Hello readers, watchers, listeners, cinephiles, and curious sorts of all stripes! This is just a quick note to say that, yes, as you may have suspected, this will be Press Play's final day on In...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/press-play-is-not-done-playing-20160430
It’s a strange time in the life of the sitcom. Somehow, television seems suddenly incapable of producing a true hit comedy, a show that goes beyond simple ratings success and enters the cultura...
Fans of Steven Spielberg say he gets them at their gut; critics of Spielberg say he goes corny too often, and in so doing betrays his craft. Both viewpoints hinge on one attribute: his ability to...
Every story you know and love originated in ancient times. David Fincher's 'Gone Girl,' adapted from Gillian Flynn's brilliant, acidic novel, is no exception. You've been listening to, reading, a...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/watch-david-finchers-gone-girl-retold-euripides-medea-20160426
Shame on anyone who says watching a film is passive! When you watch a film, you're actually doing several things at once. First and foremost, you pay attention to the nuts and bolts of the story....
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/watch-guillermo-del-toro-thinks-in-pure-colors-20160425
If fear made a sound, what would it be? That's a trick question, somewhat, because fear and silence, the complete absence of sound, are inextricably linked. John Carpenter understood this when he...
One of the most vivid memories I have of my adolescence is gorging on Doritos and Pepsi in my friend Tim’s basement and watching TV. There was no junk food in my home. I used to try and make my...
It’s easy to imagine how life as a writer or director in Hollywood—which on a good day promises meddling producers, scripts-by-committee, and fealty to test audiences—might seriously distor...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/burnt-whiplash-and-the-myth-of-the-lonely-triumph-20160415
Emotions cannot always be expressed in a straightforward conversational manner. We gesticulate, we make facial expressions, we shift our body language... or perhaps we sing. Usually the singing i...
If you've ever been immersed in the condition known to clinical psychologists and others as "depression," but really too indescribable to fit within one label, then Lars von Trier's 'Melancholia'...
There is a pressure on any work to create, within its span, a tiny world whose life begins at the film's opening credits and ends with its closing credits. It would seem that for TV dramas, that ...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/watch-what-lies-between-tv-shows-first-and-last-frames-20160407
In Quentin Tarantino's films, movement is everything. If his characters are not moving, they are about to move. In 'The Hateful Eight,' the maneuvering of the devious travelers around each other ...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/watch-quentin-tarantinos-choreography-in-slow-motion-20160404
When watching Alejandro González Iñárritu's 'The Revenant,' these lines by Wallace Stevens came to my mind many times. Among twenty snowy mountains, the only thing moving was the eye of the...
In love, I’m Paul Rudd eating cupcakes out of the garbage. My failings are not malicious. I was single for a long time. And I’m a writer. And I used to live in the woods. Loneliness and solit...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/kicking-television-bingeing-on-judd-apatows-love-20160331
How many people do you know who've been shot? This was a question that occurred to me as I watched Nelson Carvajal's latest, a video essay on Spike Lee's recent cinematic leap into rhymed verse '...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/watch-spike-lees-chi-raq-the-blossoms-of-violence-20160330
Any good story ultimately involves a power struggle of some sort, whether it be between two characters or between a character and his or her own mind. Character X wants something Character Y has:...
Interestingly enough, restraint may be the defining characteristic of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 'Amélie .' Regardless of how many surreal leaps and gestures occur within this story of a whimsical Par...
A friend of mine recently posted a photo of himself on Instagram with a C-list celebrity who was visiting my hometown. It really shouldn’t have annoyed me—though it did. I mean, what do I car...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/kicking-television-oj-simpson-v-the-people-20160323
Consider this story: a woman steals some money, runs away with it, goes to a small motel, is murdered by the proprietor. Moderately interesting by itself, possibly with some potential for suspens...
Soon after David Bowie’s death, many bloggers expressed unease at valorizing a man who slept with 15-year olds, pointing out that Bowie was yet another “problematic fave,” the go-to interne...
As complex and, in a sense, limitless as Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight ' might be, with its heady urbane mood, its panic-inducing sense of foreboding, and the presence of Heath Ledger in t...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/watch-the-dark-knight-mapping-out-the-action-20160316
The night before the SXSW Film Festival got under way, Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, defended his communal love of film in theaters. "In pursuing the new future, we c...
A sense of poignant exhaustion runs through Charlie Kaufman's stories. Not the bad kind of exhaustion, where you simply want to pass out, but the clear kind, in which you see only one thing in fr...
Watch this video essay. It's okay if you haven't heard of Vera Chytilova. It's okay if you never saw 'Daisies,' the film about two young rebellious sexy kids the essay is centered around. All you...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/watch-vera-chytilova-makes-the-richest-kind-of-fun-20160309
I woke up late on Saturday morning to good news in my email inbox: a new episode of ‘Horace and Pete,’ Louis C.K.’s online series, had dropped. The first part of the email was fun and games...