The Playlist

Harmony Korine Was Banned From David Letterman For Trying To Steal From Meryl Streep's Purse

By Oliver Lyttelton
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March 26, 2013 11:10 AM
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6 Comments

News

Maybe it's our fault for watching too many late-night talk shows in the late 1990s (to be fair this writer was in his pre-teens, and also on the wrong continent) but we'd never in a million years have thought that Harmony Korine, the one-time enfant terrible of the independent world as the writer of "Kids" and director of "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," would be a popular figure on the late-night circuit.

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Weekend Box Office: 'The Croods' Notches Best Animated Opening Since November

By Gabe Toro
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March 24, 2013 11:33 AM
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0 Comments

Box Office

Normally, we’re besieged by animated fare during all months, but not so far in 2013. The only animated film of the year thus far was “Escape From Planet Earth,” a production from The Weinstein Company that was treated like a last minute dump, posting numbers that only counted as a hit compared to the film’s small budget and meager ad campaign. Before that, DreamWorks kept “Rise of the Guardians” active in over 3,000 sparsely-attended engagements, though over the holidays it seemed kids would rather toss snowballs around than watch a weirdly oppressive, vaguely non-denominational holiday movie. Which meant that all Fox had to do was not embarrass themselves with “The Croods,” supplying the kids market with a 3D diversion that stands as the second biggest opening of the year, far ahead of the middling 'Guardians' debut.

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Watch: James Franco's Grandma Wants You To See 'Spring Breakers'

By Kieran McMahon
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March 23, 2013 11:00 AM
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2 Comments

News

After posting healthy numbers in limited release last weekend and a $3 million opening in France (where it is being heavily pushed), "Spring Breakers" is getting another publicity boost ahead of its expansion this weekend, courtesy of none other than James Franco’s grandma.

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Harmony Korine Talks 'Spring Breakers', Narrative Freedom & Why The ATL Twins Make America Great

By Erik McClanahan
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March 20, 2013 2:05 PM
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13 Comments

Interviews

After opening in New York and Los Angeles last Friday, this weekend, U.S. audiences will get to see the latest fucked-up cinematic opus from enfant terrible Harmony Korine. "Spring Breakers," featuring James Franco alongside an unlikely young cast including Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson, tells the story of four bored college coeds (the aforementioned three actresses plus Rachel Korine, the director's wife) who rob a restaurant to fund a booze-and-drug-fueled trip to Florida, only to fall in with Franco’s Alien, a rapper and gangster who loves spring break (calling it "the American dream") almost as much as he loves the four females leads, and their brazen acceptance of the criminal lifestyle.

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Harmony Korine May Direct A Southern Crime Family Tale Next; Is Developing Projects With Annapurna Pictures

By Rodrigo Perez
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March 18, 2013 8:09 PM
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1 Comment

News

Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers" is a hit in limited release. In fact, the girls gone wild meets Korine's enfante terrible aesthetics flick, posted the biggest limited release of 2013 thus far — a per-theater average $90,000 making it the the 10th-highest average ever for a live-action film in limited release. Not too shabby. And while 'Breakers' opens in wide release this weekend via A24 pictures, Korine is already shoring up his next project.

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What Are You Seeing This Weekend? 'Burt Wonderstone' May Be 'The Call' For 'Spring Breakers' Everywhere

By Emma Bernstein
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March 15, 2013 5:19 PM
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2 Comments

News

There's a certain sense of heightened and/or alternate reality pervading the theater releases this weekend. On the one hand, we have a film about magicians, professionals who create the illusion of having manipulated real world physics; plus, it takes place in Vegas, a city that, unto and of itself, is an entirely other universe. In the other corner is Harmony Korine's new picture, an exploitation flick where the Wizard of Oz leads the starlets of "High School Musical" in a coke-fueled game of Russian Roulette. And then, somewhere in the middle, "Little Miss Sunshine" gets kidnapped by a gasoline-hose-wielding sociopath.

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Review: Harmony Korine's 'Spring Breakers' Is A Semi-Conventional Genre Flick & Future Cult Favorite

By Oliver Lyttelton
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March 13, 2013 6:31 PM
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12 Comments

Reviews

This will make you feel old: it has been 18 years since Harmony Korine wrote “Kids” at the age of 21, with the Larry Clark-directed film proving to be something of a firecracker in the midst of mid-'90s indie cinema, by turns controversial, seedy, and honest. Korine made his own directorial debut with 1998’s “Gummo,” and over the last 15 or so years has made films that (with the possible exception of “Mister Lonely”), push aesthetic and critical boundaries further and further, culminating in 2009’s “Trash Humpers,” a film shot on a VHS camcorder, featuring a cast in old-people masks generally trying to provoke the audience into walking out. So where could he possibly go from there?

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15 Classic Teen Rebellion Movies

By The Playlist Staff
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March 12, 2013 2:37 PM
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21 Comments

Features

This week sees two very different, and very worthwhile, films hit theaters, each dealing with youthful rebellion as their central characters. The first, Sally Potter's "Ginger & Rosa," follows two young teen girls (Elle Fanning and Alice Englert) in 1960s England as they play hooky from school, discover politics, and have their first sexual experiences. The second is a little less wistful: Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers," starring Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez and Rachel Korine as four co-eds who head to Florida on spring break, fall in with a drug dealer (James Franco) and leave their old lives behind.

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SXSW: Selena Gomez Says 'Trash Humpers' Is Her Favorite Harmony Korine Movie & More From 'Spring Breakers' Panel

By Drew Taylor
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March 11, 2013 3:57 PM
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3 Comments

Festivals

In what was easily one of the most anticipated films of SXSW, based on the wildness factor alone, Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers" wasn't so much unspooled as unleashed on audiences in Austin last night. And while reaction was swift as the credits rolled, and discussion will continue about where this candy colored movie will fit in the director's ouevre, as we made clear in our review from Venice, "a piece of pop art."

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Watch: Alien Introduces Himself In New Clip From 'Spring Breakers' & Harmony Korine Tells Wild On-Set Stories

By Charlie Schmidlin
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March 11, 2013 8:58 AM
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0 Comments

News

Picking up coverage everywhere from EW to Cahier du Cinema, Harmony Korine's “Spring Breakers” finally opens in theaters this month, and while the promo efforts are perhaps getting to be just a few clips away from overkill at this point, we've got a quick new one as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the cast and crew's Miami exploits.

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