“Oops! … I Did It Again” isn’t one of two Britney Spears hits performed onscreen in Spring Breakers, but that song’s self-aware spirit of coy misbehavior is stamped all over Harmony Korine’s most mainstream provocation to date. Following four college girls’ descent from Florida spring-break debauchery to the even more vertiginous lows of thug life, this attractively fizzy pic may be a shock to the system for fans of teen queens Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, but remains pretty toothless titillation by its writer-helmer’s standards. Unfamiliar multiplex exposure awaits the aging enfant terrible, though the youthful target audience may seek it out on newer media. more »
Harmony Korine is passionate about making films his way. "I just want to be the greatest of all time — the greatest that ever did it," said Spring Breakers director, who described his latest work as "beach noir."
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The Spring Breakers trailer has FINALLY arrived, and it's even more packed with girls and guns and bikinis and James Franco's grimy braided hot mess than I'd ever dreamed. Also, the words "Spring Break" are spoken so many times in these two minutes of mayhem (I count 11 feverish utterances) that it's seeping into my subconscious. Watch and whet your whistle for the March 22 opener after the jump and start working on your Franco-as-Alien Halloween costumes now.
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Forget all those "most anticipated movies of 2013" lists — there's only one major motion picture event I can't wait to get my mind blown by, and that's Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers. Tween idols on a crime spree, James Franco channeling Riff Raff, the ATL Twins, and love for the pop powerhouse that was '00s-era Britney Spears... who can resist? Are we not human beings? Today Vulture's got the U.S. poster debut to tease the Spring Breakers marketing wave that's coming in the next few months, which will have me floating in a fluorescent fever of anticipation until March.
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The timing is perfect: Harmony Korine's co-ed caper Spring Breakers, starring former tween queens Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, a RiFF RaFF-channeling James Franco, and all the VICE-ready skankster stars one film can hold, is set for a spring 2013 release via A24 and Annapurna Pictures.
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James Franco is still channeling all those Renaissance Men from - well, the Renaissance. The actor, director, artist, student, musician, model, writer (have I forgotten anything?) hit the Toronto International Film Festival last month promoting his latest in Spring Breakers by director Harmony Korine, in which he plays a low-brow thug. But now it's late September and it's time to roll out with something else. This time, it's a music video with his newly launched musical project, Daddy, with artist Tim O'Keefe.
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Prancing around in a fluorescent bikini while going on a partying and crime-fueled rampage through the so-called "red neck riviera" — that could be the one sentence log-line for Toronto's Spring Breakers, which arrived in North America after its first premiere last week in Venice. Fascination with former Disney star Selena Gomez's romp through the new film in a not-quite-so-squeaky-clean role continued on this side of the pond but Gomez, director Harmony Korine and fellow stars James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine provided a few racy laughs of their own in Canada's biggest city Friday. Harmony Korine even joked that a few rugged gentlemen on spring break were taken by Gomez's presence while they shot the feature. "All these thick-necked jock dudes were rubbing up against Selena," he said.
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Also in Tuesday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, AMC Entertainment's acquisition is now complete. After Dark Films eyes a horror. The Dark Knight Rises passes another box office milestone. And Jim Carrey is confirmed for a Kick-Ass role.
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With just under 300 features, the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival is a yearly behemoth that regularly churns out a number of films that will head to U.S. theaters and vie for the year-end awards race. In fact, Toronto is considered a launch pad for the long, long awards season that will culminate in the Oscar ceremony February 24th. Some recent Oscar winners that played TIFF before heading out to audiences in North America include The King's Speech and Slumdog Millionaire. Over the next several days, ML will preview some of the titles we believe will be catching attention either with audiences, the awards race (or of course both).
The ten titles that follow range from returning auteurs like Terrence Malick and Noah Baumbach to Toronto veterans that have managed to surprise audiences with their unique vision and will likely do so again. And there are some newcomers we just found interesting. This week, ML will profile some of the top "high profile" titles we'll be watching closely. Docs, Midnight/Genre and Foreign-Language titles will follow this week. Take a look and by all means, add your opinions.
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I hope the action in Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers picks up after this scene. The film, which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, is about four college girls — played by Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine and Ashley Benson — who get mixed up with an arms and drug dealer, played by a Kevin Federlinesque James Franco, after they rob a restaurant to fund their spring break vacation and land in jail.
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I'd be lying if I said I truly understood the music video for The Black Keys' "Gold on the Ceiling," or that it didn't just give me shades of the stomach-turning willies I've been getting from the words "face" and "eating" all week. So please, someone, watch the bizarre VHS-stylings of the latest Harmony Korine joint — an aesthetic cousin to his recent Trash Humpers, with a visual nod to the wheelchair banditry of Umshini Wam — and share in my amused discomfort. Because, yeah. Baby Twinz are my new nightmare.
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James Franco, Selena Gomez, and Harmony Korine are down in Florida filming Spring Breakers, a movie about four coeds (including Disney tween queen Gomez) indebted to a rapping dealer named Alien (Franco) after they rob a bank to finance their spring break trip and he bails them out. All of this sounded innocent enough, at least as much as a Korine film can seem, until images of Franco emerged from the set. Some called his look Kevin Federline-esque; rapper Riff Raff stepped forth to actually claim, proudly, that Franco's cornrowed, blinged-out drug dealer persona was based on him. In any case, get a look at your 2011 Oscar nominee James Franco as... I don't even know what to call this. Movieliners, caption away!
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James Franco, Selena Gomez, and Harmony Korine are down in Florida filming Spring Breakers, a movie about four coeds (including Disney tween queen Gomez) indebted to a rapping dealer named Alien (Franco) after they rob a bank to finance their spring break trip and he bails them out. All of this sounded innocent enough, at least as much as a Korine film can seem, until images of Franco emerged from the set. Some called his look Kevin Federline-esque; rapper Riff Raff stepped forth to actually claim, proudly, that Franco's cornrowed, blinged-out drug dealer persona was based on him. In any case, get a look at your 2011 Oscar nominee James Franco as... I don't even know what to call this. Movieliners, caption away!
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Tribeca time already? Believe it: The 11th edition of the Manhattan-based film festival has announced the first half of its 2012 program, led in part by James Franco's General Hospital behind-the-scenes psychodrama (!), the loooonnnng-gestating lesbian-werewolf romance Jack and Diane (!!), a hipster-crisis apocalypse thriller (!!!) and a fairly awesome-sounding Val Kilmer/Harmony Korine collaboration (swoon... faint... thud) — all joined by nearly four dozen other dramatic and documentary selections in three categories. They will follow the April 18 opening-night world premiere of The Five-Year Engagement. Read on for the full Competition and Viewpoints selections, and keep an eye on Movieline for more about Tribeca 2012 as events warrant.
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When Harmony Korine's short film Umshini Wam screened alongside the latest from Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Thirst) at SXSW, both efforts had an unproven element to unveil. For Korine, the wild cards were his stars, the South African hip-hop act Die Antwoord. But for Park, it was something even more groundbreaking: he filmed the mystical, spiritual ghost story Night Fishing entirely using the iPhone 4.
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