The first trailer for Spring Breakers has gone online.  The movie centers on a group of girls (played by Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine) who go to disturbing lengths to keep their spring break going, and their journey becomes even stranger when they encounter unhinged drug dealer, Alien (James Franco).  The trailer looks pretty nuts, as we see a barrage of footage in a short amount of time.  The highlight is most definitely Franco’s character, and I can’t wait to see just how far he takes the quirky role in the full film.  In his review, Matt described the film as “wild, agressive, mildly disturbing, darkly comic, and surprisingly thoughtful.”  In short, Spring Breakers clearly looks like a Spring Break movie made by the director of Trash Humpers.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Directed by Harmony Korine,  Spring Breakers opens March 22nd.

SXSW 2013 has announced their first wave of films, and the comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone will open this year’s festival.  That’s a huge vote of confidence for the film (last year’s opener was The Cabin in the Woods), which stars Steve Carell as a Vegas magician whose relationship with his partner (Steve Buscemi) becomes strained as the two start getting upstaged by a hipper illusionist (Jim Carrey).  SXSW has also revealed that they’ll host the premiere of Fede Alvarez‘ Evil Dead remake, and they’ll also be showing off Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers, which should be a perfect fit for the festival.

Hit the jump to check out the first wave of films announced for SXSW 2013 as well as highlights from the 2013 conference.  The majority of the festival line-up will be announced on January 31st.  The 2013 SXSW Film Festival runs from March 8 – 17th.

What’s the best course of action should you ever find yourself a boring married person who’s hesitant to cash in “movie favors” due to the fear that your return favor will come in the form of the next four Katherine Heigl movies? Align yourself with like-minded boring married people and schedule yourself a significant-other-free triple feature. This advice comes directly from my own playbook and is the reason why this week’s Top 5 is arriving a little earlier than usual; so that I can make time to check out Gangster Squad, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained all in one glorious day. While you likely didn’t come here for relationship advice, as an added bonus to an already robust palette of content, I’m confident that you’re getting your time’s worth and then some.

All creative thinking pertaining to movies and how we can watch them while in a relationship aside, this week saw the announcement of the 2013 Oscar nominations, a little Evil Dead remake set visit coverage, Gangster Squad interviews with Ruben Fleischer and more, a healthy portion of posters and images from Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers, and developing news regarding Christopher Nolan potentially taking on Interstellar as his next directorial effort. All of the above resides in brief recap and link form after the jump.

We’ve got a round-up of some of the latest posters from the following movies:

• Beautiful Creatures – A French poster for the Richard LaGravenese film starring Alice Englert, Alden Ehrenreich, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum and Jeremy Irons.  Beautiful Creatures opens February 14th.
• Spring Breakers – An alternate poster to the ones that we posted earlier for Harmony Korine’s film starring Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez and James Franco.
• Epic – The animated film from Blue Sky and the creators of Rio and Ice Age is directed by Chris Wedge and features the voices of Amanda Seyfried, Jason Sudeikis, Pitbull, Beyonce Knowles, Josh Hutcherson, Colin Farrell, Steven Tyler and Judah Freidlander.  Epic opens May 24th.
• Dead Man Down – The revenge thriller from director Niels Arden Oplev and Fringe writer J.H. Wyman stars Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Dominic Cooper and Terrence Howard.  Dead Man Down opens March 8th.

Hit the jump to see the posters and synopses.

Four posters and 24 images have been released for Harmony Korine‘s upcoming film, Spring Breakers.  The movie centers on a group of girls (played by Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine) who go to disturbing lengths to keep their spring break going, and their journey becomes even stranger when they encounter unhinged drug dealer, Alien (James Franco).  Spring Breakers was one of the trippiest movies I saw at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and I found it quite enjoyable.

Hit the jump to check out the posters and the images.  Spring Breakers gets released sometime this year.  [Update: We added one more poster after the jump.]

One of the craziest films I’ve seen this year is Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers.  The slightly surreal picture follows a group of co-eds who don’t mind resorting to violence if it means they get to keep their raucous spring break going.  When they end up in jail, they’re bailed out by the colorful drug dealer Alien (James Franco), who thinks he’s met some easy prey but instead he’s met his match.  It’s one of Franco’s most memorable performances, and according to Showbiz 411, Annapurna Pictures will give the movie an awards qualifying run in December to try and get a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  I seriously doubt Franco will get the nod since the Academy probably hasn’t forgotten how he pissed on their ceremony a couple years ago.  More importantly, this isn’t an “Academy” performance.  It’s a strange character in an even stranger film, so I doubt the old white guys are going to warm to Franco singing a rendition of Britney Spears‘ “Everytime”.

Franco just wrapped shooting on his adaptation of William Faulkner‘s As I Lay Dying.  He’s next move on to co-star in Homefront with Winona Ryder and Jason Statham, and Franco recently signed on to co-star in The Grace That Keeps This World.

Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers is a wild, aggressive, mildly disturbing, darkly comic, and surprisingly thoughtful film about hedonism so thick you’ll about to choke on it.  For college kids who feel entitled to a good time and never want the party to stop, Spring Breakers takes their debauched desires, and plays them out to a grotesque degree where the characters are tested in how far they’ll go to keep the passion of spring break burning forever (the other burning will require penicillin).  Complimented by the glorious stunt casting of James Franco as a goofy drug dealer, Spring Breakers defies simple explanation, and sends the audience spinning as we grasp for some kind of anchor in this sweaty mosh pit of a movie.

Earlier today, TIFF announced that they were adding new films to their already stellar Galas and Special Presentations line-up.  Among the new additions are:

• Passion (directed by Brian De Palma) Starring Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Karoline Herfurth, and Paul Anderson.
• Love Is All You Need (directed by Susanne Bier) Starring Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, and Paprika Steen.
• Spring Breakers (directed by Harmony Korine) Starring Selena Gomez, James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, and Heather Morris.
• Yellow (directed by Nick Cassavettes) Starring Sienna Miller, Gena Rowlands, Ray Liotta, David Morse, Lucy Punch, Max Theoriot, Riley Keough, Daveigh Chase, Heather Wahlquist, and Melanie Griffith.

Hit the jump to check out the images and synopses.  The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 6 – 16th.

And here I was thinking that the line-up for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival couldn’t get any better.  Silly me.  TIFF has sent out a press release announcing new additions to their Galas and Special Presentations line-up, and there are some powerhouses in the bunch.  The new additions include Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master, Brian De Palma‘s Passion, Spike Lee‘s Michael Jackson documentary Bad 25, Susanne Bier‘s Love Is All You Need, Walter Salles‘ adaptation of On the Road, Lee Daniels‘ The Paperboy, Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers, and Nick Cassavettes‘ Yellow.  Yeah, there aren’t enough hours in the day.

Hit the jump to check out a list of all the new additions.  The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 6 – 16th.

The line-up for the 2012 Venice Film Festival has been announced and it’s a surprisingly lean year.  Usually, there’s a lot of overlap between the Toronto International Film Festival and Venice, but the only major crossovers are Terrence Malick‘s To the Wonder, Robert Redford‘s The Company You Keep, Ramin Bahrani‘s At Any Price, Mira Nair‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Ariel Vromen‘s The Iceman.  Venice does have a few standout exclusives this year, most notably Brian De Palma‘s new film, Passion, starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace.  Other notable exclusives include Abdallah Omeish‘s Witness: Libya (executive produced by Michael Mann) and Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers.

Hit the jump for the full line-up.  The 2012 Venice Film Festival runs August 29 – September 8th.

We’ve already posted plenty of images from director Harmony Korine’s spring break pic Spring Breakers, but now even more pics of the bikini-laden cast have surfaced online.  The film stars Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine as four college girls who rob a fast food joint in order to pay for their spring break.  They get busted, but a drug dealer played by James Franco bails them out and convinces them to kill his nemesis.

Hit the jump to check out the images.

With the Cannes Film Festival officially kicking off today, there is plenty of big, bold movie marketing to be found.  For those of you who couldn’t make it to France (including me), we thought we’d bring you some of the sights.  Our international correspondent Magdalena (who you can follow on twitter) has been busy snapping some shots of promotional material at the festival.  We already brought you the first iteration here, but now we have some more goodies to check out.  They include shots of Spring Breakers, Dracula 3D, Brian De Palma’s Passion and Olympus Has Fallen starring Gerard Butler. Hit the jump to check them out.

Director Harmony Korine has been hard at work on his spring break movie appropriately titled Spring Breakers, and we’ve been bringing you plenty of images of the bikini-clad cast over the past few weeks.  The film stars Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine as four college girls who rob a fast food joint in order to pay for their spring break.  They get busted, but a drug dealer played by James Franco bails them out and convinces them to kill his nemesis.  It’s fairly ridiculous premise, but what more could we expect from the director of Trash Humpers?

Not only do these images show off Franco’s latest character creation in all his cornrowed glory, but we also get a, um, nice official image of the core actresses in their fabric-light costumes.  Hit the jump to check out the images.  If you missed any of the other bikini-filled images we posted previously, click here and here.

It’s the time of year when many students are dreading their approaching finals while longing for the days of Spring Break.  For director Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, every day is a party. We previously brought you set photos of the cast in their beach attire.  You’ll probably be happy to know that Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine continued to prance around St. Petersburg, FL in their bikinis under the guise of filming a Spring Break movie. (The presence of James Franco is probably a red-herring.) Either way, we have a new video interview for you to check out which features some of the cast and a good deal of behind-the-scenes footage.  Additionally, I’ve pain-stakingly put together a gallery of some Spring Breakers images that I think you will find enjoyable. The things I do for you people.

Hit the jump to check out the new footage in the video interview and a slew of set photos from Spring Breakers.

It is tough being James Franco (Pineapple Express). The poor guy has to spend time in Florida with the likes of Selena Gomez (Monte Carlo), Vanessa Hudgens (Sucker Punch), Rachel Korine (Trash Humpers) and Ashley Benson (Pretty Little Liars) running around barely clothed. While the following images simply look like some paparazzi shots of Hollywood celebs on Spring Break, the cast is actually shooting the aptly named Spring Breakers. The latest feature from director Harmony Korine (Gummo), Spring Breakers follows four college girls who rob a fast food joint so can they afford to go on spring break in Florida.  When the girls invariably get arrested, they’re bailed out by Franco’s character, “Alien, a rapping drug and arms dealer who bails them out and entices them to kill his arch-rival, a murderer who is appropriately named Arch.” Hit the jump to see Franco and the girls going wild.