Harmony Korine

I love Harmony but Im also entitled to talk about what ever I want. Dont censor people.
You sound a bit paranoid, I just love the film, thats all, it doesnt mean I know the guy.
Is it a sin to talk about new films all of a sudden ?

Viva Black Biscuit & Eraserhead :)

i’m not trying to censor you lol

i’m just saying this is a “Harmony Korine” thread

why not start a thread for Black Biscuits for you to get the word out about the film, and discuss it in depth without getting off topic?

Sure u r, implying that I shouldnt talk about films I love, and find interesting.

Boring…………………anyway back to Harmony Korine (you happy)

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I have a question…How does everyone in here feel about Korine as strictly a writer, versus him as a writer/director? Sometimes it is preferable for a writer to stay a writer, and not try his hand at directing (Charlie Kaufman comes to mind)

just curious if some of you like his writing and directing, or if you would rather him stick to the page and let others interpret his work? Kids turned out great in my opinion, without his direction.

Whats great about Harmony is that he inspires people.

You sound a bit paranoid, I just love the film, thats all, it doesnt mean I know the guy.

That’s such bullshit. You love the film (AKA worked on it or are friends with someone who did) so much you’re willing to spout lies about it?

Critics talked shit about…..Citizen Kane, Black Biscuit, Gummo

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/black_biscuit/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2025510/externalreviews

Your promotional tactics are thinly veiled and hurtful for the movie. As Brentos said, if you want to promote your (friends?) movie, then start a thread. Pretending to start a thread on maverick directors or work it into a conversation here look sad.

Korine is a heaps mad cunt and I truly mean that.

I love Harmony Korine. He is one of my favorite filmmakers, a massive influence on me, and Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy are two of my personal favorite films. Mister Lonely is phenomenal as well, and Trash Humpers is… well, I absolutely hated it at first, but I’ve seen it a few more times now (because I’m completely crazy) and it’s grown on me; if nothing else, I love the fact that Korine was bold enough to make that film, knowing full well the kind of reaction it would spark. I feel like he’s been slipping lately, though. His most recent shorts are pretty underwhelming (though the visuals in Snowballs are quite excellent). I am, however, extremely excited for both Lotus Community Workshop/Center and Spring Breakers (which just sounds awesome no matter how you slice it). Hopefully Korine will get back at the top of his game with his next few films and keep on keeping on.

Wait so Korine’s new film is that?

I got a juxtapose mag a few months back with him and franco doing a “rebel without a cause”(mainly inspired by the knife fight scene @ the observertory,and franco approached him with the idea I guess) sorta inspired this film using real female gang members on bikes with one side wearing biggie on there shirts and the other side wearing pac on there shirts,its some outlandish shit 4sure lol but I find it intreseting….I’m assuming this project steams from that 1 and they changed the direction(?) They were going with it

Oh and if I remember right,he wanted 2 have real knife fights in the film,I’m wondering how the hell can u keep gangmembers (FEMALE gangmembers mind you) chilled out on set while doing some real knife fights scenes……wtf was harmony and franco getting blunted off of 2 come up with that shit lol…..some1 must of finally told them it could be……um…. “Problematic” perhaps lol

And I could only imagine the legal issues and public backlash they would receive,not 2 mention if shit got out of hand,which would be pretty fuckin easy.

from variety:

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.
Arriving three years after “Trash Humpers,” “Spring Breakers” couldn’t come as a more candy-colored contrast: The clearance costs alone for its soundtrack, jammed as it is with current Top 40 artists like Nicki Minaj, Ellie Goulding and the Black Keys, must dwarf his last film’s entire shooting budget.

If the film is a sellout, however, it’s a calculatedly ironic one. From its dayglo opening montage depicting the sights and sounds of a typical spring break — a relatively modern rite of passage that finds college students congregating in coastal towns for reckless drinking and indiscriminate sex — Korine is plainly aping the aesthetic of such vapid MTV exploitation shows as “Jersey Shore.” Less clear is whether he’s effectively satirizing them or merely complicit in the glossy meretriciousness of the culture they represent.

It’s a line this frequently amusing film never negotiates with complete success, though Korine might believe this ambiguity is itself indicative of the generation under scrutiny. Just about every charge of social negligence leveled at “Spring Breakers” can be countered with an arch claim of intent, which makes it at once playful and wearying; enjoyment is contingent on how little you’re willing to fight it. Indeed, there’s plenty to enjoy once the white flag has been raised, from the glistening neon polish of Benoit Debie’s ace lensing to James Franco’s latest gonzo turn, this time as a gold-toothed, bird-brained white gangsta who has modeled his entire image on Lil’ Wayne.

Franco dominates the proceedings after entering them about a half-hour in, not least because the four putative heroines remain blurred at the edges throughout. Raven-haired Gomez is afforded the most distinct perspective (and coiffure) as the none-too-subtly named Faith, a churchgoing good girl who likes to let her hair down at spring break with her three interchangeably fair-headed friends Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, the director’s wife).

None of them has enough cash for the trip to the Sunshine State, prompting Candy, Brit and Cotty to stage an armed robbery at a Chicken Shack, fixing the girls’ moral dynamic and setting the tone for what’s to come. Once in Florida, the quartet’s shenanigans land them in prison for drug abuse, until they are bailed out by Franco’s mysterious benefactor, Alien (“Truth be told, I ain’t from this planet”).

Repelled by Alien’s sleazy criminality, Faith jumps aboard the next bus home. The other three girls, in the film’s increasingly dreamy logic, are somehow turned on by his “BALLR” license plate and bewildering collection of firearms, and duly join his posse. This alliance may afford the film’s most delicious scene, in which Alien and the gun-toting trio gather for a piano-led singalong to mawkish Spears ballad “Everytime,” but it’s a disappointingly patriarchal turn of events for a film that initially promises a reckless girl-power spree along the lines of “Set It Off” or, more extremely, “Baise-moi.”

This is one of several areas in which “Breakers,” the most eccentric stretches of which recall the recent lo-fi work of Zach Clark (“Vacation!”), could have been more bravely subversive than it is. Though the film is heavy on breasts and bullets, its violence and sexual content are unlikely to threaten R-rated boundaries, while an early girl-on-girl kiss is tamer than any sung about by Katy Perry. Casting the wholesome Gomez as Faith, with tabloid-sullied “High School Musical” alum Hudgens as the more rebellious Candy, is a reasonably clever wink, though the stunt hasn’t much of a shelf life, and both actresses deserve more to play with.

By contrast, virtuoso French d.p. Debie (“Enter the Void”) is given the run of the toy store, lighting the film in exquisitely lurid pools of clashing color that lend even a university lecture hall the ambience of a nightclub at witching hour. The juddering electro score, a collaboration between Cliff Martinez (“Drive”) and chart-topping dubstep wizard Skrillex, couldn’t be more on the money. The most striking soundtrack cut, however, is Nicki Minaj’s hip-hop anthem “Moment 4 Lyfe,” heard through a car radio over Debie’s bravura tracking shot of an armed robbery in progress. The film could use more such eerie tonal discord.

Camera (color, widescreen), Benoit Debie; editor, Douglas Crise; music, Cliff Martinez, Skrillex; music supervisor, Randall Poster; production designer, Elliott Hostetter; art director, Almitra Corey; set decorator, Adam Willis; costume designer, Heidi Bivens; sound (Dolby Digital), Aaron Glascock; supervising sound editors, Byron Wilson, Glascock; re-recording mixers, Gregory H. Watkins, Glascock; visual effects supervisor, Chris F. Wood; visual effects, Pixomondo; stunt coordinators, Grady Bishop, Dave Kramer; associate producers, Jonathan Fong, Scott Pierce, Brian Fitzpatrick, Debra Rodman, Noemie Devide; assistant directors, Joe McDougall II, Richard L. Fox; casting, Laray Mayfield. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (competing), Sept. 4, 2012. (Also in Toronto Film Festival — Special Presentations.) Running time: 93 MIN.

from Hollywood Reporter:

VENICE – Even by the elastic measure of James Franco’s unpredictable career, the actor gives one of his more bizarre performances in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. Playing a Florida white-trash gangsta with beaded cornrows and a gleaming mouthful of metal, he’s a cross between Bo Derek in 10 and Richard Kiel in Moonraker. At one point he sits poolside at a cheesy white grand piano and sings a Britney Spears ballad while three co-eds in DTF pants and pink ski masks do an impromptu dance routine with AK-47s.

More than by Franco, the film’s profile will be boosted by the presence of former Disney Channel cuties Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens among all the bong-hitting, boozing, coke-snorting, breast-baring, grinding bodies. “Poetry in motion” is how Franco’s drug-dealing rapper Alien describes the crowd at a beach beer blast. “Bikinis and big booties, y’all. That’s what life is about.”

Gomez plays the pointedly named Faith, a Christian youth group member who has somehow remained close to three reprobate skanks she has known since kindergarten, Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, the writer-director’s wife). Cotty has pink highlights and a sullen streak, while interchangeable Candy and Brit are defined only by their slutty blondeness.

Desperate to get out of their dull college town but short on cash, the bad girls wield fake guns and hammers to hold up a Chicken Shack, terrorizing the customers and later torching the stolen car they used. The adrenaline rush they get from this taste of violent crime hints at what’s to come.

Even before they hit Florida, the action time-shuffles Girls Gone Wild/MTV-style montages of hard-partying college kids in various stages of inebriation and undress. Faith seems unsettled when her pals re-enact the robbery for her, but she nonetheless partakes of the proceeds as the four girls cruise around town on rented scooters.

Here and throughout, voiceover is featured heavily, much of it vapid stuff about wanting all this to last forever. Korine and editor Douglas Crise use repetition in the images and dialogue to obsessive effect. Cinematographer Benoit Debie’s visuals, with their sun-blasted exteriors, pink skies, neon splashes and candy color washes, have a cool allure. And the electronic score by Cliff Martinez and dubstep musician Skrillex that saturates every scene (along with a sprinkling of chart hits) is no less propulsive than Martinez’s music was in Drive or Contagion. But there’s a nagging sense that a sliver of substance has been pumped full of growth hormones in post.

When the girls are arrested during a bust at a druggy party, they are hauled in their bikini tops and cutoffs before a judge who orders them to pay a fine or spend another night in the lockup. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” says Faith in whispery voiceover. “This can’t be the end of the dream.” In fact, it’s the beginning of the dream, as Korine steers things in a more hallucinogenic direction.

Alien covers the babes’ bail, and while they question his motives, they climb aboard his pimped-out sports car, with BALL-R plates and dollar-sign hubcaps. A dim bulb with lots of swagger, he paints a self-glorifying picture of himself, flashing wads of cash and an arsenal of weaponry. In one of many instances of Korine having fun with metatextual cine-references, Alien’s flat screen plays Scarface on a loop.

Faith becomes uncomfortable at his sleazy crib. After a tense exchange in which he comes on strong – nicely played by Gomez – she extricates herself from the situation and takes the bus home. Alien insists on the other girls remaining, which signals their endangerment. But it turns out they can more than hold their own.

Like ducks to water, they slip into his crime crew, provide girl-on-girl entertainment and flip sexual domination roles with the receptive Alien. It soon becomes apparent that he has nothing on these girls in terms of their appetite for excess and amorality. Cotty takes off after being wounded by a bullet from Alien’s turf rival Archie (Gucci Mane), and Candy and Brit lead the charge as they strike back. That they do this in matching fluoro-yellow bikinis underlines that the bacchanal is primarily a pop-art exercise – a sour lollipop that loses its flavor.

However it’s intended, the attitudinal posing curbs any capacity to shock. From the minute Alien steps in, the film becomes like a more extreme version of one of those Saturday Night Live video sketches, with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg flaunting exaggerated hip-hop style. And while Hudgens and Benson evince a persuasive embrace of bad-assery, these psychosexual bunnies have little to do beyond look hot and occasionally fellate a popsicle. Gomez’s character is given a tad more dimension before she exits and is promptly forgotten, but all the characters are thinner than an Olsen twin.

The setting and aspects of the aesthetic will attract comparison to this summer’s Magic Mike. But while Korine douses the air with dreamy melancholia, Steven Soderbergh’s film came by its underlying sense of emptiness and restless longing far more naturally. That said, Spring Breakers seems bound to acquire at least minor cult status.

I was trying to get the weekend off to go catch this in Toronto but that won’t happen. :(

i’ll wait for it to come to redbox

Girls sucking things