.
Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style (2009)
Pt. 1: Introduction, Melendez, Welles, Truffaut
This is the first in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style.
With just five features in 13 years, Wes Anderson has established himself as the most influential American filmmaker of the post-Baby Boom generation. Supremely confident in his knowledge of film history and technique, he's a classic example of the sort of filmmaker that the Cahiers du cinéma critics labeled an auteur—an artist who imprints his personality and preoccupations on each work so strongly that, whatever the contributions of his collaborators, he deserves to be considered the primary author of the film. This series examines some of Anderson's many cinematic influences and his attempt to meld them into a striking, uniquely personal sensibility.
Entire Transcript here
With just five features in 13 years, Wes Anderson has established himself as the most influential American filmmaker of the post-Baby Boom generation. Supremely confident in his knowledge of film history and technique, he's a classic example of the sort of filmmaker that the Cahiers du cinéma critics labeled an auteur—an artist who imprints his personality and preoccupations on each work so strongly that, whatever the contributions of his collaborators, he deserves to be considered the primary author of the film. This series examines some of Anderson's many cinematic influences and his attempt to meld them into a striking, uniquely personal sensibility.
Entire Transcript here
Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style (2009)
Pt 2: Scorsese, Lester, Nichols
This is the second in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style.
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese’s intellectualized sensuality and flamboyant kineticism are inscribed on Wes Anderson’s films. Scorsese has returned his disciple’s admiration, all but anointing Anderson his artistic heir and naming Anderson’s debut, Bottle Rocket, one of the best films of the ’90s. Orson Welles, François Truffaut, and animator Bill Melendez (A Charlie Brown Christmas, et al.) may have taught Anderson how to paint, but Scorsese taught him how to dance. Setting aside for a moment their very similar use of music, there are enough shared visual tells to make Scorsese and Anderson seem like a street-tough dad and his college-bound favorite son.
Exhibit A is their use of slow motion. Slo-mo became fashionable in the 1960s as a way to draw out violent action. But while Scorsese has used it for this purpose, he also deploys it for another reason: to italicize emotion. We can see Anderson drawing directly on Scorsese’s example in film after film. Johnny Boy’s slowed-down arrival at the bar in Mean Streets—walking forward toward the viewer as the camera dollies backward—finds a visual equivalent in Rushmore when hero Max Fischer makes his triumphant exit from a hotel room elevator after terrorizing romantic rival Max Blume with a swarm of bees. Think also of how the memorable slow-motion close-up of Jimmy Conway in GoodFellas smoking at the bar, his eyes lighting up malignantly as he contemplates whacking his cohorts in the Lufthansa heist, is echoed in the penultimate montage of Anderson’s Bottle Rocket in the shot of thief and playboy Mr. Henry puffing on a stogie after robbing Bob Mapplethorpe’s house.
Entire Transcript here
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese’s intellectualized sensuality and flamboyant kineticism are inscribed on Wes Anderson’s films. Scorsese has returned his disciple’s admiration, all but anointing Anderson his artistic heir and naming Anderson’s debut, Bottle Rocket, one of the best films of the ’90s. Orson Welles, François Truffaut, and animator Bill Melendez (A Charlie Brown Christmas, et al.) may have taught Anderson how to paint, but Scorsese taught him how to dance. Setting aside for a moment their very similar use of music, there are enough shared visual tells to make Scorsese and Anderson seem like a street-tough dad and his college-bound favorite son.
Exhibit A is their use of slow motion. Slo-mo became fashionable in the 1960s as a way to draw out violent action. But while Scorsese has used it for this purpose, he also deploys it for another reason: to italicize emotion. We can see Anderson drawing directly on Scorsese’s example in film after film. Johnny Boy’s slowed-down arrival at the bar in Mean Streets—walking forward toward the viewer as the camera dollies backward—finds a visual equivalent in Rushmore when hero Max Fischer makes his triumphant exit from a hotel room elevator after terrorizing romantic rival Max Blume with a swarm of bees. Think also of how the memorable slow-motion close-up of Jimmy Conway in GoodFellas smoking at the bar, his eyes lighting up malignantly as he contemplates whacking his cohorts in the Lufthansa heist, is echoed in the penultimate montage of Anderson’s Bottle Rocket in the shot of thief and playboy Mr. Henry puffing on a stogie after robbing Bob Mapplethorpe’s house.
Entire Transcript here
Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style (2009)
Pt. 3: Hal Ashby
This is the third in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style.
In Wes Anderson’s pantheon of artistic heroes, Hal Ashby holds a special place. The former-editor-turned-director made most of his significant films in a 10-year period bracketed by two political satires, The Landlord (1970) and Being There (1979). In between, Ashby contributed some of the most unabashedly personal American films of an era that produced a disproportionate share of them, including The Last Detail (1973), about cynical sailors escorting a naive young military prisoner to jail; Bound for Glory (1976), a biography of leftist folksinger Woody Guthrie that demonstrated a palpable sense of time and place, and showcased the first-ever onscreen use of the Steadicam; Shampoo (1975), about a womanizing hairdresser screwing his way across Southern California and struggling to open his own place, set against the backdrop of the 1968 presidential election; and Coming Home (1978), a melodrama about a paraplegic antiwar vet, a hardline GI suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the nurse torn between them.
Read entire transcript here
In Wes Anderson’s pantheon of artistic heroes, Hal Ashby holds a special place. The former-editor-turned-director made most of his significant films in a 10-year period bracketed by two political satires, The Landlord (1970) and Being There (1979). In between, Ashby contributed some of the most unabashedly personal American films of an era that produced a disproportionate share of them, including The Last Detail (1973), about cynical sailors escorting a naive young military prisoner to jail; Bound for Glory (1976), a biography of leftist folksinger Woody Guthrie that demonstrated a palpable sense of time and place, and showcased the first-ever onscreen use of the Steadicam; Shampoo (1975), about a womanizing hairdresser screwing his way across Southern California and struggling to open his own place, set against the backdrop of the 1968 presidential election; and Coming Home (1978), a melodrama about a paraplegic antiwar vet, a hardline GI suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the nurse torn between them.
Read entire transcript here
Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style (2009)
Pt 4: J.D. Salinger
This is the fourth in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style.
One of Wes Anderson’s strongest influences is not cinematic but literary: J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and other touchstones.
The filmmaker’s Salinger jones was apparent before his feature-filmmaking career had even properly begun. When I interviewed L.M. “Kit” Carson about the production of Anderson’s first feature, Bottle Rocket, he told me that when he read the script for the first time, he felt as though he were reading “The Catcher in the Rye as written by Holden Caulfield.” Like Holden, Bottle Rocket’s hero, Anthony, has undergone a period of institutionalization and dotes on his kid sister.
Read entire transcript here
One of Wes Anderson’s strongest influences is not cinematic but literary: J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and other touchstones.
The filmmaker’s Salinger jones was apparent before his feature-filmmaking career had even properly begun. When I interviewed L.M. “Kit” Carson about the production of Anderson’s first feature, Bottle Rocket, he told me that when he read the script for the first time, he felt as though he were reading “The Catcher in the Rye as written by Holden Caulfield.” Like Holden, Bottle Rocket’s hero, Anthony, has undergone a period of institutionalization and dotes on his kid sister.
Read entire transcript here
Wes Anderson: Substance of Style (2009)
Pt. 5: The Prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums, annotated
This is the fifth in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style.
Urban Fable: The Message(s) of ON THE WATERFRONT (2009)
Essay on the conflicted political messages of ON THE WATERFRONT, starring Marlon Brando as a dockworker informing on the mob that runs his union. Originally published at The L Magazine.
THE END (2009)
Apocalyptic short featuring reaction shots from alien invasion, giant monster and disaster films. A historical/critical movie by Matt Zoller Seitz and Richard Seitz, originally published at The L Magazine.
Following (a video essay) (2009)
A short video essay comprised entirely of shots where the camera follows actors. Clips range from 1927-2008.
Original article published at The L Magazine.
Original article published at The L Magazine.
Steve McQueen: Too cool (2009)
Short documentary about Steve McQueen, his screen presence, his acting, and the image of masculinity that he embodied. Originally published at The L Magazine.
Berkeley(esque) (2009)
Matt Zoller Seitz documentary about B-Western master Budd Boetticher and his collaboration with star Randolph Scott.
Documentary: A Little Love: The Art of Bill Melendez (2008)
All about the "Peanuts" animator, his collaboration with Charles Schulz, the modernist flavor of his work, and his influence on the films of Wes Anderson ("Rushmore").
Review: "At The Death House Door" (2008)
Review by Matt Zoller Seitz of documentary by Steve James and Peter Gilbert about a former death row pastor turned anti-capital punishment activist.