It looks like a purple popsicle melting in the sun: a three-story motel, decked out with pastel towers and spires, where even the curbs lining the parking lot are painted a bubblegum lavender. This is the primary backdrop of Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, and it’s a real place, tucked away on a strip of likeminded…
For his follow-up to the riotous underground comedy Tangerine, writer-director Sean Baker heads south to the Sunshine State, where he turns his camera on the occupants of a purple-painted motel called The Magic Castle. The Florida Project, which starts trickling into theaters tomorrow, traces the ups and downs of the…
From Streets Of Fire to Spider-Man 3 (give or take a Bobby Peru), Willem Dafoe has played villains, creeps, and all manner of guys you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley—or motel parking lot, for that matter. But for The Florida Project, the new film from Tangerine’s Sean Baker, Dafoe is taking a novel approach:…
Variety reports that A24 has picked up the distribution rights to The Florida Project, the latest film from Tangerine director Sean Baker. Starring Willem Dafoe and newcomer Bria Vinaite, the film weaves in and out of the lives of the poverty-stricken people living out of a gaudily colored hotel in Kissimmee, the…
Organized since 1969 by the French Directors’ Guild, Directors’ Fortnight (officially The Directors’ Fortnight, but rarely referred to as such) is the most storied of the independent parallel festivals at Cannes and something of a refuge for art films, genre movies, and debut features, away from the notoriously…
James Ransone is rapidly becoming one of the best character actors in the business—someone who often appears in small but memorable roles, turning in consistently excellent work. He first came to prominence with his stint as Chester “Ziggy” Sobotka in season two of The Wire, and has gone on to appear in dozens of film…
Gunning for Buzzard’s spot as the most credibly underground American indie of the year, in comes Tangerine, Sean Baker’s motor-mouthed, occasionally hyper-active, at times repetitious tour of the street corners, fleabag motels, and back alleys of West Hollywood. Let out of jail on the morning before Christmas,…
Director Sean Baker (Starlet) has made low-budget films before, but his latest takes that frugality to an unprecedented extreme. Tangerine, a drama about two transgender prostitutes played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, both making their film debuts, was shot entirely on an iPhone. The main story follows…
