Selena Gomez

The Bizarre Conservatism of Harmony Korine’s ‘Spring Breakers’

By Judy Berman on Mar 15, 2013 1:15pm

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

Film

Harmony Korine on ‘Spring Breakers,’ SXSW 2013′s Most Divisive Film

By Jason Bailey on Mar 11, 2013 4:09pm

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

Film

Awesome Fan-Made ‘Spring Breakers’ Posters

By Jason Bailey on Mar 7, 2013 8:45am

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

Pop Culture

A Grown-Up’s Guide to Teen Celebrities

By Judy Berman on Jul 20, 2012 12:30pm

The Teen Choice Awards will air this Sunday on Fox, and — hey, wait. Where are you going? Listen, we know you’re sick of awards shows, and that a celebration of teenyboppers’ favorite pinups probably isn’t going to prevent you from watching True Blood and Breaking Bad. That’s totally fine. But does anything make you feel older than scrolling through a list of the telecast’s nominees and presenters and finding that you’ve never ever heard many of the names on the list? Oh, sure, there are the big stars who get nominated for everything. And you know Justin Bieber and the Twilight kids now, and how could you have made it halfway through 2012 without encountering Carly Rae Jepsen? Still, a slew of Disney and MTV and ABC Family and teen movie stars remain, so you may as well memorize who they are in case you find yourself in conversation with a 12-year-old One Direction superfan. After the jump, we’ve compiled a guide to the massively famous (but only to people under 18) TCA nominees you should know, if only to avoid the dreaded teenage eye-roll (but also because some of them are talented actors and musicians who will likely break through to the grown-up mainstream in the years to come). … Read More

Film

Of Course Skrillex Is Scoring Harmony Korine’s New Movie Starring James Franco

By Judy Berman on Jun 29, 2012 11:00am

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

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on May 29, 2012 10:00am

1. It took the return of Will Smith after a four-year film hiatus to knock The Avengers out of the top spot at the box office. That said, Men in Black III’s $55 million opening weekend is reportedly a disappointment for Sony, who spent about $325 million to make and market the movie. [via … Read More

Fashion

The Fug Report: Highs and Lows from the Week in Fashion

By Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan on Apr 6, 2012 5:00pm

Editor’s note: Welcome to The Fug Report! Each week our fashion blogger friends Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the sartorial geniuses behind Go Fug Yourself, will feature some of the most memorable looks of the week in this space. We hope you enjoy it!