News

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art

A major highlight of any filmgoing year, To Save and Project returns.

IFC Center

A Donald Sutherland retrospective includes Klute, Fellini’s Casanova, Don’t Look Now, and Mash; Crash, Battle Royale, and The Lost Boys show late.

Anthology Film Archives

Blackout 1973 features films by Sembène, Bill Gunn, Mambéty and more; Essential Cinema runs the gamut from Laurel and Hardy to Jonas Mekas’ Walden.

Roxy Cinema

Emma Roberts has curated Thirteen on 35mm and Mysterious Skin; Amadeus shows on Saturday and Sunday.

Film Forum

AI: From Metropolis to Ex Machina continues, featuring Terminator 2, Blade Runner, Videodrome, and Ghost in the Shell; Wall-e screens on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

See It Big! Let It Snow brings The Gold Rush on 35mm, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Shining, and more.

Metrograph

Trash Humpers, The Bling Ring,...

Early on in “A Clockwork Orange,” Alex and his fellow droogs break into a rich writer’s home and rape his wife, which would be wrong enough if he weren’t crooning “Singin’ in the Rain” in the process. Half a century later, the scene seems no less appalling, given the way Stanley Kubrick made such ultraviolence look like fun for the demented kids who were doing it. Could there be anything more nihilistic than that?

Middle-aged bad boy Harmony Korine certainly thinks so. The latest stunt from his taboo-razing Edglrd studio, “Baby Invasion” blurs the lines between real life and a gnarly video game, so much so that it’s hard to tell what we’re watching for most of the trippy project’s 79-minute running time.

First-person footage of Florida McMansions ransacked by screen-addicted sociopaths? Creepy face-replacement technology that turns armed vandals into demon-horned Gerber babies? AI-generated cameos from an elusive CG rabbit?...

Coming on the heels of his experimental assassin flick “Aggro Dr1ft”, which made extensive use of infrared technology, and the forming of his new production company/design collective Edglrd, Harmony Korine is adding to its output with a new music video from bladee and Yung Lean called “One Second”.

Featuring a constant bass-pumping beat and visuals that range from hi-def gaming sequences to classic fish-eye lens close-ups on bare bellies and disarming masks, “One Second” plays as a level-up on the kind of chaotic splendor Korine introduced with films like “Spring Breakers” and “Trash Humpers”. Korine is clearly a fan of bladee and Yung Lean, as exhibited by the DJ sets he performs with them at Miami’s Boiler Room Club. The club setting seems to be the perfect environment for Korine’s experimentation, as he recently screened “Aggro Dr1ft” in Los Angeles at a strip club for its first ever immersive experience.

November is the month of thankfulness, so why not be thankful for some great independent cinema?

As the end of the year approaches, new films arrive in theaters at a rapid pace with big blockbusters, seasonal holiday films, and major Oscar contenders all vying for those juicy November and December slots. This month alone, some highly anticipated films include “American Fiction,” “Dream Scenario,” “Leave the World Behind,” “May December,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” “Napoleon,” and the Disney Film “Wish.” On streaming, new movies skew towards the seasonal holiday variet with mountains of Christmas rom-coms coming to Netflix for you to enjoy and/or dread. But there’s still plenty of classic films arriving on platforms this November — including great independent movies that have released as recently as 2014 and as far back as 1969.

It’s a particularly great month for the Criterion Channel: the streamer for...

This article contains spoilers for "Killers of the Flower Moon."

Martin Scorsese's new film "Killers of the Flower Moon," based on true events, takes place in the Osage Nation just after World War I. The Osage people have a vast reservoir of oil on their land and have, very quickly, become some of the wealthiest people on the planet. 

The movie mostly surrounds a man named Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio), a weak-willed former soldier who is just looking for a job. Ernest falls into the employ of his uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro), a real-life local politician who claimed to speak for the Osage people and to be a friend of the community, but who was in fact bilking the community for their money, murdering its citizens, and doing everything in his power to rearrange Osage wealth so that it flowed toward white men. Hale even encouraged white...

Depending on who you speak to, Aggro Dr1ft has either been a hideous blight on the fall festival circuit or… Well, currently, there’s not exactly a consensus on what there is to love about Harmony Korine’s in-your-face fantasia, a nightmare vision of Florida made all the more hellish by its refusal to resemble anything you might expect even — or perhaps especially — from the director of Spring Breakers.

Its director claims it isn’t a movie anyway, and that he doesn’t care that much for movies at all any more. But, that said, Aggro Dr1ft has a visceral effect that’s hard to shake, and its images are unexpectedly memorable, ready to loiter in your synapses until a series of Nicolas Roeg-style flashbacks brings them racing back into your mind’s eye, long after the memories of more serious art films have faded.

If there’s a story,...

Of the many directors to emerge during indie cinema’s heyday in the 90s, Harmony Korine probably remains the most iconoclastic. It’s not an understatement to say that his script for Larry Clark’s Kids, which he penned at age 18, is the most conventional thing in his whole filmography. Everything since — from his irreverent feature debut Gummo (which The New York Times deemed “the worst film of the year”) to the Dogme 95-certified Julien Donkey-Boy to his Jackass-like Trash Humpers to the tripped-out Florida-set heist flick Spring Breakers and bizarro Matthew McConaughey vehicle The Beach Bum — has been an experiment of one kind or another.

But the 80-minute assassin movie Aggro DR1FT (all caps, one digit) is something else entirely. In fact, it’s not really a movie at all, but more like a cross between a movie, a video game and a flow of hallucinatory images that could...

Harmony Korine has been openly bored with movies as we know them since the first time that he directed one. Real ’90s kids remember when he went on “Late Show with David Letterman” to promote “Gummo,” and insisted to the befuddled host that “things need to change. We can make films differently.” Korine may not have been wrong on either score back in 1997, but he’s a hell of a lot more right today. We live in a time when Hollywood offerings have become more stale than ever, and traditional cinema is beset on all sides by new technologies, novel coronaviruses, and — in Korine’s case — even some of the same artists who’ve helped to push the medium forward over the last several decades.

And, in theory, there’s nothing wrong with that. The movies wouldn’t exist if not for the 19th century visionaries who recognized that photography...

Harmony Korine used to be a movie junkie, someone who’d watch anything and everything. These days, when people recommend a movie, “I’ll look at it and I feel nothing, like dead inside,” says the guy whose own films, from “Spring Breakers” to the controversial screenplay for Larry Clark’s “Kids,” are nothing if not disruptive.

“Watching a lot of this shit, you really feel the algorithms,” he says the day before receiving the Pardo d’onore Manor prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Whereas, “I’ll see a clip on TikTok that is so inexplicable, so outside the realm of what I even imagine someone creating. Like, I can have an experience with a 30-second clip that goes so far beyond” what movies do for him.

TikTok. YouTube. Video games. Those are the influences operating on Korine’s latest feature-length provocation, “Aggro Dr1ft,” which is premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

After highlighting 40 titles confirmed to hit theaters this fall, we now turn our attention to the festival-bound films either without distribution or a confirmed fall release date. Looking over Venice, Toronto, and New York Film Festival selections, we’ve rounded up 20––most of which we’ll be checking out over the next few weeks––we can’t wait to see.

Find our 20 most-anticipated festival premieres below and return for our reviews, as well as news if some of these hit theaters this fall.

Aggro DR1FT

“I have never made anything like it. I was trying not to make a movie. I don’t know if it will be a scandal, but it will be its own statement,” Harmony Korine said of his shot-in-secret infrared action film Aggro DR1FT starring Travis Scott. Never one to repeat himself––regardless of how you may feel about the results––we’re mighty intrigued what...

Harmony Korine has never made “normal” films. Even his most straightforward feature, probably 2019’s “The Beach Bum,” is pretty subversive by traditional standards. But then you look at things like “Gummo,” “Spring Breakers,” and “Trash Humpers,” and you realize Korine just clearly doesn’t have any interest in making anything the general public would embrace. So, it makes sense that his new film, “Aggro DR1FT,” is shot 100% in infrared and features all the subversion you would expect.

Continue reading Harmony Korine Says Terrence Malick Wrote A Script For Him To Direct at The Playlist.

One day after revealing Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” will have its North American debut at the New York Film Festival as the festival’s Spotlight gala screening, Film at Lincoln Center has announced the complete list of Spotlight films.

Some of the notable features include the world premiere of the Garth Davis film “Foe” with Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal (the premiere designation likely means this Amazon release won’t be part of the Telluride Film Festival lineup) and the U.S. premieres of the Richard Linklater movie “Hitman” with Glen Powell and the Hayao Miyazaki animated feature “The Boy and the Heron.”

Another headline-making event is the world premiere of “The Curse,” a new A24 television series that will debut on Showtime this fall. The series comes from Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie and stars both men alongside Emma Stone.

Check out the complete list of Spotlight films and descriptions,...

Following the Main Slate announcement, the 61st New York Film Festival has unveiled its Spotlight section for the festival, taking place September 29–October 15. Highlights include the world premieres of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s The Curse starring Emma Stone, Garth Davis’ Foe starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, and the U.S. premiere of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.

The lineup also features the North American premiere of Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Harmony Korine’s Aggro DR1FT accompanied by David Cronenberg’s new short Four Unloved Women, Adrift on a Purposeless Sea, Experience the Ecstasy of Dissection, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, Sean Price Williams’ debut The Sweet East, Pedro Almodóvar‘s Strange Way of Life, Trân Anh Hùng’s newly-retitled The Taste of Things, plus docs by Steve McQueen, Frederick Wiseman, Errol Morris, and more.

See the lineup below, with Passes available now and tickets going on sale Sept.

The full 2023 NYFF lineup has been unveiled.

Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s satirical series “The Curse” starring Emma Stone, as well as Garth Davis’ “Foe” with Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan, will make their respective world premieres at the 61st annual New York Film Festival. Hayao Miyazaki’s highly anticipated first animated feature film in more than a decade, “The Boy and the Heron,” will additionally debut in the U.S. following its TIFF North American premiere.

More highlights include a late-night showing of Harmony Korine’s “Aggro DR1FT,” shot entirely in infrared, preceded by David Cronenberg’s surreal short “Four Unloved Women, Adrift on a Purposeless Sea, Experience the Ecstasy of Dissection.” Glen Powell leads (and co-wrote) Richard Linklater’s existential comedy “Hit Man,” plus Sean Price Williams’ feature debut, the weird and wild “The Sweet East” will screen. Cannes Palme d’Or winner Trân Anh Hùng’s...

Harmony Korine teased upcoming Venice premiere “Aggro Dr1ft” in Locarno, where he picked up the Pardo d’onore Manor award for outstanding achievement in cinema.

“I am excited. I have never made anything like it. I was trying not to make a movie. I don’t know if it will be a scandal, but it will be its own statement,” he said.

“Aggro Dr1ft” stars Spain’s Jordi Molla and Travis Scott. Korine has already worked with Scott on “Circus Maximus” – as well as his friend Gaspar Noé, surprise guest at the fest, who ended up co-moderating his Saturday masterclass.

“It was pretty wild. It was crazy!,” said Korine about the “last-minute” collab with Scott, also opening up about his humble beginnings.

“I grew up in Nashville, I was born into a commune. My dad made strange documentaries about Southern moonshiners and circus people, and then he sold some weed.

The Toronto International Film Festival announced today the 2023 selections for the highly regarded Midnight Madness program.

The infamous Midnight Madness lineup features 10 titles, 7 of which are World Premieres, and highlight the weird and the wicked of film.

“Sides will be split — both figuratively and literally (on screen) — as Midnight Madness returns to the Royal Alexandra Theatre with another stimulating concoction of unpredictable shock and ‘y’arr!’ cinema,” said Peter Kuplowsky, TIFF International Programmer, Midnight Madness. “Featuring two timely satiric provocations from Saudi Arabia (Naga) and Serbia (Working Class Goes to Hell) — nations that are making their section debut — this year’s madness infectiously ignites with 11 o’clock numbers that go all the way to midnight courtesy of Larry Charles’ bonkers and bawdy Dicks: The Musical. A menagerie of tastes will be sated, so bottoms up!

“There are so many fantastic genre films playing the festival circuit that it is always...

U.S. director and artist Harmony Korine, whose films include “Gummo,” “Spring Breakers” and “Beach Bum” – which stars Matthew McConaughey as a stoner poet named Moondog – is being honored by the Locarno Film Festival with its Pardo d’onore Manor lifetime achievement award.

Born in Bolinas, California, in 1974, Harmony Korine broke out in the filmmaking world in 1995 when he wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark’s controversial “Kids.” In 1997 he made his directorial debut with “Gummo,” a realistic look at youth alienation in America, for which he won awards at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week and at the Rotterdam fest.

In 1998, he directed his first music video for the song “Sunday” by Sonic Youth, starring Macaulay Culkin. The same year Korine published his debut novel “A Crack-Up at the Race Riots.”

Korine’s second feature “Julien Donkey-Boy,” the experimentally told story of a schizophrenic, went to Venice in...

Go south, young women. Head to Florida. Maybe try St. Petersburg, a city where students might take a seasonal break from the grind of academia and indulge in some time-honored traditions, like wet bikini dance contests or binge-drinking. Sex and drugs? Motel orgies? Doing bumps on the dance-floor with tongue-wagging bros? That’s called “Tuesday” in Saint Petey’s, yo. Imagine the lawless vibe of international waters, but on dry land. Play your cards right, and you might — as the “good girl” of a quartet of twentysomethings says in a...

Jackass.With the triumphant return of the Jackass gang, one of the few true events of theatrical moviegoing in the pandemic era, the franchise built on absurd stunts, crass hijinks, and bruised cocks has at last been seriously accepted as the masterful trash it’s always been. Although much Jackass analysis revolves around the on-screen content—from the cinematic form of bold stunts to the interpersonal dynamics and bodies of the cast—the uniquely digital nature of the series is central to its reclamation. It’s that ramshackle camcorder aesthetic, bordering on snuff compared to glossy Hollywood productions, that gives the film series part of its distinct appeal. As much as the naked bodies and buttholes, the illicit sensation of going to a multiplex to watch MiniDV tape makes the first Jackass movie what it is—even as the image resolution and budget have increased, there’s an intimacy and...

When your films are as esoterically titled as "Gummo," "Julien Donkey-Boy" and "Trash Humpers," there's bound to be a messed-up filmmaking origin story lurking in your early adulthood. For transgressive auteur Harmony Korine, this certainly proves true. Before he would go on to helm the neon-soaked "Spring Breakers" or the slacker cinematic classic "The Beach Bum," Korine's first venture was a script which "honestly" (and crudely) portrays the delinquent and depraved behavior of NYC teens, a faction that the 19-year-old Korine was enmeshed in at the time. Directed by the oft-lascivious photographer Larry Clark and starring Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson in their first feature roles, the...

The post The Kids Controversy Explained: Contentious Child's Play appeared first on /Film.

Val Kilmer has been waiting to tell his story for decades. In “Val,” the intimate first-person account of the actor’s ambitious rise to Hollywood A-lister and the bumpy years that followed, Kilmer shares his experiences in both candid voiceover narration and years of home video footage from virtually every chapter of his life — from his promising early days to the clashes over creative vision that came later, and the tragic battle with throat cancer that limited his ability to speak.

Kilmer, who wrote about his health struggles in the 2020 memoir “I’m Your Huckleberry,” received an operation on his trachea that has left him unable to speak beyond a whisper. But his footage tells a much louder story. Kilmer had his camcorder in hand for every phase of his career, but it took directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo to piece it all together.

The movie premieres at Cannes...

“He may be a jerk, but he’s a great man. He’s brilliant,” says Heather (Stefania Lavie Owen), the neglected daughter of Moondog (Matthew McConaughey), in “The Beach Bum,” Harmony Korine’s latest exploration of charismatic and hedonistic human disasters. Heather’s father is an acclaimed poet, his artistic genius seemingly on the wane, who lives in South Florida like Hunter S. Thompson if he were a character in Korine’s fractured comedy about middle-American weirdness, “Trash Humpers.”

That Moondog isn’t trying to have sex with garbage cans and mailboxes would seem more a case of it having slipped his drug-addled mind, rather than a distaste for the practice itself. Moondog is also quite rich, much like James Franco’s character in Korine’s “Spring Breakers,” thanks to having married money in the form of the sexually voracious Minnie (Isla Fisher), whose emotional and physical adoration of her...

Tales of Ordinary Madness: Korine Courts Cutesy in Outlandish Stoner Comedy

It’s no fun being the designated driver, which is the position the audience of Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum is unfortunately relegated to. A somewhat baffling follow-up to the zany, similarly tropical themed Spring Breakers (review), there’s no shortage of hedonism in this grating portrait of a genius stoner poet allowed a careless life of luxury explained by a fantastical fount of privilege. As if predicting the inevitable extreme of dysfunctional creative energies breastfed in the world of elitist one-percenters, Korine’s latest is at least thematically familiar to his past filmography, like the Pleasantville (1998) version of his 2009 Trash Humpers.…...

The latest opus of debauchery from the great Harmony Korine, The Beach Bum continues his more playful streak, full of carefree possibilities while existing in roughly the same cinematic universe of his previous film Spring Breakers. While James Franco’s Alien hustled hard for that paper, Matthew McConaughey’s Moondog inherited his wealth from wife Minnie (Isla Fisher). Moondog, an aspiring writer, lives large without a care in the world on his borrowed Southern Florida yacht. His days consist of getting high, drinking, and having trysts in random places including a kitchen of a local beach sidebar that’s played for laughs.

Existing in the same heightened reality of his 2012 hit, Korine gleefully adapts and upscales the Idgaf tone of his previous works including Kids, the Larry Clark feature Korine wrote at age 22, and Gummo. The Beach Bum has the feeling of a director who has essentially semi-retired and gone south,...

It turns out that Spring Break never ended after all, at least not for Moondog. Key West’s answer to The Dude, the sun-baked poet played with Thc-infused gusto by Matthew McConaughey is the life of every party and the biggest personality in any room he walks into. He’s so entertaining, in fact, that it takes nearly the entirety of “The Beach Bum” to fully absorb how little else there is to the film once the initial high of basking in Moondog’s perma-stoned glory wears off.

Comparisons to Korine’s last protagonist are unavoidable, so I won’t: Moondog is like a mellower version of James Franco’s Alien aged 15 hard-living years, not interested in guns or bling but equally stoked about weed and booze. “I’m a bottom-feeder, baby,” he tells his inexplicably understanding wife (Isla Fisher) after returning from his latest bender. “I gotta go low to get high.

In December 2017, five years after “Spring Breakers,” Harmony Korine finally got to direct another outrageous Florida adventure. During the last week of production, Korine gazed into a monitor as cinematographer Benoit Debie focused on the action, while Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron dashed down a Miami Beach boardwalk.

As stoner poet Moondog, McConaughey was nearly unrecognizable in a bright yellow wig and loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt. Efron was hard-rock drug addict Flicker, sporting sunglasses, a crew cut with zig-zags on the sides, and a Japanese headband. McConaughey swayed across the bright lights of the promenade as the ocean gleamed under a moonlit night, as Efron cackled and sprinted alongside. McConaughey stumbled into a table full of baffled locals, twirled around, and found his footing. “‘Scuse me, folks,” he said.

“Matthew, that was great!” Korine said. “Don’t hesitate to throw in a little shout, to take in the night air.” He...

We’ve got a new red-band trailer here for you to watch for Matthew McConaughey’s new film The Beach Bum. The movie follows the outrageous misadventures of Moondog, “a rebellious burnout who only knows how to live life by his own rules.”

The movie comes from director Harmony Korine. This looks like it’s going to be another wild and crazy film from the director. Korine tends to make films that are uncomfortable to watch, this latest one looks like it will be his most tame movie.

McConaughey will be joined by a great supporting cast that includes Zac Efron as Flicker, who is just one of the many characters that Moondog meets on his wild journey. The film also stars Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Stefania Lavie Owen, Jimmy Buffett, Martin Lawrence, and Jonah Hill.

The Beach Bum will hit theaters on March 22, 2019.

The first red-band trailer has been released for director Harmony Korine's latest film The Beach Bum, and it looks crazy! The film stars Matthew McConaughey as a rebellious and rogue stoner named Moondog, who lives life by his own rules. The movie also stars and very different looking Zac Efron as Flicker, who is just one of the many characters that Moondog meets on his wild journey. The film also stars Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Stefania Lavie Owen, Martin Lawrence, and Jonah Hill.

If you're familiar with Korine's previous film work, then you know what you are getting yourselves into. Korine's previous work includes Gummo, Kids, Spring Breakers, and Trash Humpers. Watch the trailer and tell us what you think.

Transilvania Film Festival audiences have been savvy about off-beat films from bizarre quarters for many years, thoroughly appreciating the efforts of fest organizers, who scout out and embrace provocative work. This year, Czech Republic’s Shockproof Film Festival has been given carte-blanche by Transilvania to program its own selection of schlock gems.

The lineup surely ranks as highly as any in its embrace of film that is both cheap and offensive – and thoroughly relishing both qualities. Shockproof founder Petr Saroch, who has been screening “all forms of low-brow, bad taste, trash and fun outside of the realm of run-of-the-mill” for 14 years at Prague’s Kino Aero, says Transilvania crowds should expect the best of the worst this year.

Aside from sleaze classics such as José María Forqué’s extraterrestrial dictator flick “Nexus” (1994), William Castle’s parasite horror gimmick “The Tingler” (1959), “Trash Humpers” (2009) by Harmony Korine, and Anthony Hickox’s “Exodus...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely (2007) is showing March 24 - April 23, 2018 and Trash Humpers (2009) from March 25 - April 24, 2018 on Mubi in the United States. The schizoid characters populating Harmony Korine’s very literally titled Trash Humpers are too busy fornicating with trees and trash cans to talk, but when they do, they speak in thought-provoking tongues. As the writer/director’s 2009 feature comes to an end, a character interrupts a late-night vandalism spree to deliver a subdued monologue: “When I drive here at night I can smell the pain of people… smell how they are just trapped… it hurts me to think they’re all living such balanced lives.”Should there be a manifesto to the grotesque philosophy embraced by the humpers, this will probably be it. Premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (and winner of the Dox award...

Some photos have surfaced from Harmony Korine's upcoming stoner film The Beach Bum and Zac Efron is sporting an insane new look. This is definitely different from anything that we've seen from the actor below.

Zac Efron is playing a character named Flicker, and as you'll see he's got a very colorful punk rock style. According to IndieWire, The Beach Bum follows a "rebellious stoner named Moondog (Matthew McConaughey) who lives life by his own rules." Efron's character Flicker is just one of the many characters that he meets on his journey.

The movie is said to be a stoner comedy, but knowing Korine's previous work, you can bet there's going to be a dramatic dark undertone. Korine's previous work includes Gummo, Kids, Spring Breakers, and Trash Humpers.

The Beach Bum also stars Isla Fisher, Jimmy Buffet, and Snoop Dogg.

Efron is currently shooting Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and...

“Shirkers” is a documentary about the production of an uncompleted movie, but it doubles as an upgraded version of the missing project itself. As a punk teen in early-nineties Singapore, Sandi Tan wrote a feminist slasher movie for the ages, an exploitation road movie designed to ruminate on the energy of youth, creativity, and alienation. The director, a much older American high school instructor with dubious motives, stole the film canisters for unknown reasons and vanished into the mist; two decades later, Tan has completed a fascinating personal look at her quest to uncover his motives, resurrecting the significance of her original intentions in the process.

Tan’s actual debut, “Shirkers” takes its title from her earlier effort, an adorably deranged slasher movie in which she starred as a bored young woman killing men to pass the time. Though her old pals celebrate its relevance to Singapore’s minuscule film community at the time,...

Sergei Eisenstein. Leni Riefenstahl. Michael Moore. Steve Bannon? At an event entitled “Alternative Facts: The Steve Bannon Reality Show” on the opening weekend of the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (Cph:dox), writer and host Lars Trier Mogensen argued that Trump’s chief strategist might just be the most influential filmmaker among these titans of polemical documentary. A year ago, that claim might have seemed far-fetched.

Back then, the young crowd now packed into the “Social Cinema,” a performance hall in festival’s new center Kunsthal Charlottenborg, had likely never heard of this alt-right auteur. Lounging on stylish sofas, they were willing to sit through nine tedious Bannon trailers and a two-hour analysis of populism and propaganda with a Princeton professor, political scientist Jan-Werner Müller, and artist Christian von Borries. Given Bannon’s disdain for factual integrity, it would be hard to claim that his 90-minute political screeds could even be called documentaries.

It’s easy to understand the Hollywood logic behind developing sequels: If it does well, keep it going — and going, and going, with spin-offs flying in every direction long after the concept has been spread thin. But some projects are so antithetical to this approach that the very idea of the franchise approach registers as a vulgarity. So it goes with the ongoing attempts to turn Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” into something more than a single movie.

First, it was going to be a sequel; now, it’s a “digital series,” again without the participation of the creative team behind the original. This needs to stop.

Three years ago, it was reported that Muse Prods., the company run by Chris and Roberta Hanley, was shopping around a followup to the 2012 project without the involvement of Korine or anyone else associated with the original. That included “Spring Breakers” star James Franco,...

Selena Gomez is opening up!

The 24-year-old singer looks stunning as ever as Vogue's April cover star, but it's inside the mag that she gets really candid -- sharing new details about her three-month break from the spotlight. what used to make Justin Bieber "really frustrated" and her new relationship with The Weeknd.

Watch: Selena Gomez Says She 'Can’t Wait for People to Forget' About Her, Dodges Questions About The Weeknd

Here are 11 things we learned from Gomez's revealing interview, starting with her emotional breakdown last fall.

1. The pressures of her world tour led to her three-month break from the spotlight.

"Tours are a really lonely place for me," explains Gomez, who abruptly stopped her Revival tour in August, with more than 30 concerts remaining. "My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage. Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough...

Tony Sokol Jan 23, 2019

Life is a rodeo for Matthew McConaughey as stoner rebel Moondog in new The Beach Bum trailer.

True Detective and Dallas Buyer’s Club star Matthew McConaughey tries to score acid at the grocery and hits the sands in the Beach Bum trailer. The upcoming stoner comedy was written, produced, and directed by American indie filmmaker Harmony Korine, who made Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Mister Lonely, Trash Humpers, and Spring Breakers, which stars James Franco, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens.

"Life's a fucking rodeo" for McConaughey as a lovable rebel named Moondog who lives life large. There is nothing wrong with that, in spite of Isla Fisher's admonitions.

"The Beach Bum will be a wild, audacious ride," Korine said in a statement when the film first went into production. "And I can't think of anyone better than Matthew McConaughey to play our hero Moondog, a rebellious charmer in this fast-paced,...

While the feature films of Harmony Korine have caused plenty of provocation on their own (“Gummo,” “Trash Humpers,” “Spring Breakers,” etc.) his predilection for mischief, particularly early in his career, saw the creation of some projects that just never saw the light of day. Perhaps most infamous of them all is the unfinished “Fight Harm,” which featured magician David Blaine filming Korine as he got into real life fights with random strangers.

Continue reading Harmony Korine Got Thrown Out Of The Premiere Of His Johnny Depp-Starring ‘The Devil, The Sinner, And His Journey’ at The Playlist.

Gucci Mane and Harmony Korine continue their ongoing media partnership, this time with newly released music video “Last Time.” Korine makes a cameo appearance in the short directed by David Helman, which is a collaboration between Gucci Mane and Travis Scott. Set in a harsh winter wonderland, Gucci and Travis rap one-on-one with the camera, as well as in a parked car that eventually levitates and catches fire.

Korine is known for controversial and unconventional work such as “The Kids” and “Trash Humpers,” and worked with Gucci previously on his 2012 film “Spring Breakers,” as well as for an ad for clothing label Supreme (which was mde inside Gucci’s mansion while he was under house arrest). Gucci is set to act in Korine’s upcoming film “The Trap,” along stars Al Pacino and Benicio Del Toro.

Read More: Harmony Korine: “I’m not going to lie and say that...

The first thing you need to understand about the protagonist of Alissa Nutting’s wildly unsettling and wonderfully written 2013 novel “Tampa” is that she’s a monster. While Celeste Price — accurately described as “smoldering” in the book’s official synopsis — is physically stunning (and damn does she work for it), her emotional and psychological landscape is so diseased that whatever cinematic project springs forth from the material will likely look and feel more like a film about bloodthirsty vampires or Frankenstein’s creation or the abominable snowman or something similarly driven by lust and rage than any sort of dramatic offering about overcoming life’s harsh realities.

No one overcomes anything in “Tampa.” No one gets over anything.

“Tampa,” despite a premise that seems tailor-made to be turned into a prestige feature (perhaps in the vein of “Precious”?) or at least a Lifetime-ready movie of the week (think “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?...

When you are Radiohead, you don’t just release an album. Following the bow of their ninth record, A Moon Shaped Pool, in early May, the band commissioned a set of short video vignettes to go alongside a number of the songs.

Featuring Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) directing Denis Levant, High-Rise‘s Ben Wheatley dragging a floating body across rocks, and Submarine director Richard Ayoade shooting what could’ve been a deleted scene from Trash Humpers, each present a distinct interpretation of the respective song.

They’ve now completed the vignettes, although they note that their latest is the final one in the “current series,” so perhaps we can expect another round soon, considering “Burn the Witch,” “Daydreaming,” “Decks Dark,” “Present Tense,” and “True Love Waits” aren’t represented here.

Check them all out in the order the songs appear on the album, followed by a full stream, below:

Desert...

Jonas Mekas has been at the forefront of avant-garde cinema for more than half a decade, and in that time has accrued a wealth of knowledge that few could match. The 93-year-old luminary has condensed some of his insights into 13 precepts for aspiring experimental filmmakers to follow in “Akademie X,” a new book featuring lessons from 36 “tutors” offering advice in their respective fields.

Read More: Werner Herzog To Teach Online Filmmaking Class This Summer

Number four seems one of the most pertinent. “I believe that the two best ways to begin the journey are: one, to work with another filmmaker whose work you admire, and learn the art and craft the way the old Renaissance artists did or two, by acquiring a camera, any camera, and beginning to film/tape as a daily practice.” As with Werner Herzog and countless other filmmakers, Mekas also insists upon the importance of reading — and being discerning about it.

James + Semaj is a column where James Franco talks to his reverse self, Semaj, about new films. Rather than a conventional review, it is place where James and Semaj can muse about ideas that the films provoke. James loves going to the movies and talking about them. But a one-sided take on a movie, in print, might be misconstrued as a review. As someone in the industry it could be detrimental to James’s career if he were to review his peers, because unlike the book industry—where writers review other writer’s books—the film industry is highly collaborative, and a bad review of a peer could create problems. So, assume that James (and Semaj) love all these films. What they’re interested in talking about is all the ways the films inspire them, and make them think. James is me, and Semaj is the other side of me.

Editor’s note: On Friday, Kanye West premiered “Famous,” an extended music video for his single in which he portrayed a variety of recognizable faces sleeping in the nude. The 10-minute video has naturally sparked a mixture of outrage and confusion. Here, critics Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich attempt to figure out what the rapper is trying to say.

Eric Kohn: It may have commandeered the cultural dialogue within moments of its release, but Kanye West’s “Famous” video is about as intellectually basic as the celebrity-obsessed terrain it’s designed to deconstruct: Stars — they’re just like us! Whether it’s Chris Brown or Donald Trump, everybody snores. And yet West’s titillating provocation is fundamentally amusing precisely because it’s such a lark. Minutes drag by as grainy digital video of his sleeping subjects slowly reveals more and more participants, setting the stage for an epic zoom that...

Read More: Is Cph:dox Ruining Documentary Film or Saving It? Cph:dox, the informal, angularly hip moniker of the event officially labeled the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival, takes place in Dongara every year, some 8,237 miles from Copenhagen. Since 2003, Cph:dox — "Dox" for even shorter — has sought to showcase the best of the planet's non-fiction filmmaking, while simultaneously challenging and redefining exactly what "documentary cinema" means in the 21st century. Many Dox films wouldn't even be regarded as documentaries by squarer, more traditional festivals, including several winners of the top prize in the centerpiece "Dox:Award" competition, most notably Michelangelo Frammartino's "Le Quattro Volte" (2011) and Harmony Korine's "Trash Humpers" (2009). A Cracked ExperimentSix years on, Korine was represented by one of the more noteworthy of the festival's 60 world premieres: "A Crackup at the Race...

Some un-released thoughts have been running amuck my headspace, and a recent re-watch of Spring Breakers pulled the trigger. Probably three films you never thought you'd see in the same corner, Spring Breakers, American Sniper, and a 'dash' of Inherent Vice, are the films I chose to defend. Read below, my curious brain splurge.

Spring Breakers is a film that has been misunderstood, pre-evaluated, underestimated, and misled. That’s likely an effect of cunning marketing, but it’s also the audience’s inability to recognize a film’s objectivity in the face of breasts, butts, and extreme hedonism. Or on the other hand - for the audience promised the party - the films subjectivity plays it’s part, and they feel uncomfortable and guilty without really understanding why. Certainly user ratings indicate a majority distaste (frozen at a 42% user tomato rating), and critics only slightly more favorable (at 65%).. But in...

Spring Breakers provocateur Harmony Korine’s next project already had our curiosity, but now, it has our attention. For the first time, Korine will team with an Oscar winner, with word that Jamie Foxx will star in his upcoming ensemble gangster drama The Trap. Benicio del Toro will also star in the film, which has been described as a Southern revenge tale.

The Trap centers on two childhood friends both in their mid-to-late 30s. One of them has become a very successful businessman, while the other has spent most of his adult life rotting in jail. On the eve of a big recognition for the successful man, the other is released from prison and sets out on a path of vengeance, determined to get even.

Korine scripted and will direct the pic, which kicks off production in Miami early next year. The director, who also helmed controversial titles Gummo and Trash Humpers,...

Just in case you wondered: that recently-announced sequel to Spring Breakers is being made without the participation or even the consent of Harmony Korine. The director of Gummo and Trash Humpers masterminded Spring Breakers as a savage, strange fever dream of excess and influence, but this sequel will probably be… something else. Something more tame, […]

The post ‘Spring Breakers’ Sequel Happening Without Harmony Korine’s Blessing appeared first on /Film.

It's hard to follow up a gangsta, Britney Spears-singing James Franco, but a sequel for the demented 2012 film Spring Breakers is in the works. According to Screen Daily, the second installment will be directed by Jonas Akerlund (Spun) from a script by author Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), though neither Franco or original director Harmony Korine are currently involved in the project.

Inside 'Spring Breakers,' the Most Debauched Movie of 2013

"It's not a direct sequel, although there are allusions to some characters in the original," says Vincent Maraval of Paris-based production company Wild Bunch,...

Listed alongside such divisive superhero blockbusters as Man of Steel and the arthouse title Only God Forgives, one film that made our roster of Most Polarizing Movies of 2013 is Spring Breakers. The latest feature by controversial writer/director Harmony Korine (Kids, Trash Humpers), Breakers features – among other things – such former Disney Channel stars as Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, doing their best to leave their squeaky-clean screen images far, far behind them.

For those who aren’t familiar with the indie flick, it revolves around a pack of college-age women who head down to Florida, in order to join in the annual booze-fueled mayhem that is the state’s Spring Break festivities. Their quest becomes even crazier – and, ...

Click to continue reading ‘Spring Breakers 2′ in Development; New Writer and Director Onboard

The post ‘Spring Breakers 2′ in Development; New Writer and Director Onboard appeared first on Screen Rant.

Youtube

In the eighties and nineties music videos were just as important in marketing a band as getting their song on the radio. A successful video on MTV could launch someone to new heights within weeks. They would even go on to launch the film careers of many of today’s biggest directors like David Fincher, Jonathan Glazer and Michael Bay. Love them or hate them, music videos changed the landscape of the industry.

Fast forward to the 21st century and an era where music networks are pretty much extinct. One would think that without a forum for music videos, they’d become obsolete as well right? Wrong.

In fact, many bands and directors have been coming together to constantly innovate the music video and bring it back to the art form it once was. And now with video-sharing sites like Youtube and Vimeo, artists don’t have to fight...