Forget having the same rights as men, earning as much money as men, and having as much control over our bodies as men. Those were all boring feminist projects that we haven’t needed to worry about since that magical moment in the ‘70s when Gloria Steinem clicked her dowdily shod heels together three times and chanted, “There’s no political aim like equality.” … Read More
Harmony Korine
Ranking Cinema’s Spring Breaks From Worst to Best
Harmony Korine’s controversial Spring Breakers goes into well-timed limited release this weekend. Reviews thus far have been mostly positive — to the befuddlement of your Flavorwire, since we found the film to be both a mixed bag quality-wise and a little troublesome from a messaging point of view. Then again, it could just be a matter of expectations — viewers aren’t just surprised that a Korine movie is sort of accessible, but that a movie about spring break isn’t just all-out terrible. You see, it’s not an event with a rich cinematic history; most movies about spring break are, for lack of a better word, stinky. But if you’d like to get in the mood for Spring Breakers, or just enjoy the debauchery from the safe, STD-free confines of your living room, here’s a roundup of spring break in cinema, ranked from worst to (relative)… Read More
The Bizarre Conservatism of Harmony Korine’s ‘Spring Breakers’
Harmony Korine is known as a provocateur. He is the filmmaker who shows us 13-year-old girls ceding their virginity to HIV-positive 16-year-old boys, and dreams up the most horrifying of elderly subcultures. And that is what we all expected out of his new film, sold as a nihilistic, neon-hued celebration of bad-ass teen girls wearing bikinis and wielding machine guns. Though it’s just as stuffed with sex, drugs, and firearms as the trailers promise, Spring Breakers doesn’t offer too much in the way of fun. It’s too busy moralizing. … Read More
The Best and Worst Movies of SXSW 2013
Your film editor has returned from Austin, where SXSW’s robust selection of fascinating panels and workshops kept my film consumption lower than I might’ve liked. But the dozen SXSW film entries I did get to see offered up an assortment of riveting performances, inventive filmmaking, and recurring motifs; a quick round-up of the best and worst (of what I saw, at least) is after the jump. … Read More
Harmony Korine on ‘Spring Breakers,’ SXSW 2013′s Most Divisive Film
AUSTIN, TX: “I had been collecting spring break imagery for a couple of years before. I was using it in paintings and artwork and stuff,” Harmony Korine explained at the SXSW panel Monday for his new film Spring Breakers. “Just pictures that I would get off the Internet, different sites, fraternity sites, co-ed pornography, anything that had that role of adolescent debauchery in Florida. The images were just hyper-sexualized, hyper-violent — the subject matter was — but then all the details, the bikinis and the book bags and the flip-flops and the Hello Kitty bags and the nail polish and the neon, just all those things were childlike, or innocent. I thought it was interesting, both those things playing together, both those things working together.” … Read More
Awesome Fan-Made ‘Spring Breakers’ Posters
If you’d told us six months ago that we’d be actively looking forward to a Harmony Korine movie starring James Franco, we’d have laughed heartily, pat you on your head, and contemplated hara-kiri. Yet here it is, March 2013, and we genuinely can’t wait to see Spring Breakers, Korine’s sex-and-drugs-and-Disney-girls action/comedy, out next week in limited release (and a week later wide). And we have to admit, part of the pull is the film’s clearly effective marketing campaign, which has given us several frisky trailers and eye-catching posters. But even those aren’t good enough, apparently; Mars, the film’s French distributor, enlisted fans to submit their own posters, and the results (posted at FilmGeek) are clever, sexy, and just plain cool. Check them out after the jump. … Read More
The Darkest Teen Movies of All Time
There are two kinds of teenagers: those who get all choked up with happiness at the end of movies like Dirty Dancing or Can’t Hardly Wait and those who prefer ice-cold comedies like Heathers. As your Flavorwire editors have always fallen into the latter camp, we were intrigued (and cautiously optimistic) to learn, last week, that Heathers is getting a small-screen reboot. In fact, the news inspired us to compile a list of the dark teen movies we love the most, all of which we’ll probably re-watch in anticipation of the TV series. The selections after the jump range from black humor to true tragedy (but we’ve left out teen horror flicks because that’s a whole other post). What ties them together is the rare acknowledgment that high school isn’t all dances, football games, and makeovers. … Read More
10 of Film’s Biggest Provocateurs
Danish filmmaker and journalist Mads Brügger boasts a first name that seems worthy of his work, which he has dubbed “performative journalism.” He went undercover as a European Ambassador in the war-torn Central African Republic (CAR), armed with hidden cameras and credentials obtained on the black market. There, he brokered deals with corrupt blood diamond kingpins, leisurely traded diplomatic titles, and exposed a litany of murder, bribery, and bureaucrats from hell. The Ambassador balances a dark absurdity with terrifying revelations of exploitation, shocking fraudulence, and greed. The film opens in New York today, and we thought this would be a good time to explore some of cinema’s most controversial figures (mainly directors) — several of which Brügger has been compared to. The Huffington Post called him the “most provocative filmmaker in the world.” See if you agree after viewing our gallery after the jump. … Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. The lineup for this year’s Venice Film Festival has been announced, and among the 17 films in competition are new works from Terrence Malick (To The Wonder), Brian De Palma (Passion), and Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers). [via ArtsBeat]
2. If you didn’t grab a copy on Record Store Day, you can stream… Read More
Of Course Skrillex Is Scoring Harmony Korine’s New Movie Starring James Franco
Well, James Franco has done it again — he’s gotten himself into a pop-culture Mad Lib of a news item, and this time it isn’t even entirely his fault. You see, Franco is set to star in the upcoming Harmony Korine comedy Spring Breakers, which also stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens (really!), because the… Read More
Recent Features
-
4m
The "Gayest Album Ever," Haim, and Video Game Mash-ups: Links You Need to See
-
1h
Staff Picks: Flavorwire's Favorite Cultural Things This Week
- 2h
- 2h
- 3h
- 4h
- 5h
- 6h
- 6h
- 7h
Popular Posts
- 1d
- 2d
Actors and Directors Who Trashed the Remakes of Their Classic Movies - 2d
- 2d
- 4d
The 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read, 1963-2013
The 50 Greatest Summer Albums, 1963-2013
5 Great Novels That Will Mess With Your Mind
The Wedding Photos of 25 Musicians in LoveGoing Viral on BuzzFeed
