SXSW: Matthew McConaughey in "The Beach Bum"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from the SXSW Festival...

You know that any movie which has its publicists passing out “scratch and sniff” cards to help audiences smell weed during select scenes is going to be a wild ride. Matthew McConaughey playing the title character in a movie called The Beach Bum should be enough of an indication, and, if still more reassurance was needed, the fact that it comes from writer-director Harmony Korine should put any doubts to rest: this is going to be one out-of-control film. 

Korine’s last film was Spring Breakers, a mostly-praised portrait of college students-turned-criminals featuring a highly memorable and indescribable performance from James Franco...

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Miami, Miami, You're Got Style

by Jason Adams

Hard to believe that it's been six whole years since Harmony Korine's last film, the pink and orange hued romp called Spring Breakers, came out - harder still to believe that he hasn't made another movie since. And maybe hardest to buy - this here first trailer for The Beach Bum, Korine's return to movies starring Matthew McConaughey, makes it seem an awful lot like Korine is copying himself? At the very least it looks like it's set in the exact same world that James Franco's Alien lived in - Southern Florida Neon Skeeze.

Still like Spring Breakers it looks fun and maybe even dangerous in equal measure. And McConaughey seems to be having a blast (all the thongs are giving me visions of Magic Mike) plus it looks like Korine's providing some outside-the-box roles for folks like Zac Efron and Jonah Hill. And bless anybody that gives Isla Fisher something to do. So we'll be there when it opens on March 22nd 2019. What do y'all think?

Zac Attacks

by Jason Adams

The Greatest Showman is out in theaters now and word seems to be... mixed, let's used the word "mixed." If any of you have seen it feel free to chime in with thoughts in the comments! I haven't seen it, nor do I plan on seeing it, but it was never gonna be my cuppa anyway. Much more my cuppa, at least in theory, is Zac Efron's next pair of projects - he's entering his Risk Taker phase, y'all...

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All for Link and Link For All

Variety are House of Cards and Hemlock Grove and other new instant watch series the saviors of Netflix? I sure hope so. I shudder to think of a world without Netflix and I've been very surprised at how gleefully people have watched its fall. Wake up cinephiles: there are so few services left that give us this much variety in movies. I mean do you really want to rely on Redbox if you want anything other than the latest blockbuster?
Bold Hype Gallery I'm so sad to hear about this Scorsese Tribute here in NYC after the fact (and so annoyed that it was only up for three days -wth?) but look at these amazing paintings from the just closed installation,
Inside Movies new pics of Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan in Spider-Man 5 (which is called The Amazing Spider-Man 2)

Awards Daily Vertigo and Kim Novak are guests of honor at Cannes this May
Advocate Darren Criss sings the gayest cover of "Call Me Maybe"... I bet you thought covers of that song were over?
Hammer and Thump will Spring Breakers continue to change minds about Harmony Korine's shock-friendly filmography? 

Ed Douglas (photo via BadAss Digest)Finally... And Quite a Lot Importantly.
[soapbox] Though I'm loathe to remind my fellow US citizens that we live in a selfish self-sabotaging world where 50% of the country thinks "we're all in this together" equals weakness (or, even more misguidedly,"evil") and thereby punish themselves and others by fighting against universal healthcare, I must. Ed Douglas, who writes for Coming Soon and who has been nothing but sweet to me my whole career (others say the same which proves he's a truly nice guy), was recently diagnosed with leukemia. Like many film journalists he is without healthcare so if you have it your heart or pocketbook to donate, join the fundraising effort. The goal was raised from $10,000 to $50,000 due to the immediate and very heartwarming response from the cinephile community but if you've ever seen a hospital bill you know that that kind of money can be gone in all too quickly (another reason we need to cut out the parasitic middle man known as the insurance industry whose profits are directionally proportional to blocking our access to healthcare... or just jacking up the prices for it if they can't find ways to block it) and just pay for healthcare for everyone. [/End soapbox].

The Dirty Secret of Spring Breakers

Hi everyone, Tim here; you may know me from my film review blog Antagony & Ecstasy, from my dogged commitment to the Film Experience’s own Hit Me with Your Best Shot or you may not have the damnedest idea who I am and don’t care. But I’m going to be with you on Thursdays for at least a little while now, with a weekly column, where we’ll talk about… well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Movie stuff. Whatever seems to be interesting about the new movies poking their heads around that particular week: something particular about the way a movie was put together, or conceived, or, in this case, sold.

The dirty secret of the film industry is that it exists to be profitable. It actually does good to be reminded of that, because even in the case of the costliest, sprawlingest tentpole movies, we tend to act like that the filmmakers are our buddies, or some such; but it’s true of even the most independent-minded, anti-commercial cinema that it’s actually supposed to make some sort of money. Sad as it is to think, even microbudget indies that cost fractions of pennies by movie budget standards are still wildly expensive by actual human being standards, and if they constantly hemorrhage money, then it would be impossible to keep making them.

All of which is to say: I truly don’t begrudge Annapurna Pictures the right to turn a profit on Spring Breakers, more...

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