Trailer for Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers"
For Cinema Scope, Mark Peranson reported from TIFF:
First things first: despite the presence of Selena Gomez and the blonde Disney Channel twins, Spring Breakers is not a commercial film: it is hardcore art house. It’s not even Harmony Korine’s most commercial film, though maybe the many industry experts who have so opined associate boobies with commercialism. Nor is it at all revolutionary. Many things pop out of Spring Breakers along with those boobies, but first and foremost this is Harmony Korine doing late Hou Hsiao-hsien (say, Millennium Mambo and Flowers of Shanghai) via Miami Vice (the TV show and the movie) and Girls Gone Wild (the DVD and the downloadable internet version), and it’s as intriguing but also as problematic as that sounds. The structure is also right of out The Wizard of Oz, or I should say, thanks to the omnipresent vulgarity, Wild at Heart, as Korine’s four DTF heroine escape the glumness of small-town reality by robbing a Chicken Shack, bussing it to Florida, partying hearty, being arrested for drug possession, and eventually entering the last circle of hell when bailed out of jail by James Franco’s Scarface-adoring gangsta, a drug-dealing reprobate named Alien, who here substitutes for Bobby Peru.
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It is Korine’s good fortune to make this picture less than a decade after we witnessed the convergence of ghetto culture and the cult of youth (as compressed in the moral vacuum of white-trash celebrity media). Based on the trailer, this looks nothing like a feature film; surely every frame is cinema verite.
“Spring Breakers” disproves any criticism of Korine being an indolent director because of his style that is seen throughout his previous films. The ironic part about the film is that because of the star cast and it’s over-saturated nature it will most likely become a cult film for the same demographic that Korine chose to satire.
Color me interested, commenters! Do continue.
I’m tired of this asshole and his pretentious garbage masquerading as zeitgeist diagnostic. This movies looks like a mildly subversive genre exercise from 1999.
Yes !
Y’all!
^ What Mac said. Instead of having to “learn” about how terribly narcisistic youth culture can be, let’s watch something else that can teach more effectively than this. I am going to watch it, like many, because we are pervs.
HazO, a lot of people will indeed watch Korine’s new picture. My point was that we’ve already seen it, in the local clubs and all over television. Mac, love your point about zeitgeist diagnostic, but one thing: can found footage or a network affiliate B-reel actually be subversive? It’s only the real world, after all.
You guys sound old.
Harmony Korine is old.
Ehhh. I’ll probably avoid this one.
Korine, whether you hate him or love him, is one of the most distinct voices to emerge from the plethora of 90’s indie filmmakers.
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