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Schnabel Good? Or Schnabel Bad?

I'm co-teaching a class at Columbia College Chicago this semester called Story in Fiction and Film International. In Wednesday's class, we showed "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", directed by Julian Schnabel (who is American, but the film is in French). I first saw Schnabel's paintings in a London gallery in the 1980s. Since then, he's made three films -- "When Night Falls", "Basquiat", and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly".

Personally, I think he's a far better maker of films than he is of paintings. What do you think? Is this:

"Untitled (Ross Bleckner), 1985
... really better than this:


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