HarmonyKorine Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In describing today's best directors, three terms are generally used (and overused): Maverick, Genius and Auteur. A "maverick" is now used to describe virtually anyone who makes a movie without using Hollywood money. An "auteur" is used to describe anyone who writes as well as directs. And "genius" is used to describe anyone who makes a halfway decent film. I'm taking these words back. In reality, a "maverick" should be a button-pusher. It's a filmmaker who is so radical and daring that even high-minded, forward-thinking critics sneer at their work, people like Vincent Gallo or Catherine Breillat. These people are so dangerous that they have trouble making and distributing films. Harmony Korine, director of Mister Lonely (5 screens) is very much a maverick. Korine has pushed many buttons and many envelopes over the years and though I love his work, he's someone I wouldn't want to invite to my house. (He scares me.)

Werner Herzog, director of Encounters at the End of the World (1 screen), is also a maverick (and, incidentally, a buddy of Korine's). His physically dangerous films have probably had insurance companies slamming the door in his face, and his co-workers have included people who might not be fit for polite society. (At the very least, most of them would turn heads.) Some of his actors have reportedly threatened to kill him. It cracks me up that, because Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man was such a hit, Herzog was allowed to make his new film for the Discovery Channel. I'd really love to have been in on that board meeting. Did they really know who they were dealing with? At the same time, Herzog is also an auteur: all of his films have the same roaming curiosity, fearlessly exploring man's tenuous connection to nature, from Aguirre navigating the Amazon looking for El Dorado, to Timothy Treadwell seeking to befriend the bears.

If you're anywhere near New York City this weekend, you simply must check out the work of this great new filmmaker named Harmony Korine, whose strangely fantastical movie, Mister Lonely, opened yesterday at the IFC Center (it hits Los Angeles on May 9). Some readers may confuse this Korine for the angry young radical who wrote Larry Clark's teen sex drama Kids when he was 19 and later directed the startling divisive, sharply confrontational films Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy.

I assure you that the 1990's-era Korine is long gone -- or, rather, has morphed into an agreeably warmer artist. Mister Lonely, which stars Diego Luna as a Michael Jackson impersonator and New German Cinema legend Werner Herzog as an eccentric priest, doesn't always make sense, but that's precisely what Korine was going for. "I've always been interested in making a perfect nonsense," he told a crowd at the Apple store in lower Manhattan Thursday night. "I never really cared much about plot. I wanted to make movies about moments that went through you, that were experiential."

The writer/director Harmony Korine might have been -- and might still be -- one of the most audacious and terrifying new American talents in some time. At the age of 19, he wrote the script for Larry Clark's Kids (1995) and made his own directorial debut with Gummo (1997), a film so astonishing that most reviewers panned it simply to get it out of their heads. He then made the first official American Dogme 95 film, Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), and cast one of his biggest fans, director Werner Herzog, in a starring role.

All three films conjured up images that inspired the gag reflex. It was hard to look away, though. They were odd and sad and not a little repulsive. From there, he retreated into other art forms, such as photography and music (he directed music videos for Cat Power and Sonic Youth), returning to features only to write Clark's Ken Park (2002), which was so lurid it failed to secure a U.S. distributor. Indeed, like many of the most cutting edge American directors, most of Korine's fans, and financiers, currently reside outside the U.S.

Mister Lonely, directed by Harmony Korine (who previously wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark's Kids), starts out with a great idea: a Michael Jackson impersonator meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who takes him to a remote commune for celebrity impersonators, where she lives with her husband Charlie Chaplin and daughter Shirley Temple, along with the Pope, the Queen of England, James Dean, Madonna and the Three Stooges.

Once Jackson settles into this would-be paradise for people who aren't quite what they seem, things start to go a bit awry. Jealousies lurk beneath the surface and start to bubble over; the commune's sheep population gets sick and has to be taken down; and tensions rise. The group pulls together a celebrity impersonator variety show that they hope will attract crowds from far and wide to see and appreciate what they do, but in that effort, too, nothing comes out quite the way they'd hoped.

I brought you news yesterday that Martin Scorsese will be teaching a Masterclass, presenting an award, and unveiling a new film preservation foundation at the upcoming Cannes festival. Today brings more confirmation that this is going to be a pretty amazing year for Cannes, which kicks off on May 16th. Guest of honor Scorsese will also be putting his Rolling Stones documentary up for sale, and more rocking will be heard at the screening of Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington's 3D U2 documentary U2 3D. New Line will be premiering scenes from the highly anticipated The Golden Compass with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman. James Gray's We Own the Night with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix, (who also co-starred in Gray's last film - The Yards), will premiere. And there will also be a screening of No Country for Old Men, which is written and directed by the Coen Brothers and therefore moves it to the tippity-top of my "must-see" list.

Ocean's Thirteen and Tarantino's Death Proof had already been announced for the fest, and Robert Rodriguez may do a special midnight screening of Planet Terror. The rest of the lineup is still unconfirmed, as the Cannes team still has many films to watch, but insiders are reporting that strong contenders include: Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farell, Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan project I'm Not There, Michael Winterbottom's Angelina Jolie film A Mighty Heart, City Of Men - a sequel to the mindblowingly excellent City of God from a different director - Paulo Morelli, Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely (with a cast that includes Werner Herzog and David Blaine!), Michael Moore's health care documentary Sicko - which Moore is racing to finish in time, and Julian Schnabel's Diving Bell and Butterfly. It is rumored that David Fincher's very cool Zodiac will be the closing-night film. Of course Cannes can't only be about American films and there are a lot of exciting foreign contenders as well, including the new movie from celebrated Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai: My Blueberry Nights, which has a phenomenal cast. So, ah -- anybody got an extra Cannes ticket? Maybe I'll try Craigslist.

It's not nearly as odd as the video he directed for Sonic Youth's "Sunday" back in 1998 with Macaulay Culkin, but like everything else the enigmatic Harmony Korine creates, you can spend the next several hours discussing just what the f*** he was trying to say with his new video for Cat Power and her song "Living Proof." The video seems to center on a foot race between Cat, carrying a cross on her back, and a group of women in traditional Muslim garb. Is he making some statement about the current state of religious discourse in the country? Or about the role of women in society? Maybe it's a very subtle reference to Wisconsin dairy farmers? I'm sure I have no idea, but it's fun to watch. The song's not too shabby, either.

[via Filmmaker Magazine Blog]