Selena Gomez says doing Spring Breakers was her mom’s idea

Written by Vince Mancini / 03.18.13

Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine’s 90-minute Girls Gone Wild music video, is currently tearing up the specialty box office in advance of its wider release, earning $90,000 per theater in New York and LA over the weekend. While it’s pretty obvious why Harmony Korine would want wholesome-famous Disney babes to star in his extended riff on naughty coed psuedo-porn, it’s little less obvious why those Disney babes would agree. In Selena Gomez’s case, she tells E! News, her mom urged her to do it. And if you’re a young actress coming up in Hollywood, you should definitely listen to your crazy stage mom. I let my mom determine all my career decisions too, but only because I live in her basement.

“I wasn’t scared. I definitely wanted to do this,” Gomez told reporters of deciding to shed her wholesome Disney image. “I thought it would be a great opportunity for me, and Harmony [Korine, the director] explained the movie perfectly and that’s the reason why [I chose to do the film].”

“I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into but while we were there, it was incredible to create and to play and it was liberating,” she continued at the Saturday, March 16 press junket.

But Gomez told E! News that despite any uncertainty she had initially, her mother was always one of her biggest supporters.

“She loves this kind of vibe,” she said. “She’s super into indie movies and indie directors … I think it was more of her pushing me and being like, you should go for it.” [USWeekly/ENews]

Whoa whoa whoa, slow down, you mean to tell me that a former child actress who started doing Disney Channel shows when she was 12 has a mom who pushes her into possibly-exploitive career decisions?? I can only express my reaction to this news .gifficly.

I just don’t know how to process this information. Selena Gomez’s mom’s name, incidentally, is “Mandy Teefey.”

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Spring Breakers Review: Many f*cks spoken, few given

Written by Vince Mancini / 03.14.13

Kool Aid & Nunchuks

Spring Breakers may suffer from the high-expectations problem. I tried to temper my excitement going in, but with new pictures of nubile girls in bikinis and slow-motion trailer footage of James Franco with an AK going around the internet every day, it was hard. I so much love the idea that the guy from Kids partnered up with Dicknose Franco to film an over-the-top teeny-bopper panty party of exploited former Mouseketeers that I don’t know that the actual movie could ever hope to live up to it.

The first thing you should know going in is that Spring Breakers is not a movie that progresses much past the initial idea. You know how they repeat “Spring Breeeak” about 15 times in the trailer? The movie is exactly like that, just… more. I didn’t count, but I’d estimate they repeat “Spring Break” about 250 times. To be fair, it sounds really cool the way James Franco says it. Spriiiiing breaaaaak. Spring breeeak, y’all. Spring break fa evaaa. Point being, it’s not a movie you should go into looking for character development. It’s an extended visual joke, a partly satirical celebration of shallowness, materialism, and decadence. It feels more like a visual art installation adapted to a feature rather than a feature in its own right. It can feel like Harmony Korine stuffing newspapers into a feature hat so it’ll fit on Spring Breakers‘ little head, and at times you really notice the newspaper. The characters repeat the same things over and over. The editor must have worn the plastic shell off the button for “gun cocking sound effect.” And I’m pretty sure Spring Breakers breaks the South Park movie’s record for most uses of the word “f*ck.” As I heard someone say on the way out of the theater, “I felt like I was trapped in a music video I didn’t want to be in.”

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Gas Up the Van: Spring Breakers has a restricted trailer

Written by Vince Mancini / 02.01.13

James Franco and Harmony Korine made a movie about Disney Channel teenyboppers who get half naked and rob banks, and now it has a restricted trailer (slightly NSFW for the briefest of nipularity), and better believe I’m going to post it. Spring Breakers opens March 22, so start getting lubed up to receive your inevitable dicknosing. That’s Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine up top. Rachel Korine looks pretty great for someone who had a kid in 2008, but I think Ashley Benson is my favorite. Though that could just be because she has the least amount of fabric covering her lower half. I am a simple man.

Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine) and Faith (Selena Gomez) have been best friends since grade school. They live together in a boring college dorm and are hungry for adventure. All they have to do is save enough money for spring break to get their shot at having some real fun. A serendipitous encounter with rapper “Alien” (James Franco) promises to provide the girls with all the thrill and excitement they could hope for. With the encouragement of their new friend, it soon becomes unclear how far the girls are willing to go to experience a spring break they will never forget.

Oh boy, seeing how far college girls will go used to be my favorite thing! Anyway, I can’t wait. And I can’t believe none of this made it into James Franco’s Obama poem. You write about talking Borges with Christopher Hitchens but not partying with half naked teens in Florida? You’ve changed, bro.

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Bikinis, Guns, James Franco: New Spring Breakers Trailer

Written by Vince Mancini / 01.17.13

This man has six graduate degrees. Stay in school, kids.

When James Franco and Kids writer Harmony Korine, who last collaborated together on an art project about naked gangster chicks on BMXs, say they’re working together on a teeny-bopper movie about sexy bank robbers starring a bunch of half-naked Disney Channel chicks, you know you’re in for the best kind of dicknosing. In the latest trailer, the girls – Efron’s ex Vanessa Hudgens, Bieber beard Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson (dibs!), and Harmony Korine’s wife, Rachel – party with James Franco, who seems to be doing a Gary Oldman-esque impression of Riff Raff that alternates between playing it big and whispering to us like he’s in a CK One commercial. If you don’t know who Riff Raff is, like me when I was calling his character Kevin Federline at first, don’t look it up, you’ll be better for it.

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This Week in Posters: God Bless Spring Breakers

Written by Vince Mancini / 01.09.13


This week in posters is back, and just in time for some new Spring Breakers posters. I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to say anything about this besides Ashley Benson’s name while I bit my knuckle, but instead I’ll simply say that a teeny-bopper movie with a bunch of Disney Channel queens from notorious dicknosers Harmony Korine and James Franco is something I’d pay at least double the price of admission for. I’m dying to know what glorious dicknose is in store for us with this one.

Also, these chicks are all like 18 to 22, aren’t they? Do we really need all the airbrushing? Cut it out with the filters, I want to see every dimple. Uh, I mean… airbrushing is a sexist tool of the patriarchy that promotes an unhealthy body image among impressionable young girls. (Phew, good save, Mancini, good save).
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