Posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2012 by Angie Han
Harmony Korine‘s edgy oeuvre isn’t exactly typical awards bait, but his upcoming Spring Breakers is apparently gunning for at least one of those little gold men. The drama is getting an Oscar-qualifying year-end release to give star James Franco, who plays drug kingpin Alien, a shot at the Best Supporting Actor award.
Franco isn’t totally unknown to the Academy, having previously been nominated for his lead turn in 127 Hours. But he’ll be up against some stiff competition, many of whom did fine work in films more likely to be appreciated by the older Academy crowd. More after the jump.
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Yep, that’s an image of a slacker Val Kilmer on a BMX bike. In a new short from Harmony Korine, Kilmer plays a motivational speaker named Val Kilmer, and we see him do his thing at a roller rink. The short is part of an omnibus feature called The Fourth Dimension that will play soon at the Tribeca Film Festival. As you might guess just based on that image and the short description I just provided, this looks like signature Korine craziness. Check out a trailer below. Read More »
Posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 by Angie Han
Whether you love James Franco or can’t stand him, it can’t be denied that the man works hard. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate already — what with films including Oz: The Great and Powerful, Lovelace, Spring Breakers, and his directorial effort The Broken Tower all coming up, plus all of his non-movie projects — he’s now added Mapplethorpe, a biopic of the late photographer. The Tribeca-backed picture will be the first narrative feature by documentary director Ondi Timoner (Dig!, We Live in Public).
Franco will topline the cast as Robert Mapplethorpe, whose explicit works sparked debate over public funding for the arts in the late 1980s. Between this and Howl, it seems Franco’s becoming the go-to guy for historical movies about controversial artists. Timoner, Miles Levy, and Eliza Dushku will produce along with Nate Dushku (Eliza’s brother), who was lined up to play Mapplethorpe at one point before Franco came on board. [The Hollywood Reporter]
After the jump, Emma Roberts refuses to let James Franco bail her out of jail.
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Posted on Friday, December 9th, 2011 by Angie Han
There’s still no word on who’ll be playing Éponine in Tom Hooper‘s Les Misérables, but the project has landed yet another well-known star to play her father. According to LondonNet, Sacha Baron Cohen is set to join Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, and Eddie Redmayne in the musical, in the role of the villainous inn owner Monsieur Thénardier. Helena Bonham Carter was said to be in talks to play Thénardier’s wife earlier this year, but it’s not clear whether she’s actually attached at this point.
Cohen did a bit of singing in his last big-screen musical, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and is slated to do still more as the lead of that Freddie Mercury biopic from producer Graham King. In terms of non-singing roles, Cohen recently appeared in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, and already has three more movies scheduled to open next year — The Dictator, Madagascar 3, and Django Unchained. Get used to that face, because you’ll be seeing a lot of it in 2012.
Les Misérables opens December 7, 2012. [via The Playlist]
After the jump, a Disney gal decides it’s time to break into more mature territory, and Diablo Cody’s next project finds a mom for Julianne Hough.
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From anyone but Harmony Korine, known for scripting Kids and directing Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, and Trash Humpers, the plot for Spring Breakers would sound like a wild piece of material. For Korine, it almost sounds like a family film. The story follows four late-teen girls who rob a restaurant in order to finance a spring break trip, and end up enlisted to kill the rival of their drug dealer.
Now Emma Roberts is in talks to play one of the four girls, and James Franco is attached to play the dealer. Read More »
Posted on Friday, September 23rd, 2011 by Angie Han
Harmony Korine has built up quite a reputation as a polarizing cult filmmaker (writer of Kids, writer/director of Gummo, Mister Lonely, Trash Humpers), but that hasn’t stopped him from doing quite well for himself in the relatively safe world of commercials. Among his past high-profile clients are Budweiser, Liberty Mutual, and Axe. His latest commercial effort sees him teaming up with high-end fashion line Proenza Schouler for a four-minute short titled Snowballs, featuring the brand’s Southwestern-flavored Fall 2011 collection. Although Snowballs won’t drop til next week, we’ve got an exclusive look at two posters for the film that suggest something artsy, colorful, and hopefully a little twisted. Check ‘em out after the jump.
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Summer is fast approaching and Harmony Korine—the polarizing Nashville-based filmmaker irresponsible for directing Gummo and scribing Kids—has returned to combat the season’s flabbier atrocities. For everyone’s information, Korine believes his latest movie, Trash Humpers, should not be referred to in the press or elsewhere as “a movie” or “a film.” I think I see his point. I mean, after all Humpers doesn’t contain a shirtless Vince Vaughn tripping over models in Ibiza or Egyptian robot rockets penetrating a CGI brick wall that turns into sand. But since the not-a-movie is receiving a theatrical release this summer, I asked him to elaborate. Korine said Humpers might as well be projected into a toilet bowl or mailed anonymously to a closeted politician. And then he said something profound about granny’s undergarments and snickered like an asthmatic hick with dementia.
It’s the same asthmatic snicker heard in Trash Humpers, a sound horrifying enough to make “a grown man jump from a ledge,” as Korine comments below. Directed and edited to approximate a found VHS from hell, Humpers stars Korine and pals as three elderly degenerates with poor dermatology and a recreational interest in dumpster fornication and murder. Any semblance to narrative exhibited in his past works, including 2007’s Mister Lonely about a Michael Jackson impersonator, has been blown up like cherry bombed synapses. Humpers is a canvas for Korine’s obsession with disorienting repetition, inbred culture, and dysfunctional imagery. He wants to imprint the viewer’s brain with new moods, however terrible or tedious. And Humpers seems meant to occasionally alienate and punish the viewer, not for preferring popcorn to art or vice versa, but for believing there’s sense in making sense of anything.
Hunter Stephenson: Have you visited your tax man?
Harmony Korine: Have I what? Did I visit the tax man?
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Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
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