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The Belgian director Lukas Dhont spotted Eden Dambrine, an eleven-year-old French dance student, on a train and asked him to audition for his latest film Close (2022). Among the youth’s qualities were his “very big eyes.” In discussing film acting,Read More

The six-part Netflix docu-series The Andy Warhol Diaries, produced by Ryan Murphy and directed by Andrew Rossi, takes a strange tack by focusing on the Pop artist’s love life in the period after he was shot by Valerie Solanas inRead More

Paul Harrill’s second feature, Light From Light (2019) is an even stronger, more assured work than his marvelous first feature Something, Anything (2014). The film played at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival where it received very positive reviews from bothRead More

I was given the opportunity to write about any American indie film for the new “21st Century Film Essentials” series from UT Press. I chose The Florida Project (2017) because I believe that Sean Baker is simply one of theRead More

Sean Baker’s latest film Red Rocket opens in LA and NYC this weekend, so you might imagine how busy he is at the moment. Yet he found the time to post a video about my recently published book on TheRead More

At long last, my new book on Sean Baker’s indie film The Florida Project (2017) was published last week. It’s the 3rd book in a series entitled 21st Century Film Essentials from University of Texas Press, and the 4th filmRead More

When I was growing up, John Gnagy’s “Learn to Draw” series on television encouraged everyone, especially kids, how easy it was to draw. I remember that at the end of the show viewers were encouraged to submit artwork for evaluation.Read More

Last week was Peggy Guggenheim’s birthday, which elicited numerous posts about her online. It prompted me to re-watch Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s fascinating documentary Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (2015), which is available for viewing on Amazon Prime. The film benefits fromRead More