Vanessa Hudgens - Candy (Spring Breakers S&S) #9 ~ "Gomez, Hudgens and Benson don't just shed their Disney personas, they shatter them."

Less Than Perfect · 09-10-2012, 02:05 AM

Welcome To The
Spring Breakers
Spoilers & Speculation Thread

Cast
Vanessa Hudgens - Candy
Selena Gomez - Faith
Ashley Benson - Brit
Rachel Korine - Cotty
Heather Morris
James Franco

Harmony Korine - Director

Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith 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"
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.

Four sexy college girls plan to fund their spring break getaway by burglarizing a fast food shack. But that’s only the beginning. During a night of partying, the girls hit a roadblock when they are arrested on drug charges. Hung over and clad only in bikinis, the girls appear before a judge but are bailed out unexpectedly by Alien (James Franco), an infamous local thug who takes them under his wing and leads them on the wildest spring break trip in history. Rough on the outside but with a soft spot inside, Alien wins over the hearts of the young spring breakers, and leads them on a spring break they never could have imagined.

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xxx

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Spring Breakers - In Competition @ Venice International Film Festival

Venice Schedule

September 5, 2012
20:15 PALABIENNALE a seguire (8:15 PM - PalaBiennale to follow)
22:15 SALA GRANDE (10:15 PM - Big Room)

Spring Breakers - Special Presentation @ Toronto International Film Festival

TIFF Schedule

Friday September 7, Ryerson Theatre, 6:00 PM
Sunday September 9, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, 3:00 PM
Friday September 14, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, 9:00 PM

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PROGRAMMER'S NOTE

The overly bright sunshine begins to hurt your eyes. The semi-nude bodies grind in a tequila-fuelled haze. A waft of violence floats through the atmosphere until it dominates the scene, aware of its hold on everything and everyone. You feel all-powerful and totally alone. This is spring break in Florida, captured through the transformative lens of Harmony Korine’s imagination.

Korine’s impressive canon of films poetically chronicles the minor heroics and self-aggran-dizing intensity of marginalians, unseen, ignored and dismissed by a willfully ignorant world. In Spring Breakers, his attention turns to four female co-eds (Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Rachel Korine) in an unnamed college town. Desperate to hit the beach, but flat broke, they rob a coffee shop with fake weapons, steal a car, head south and start to party hard. Their fun gets rudely interrupted when the cops bust into their apartment and find things young girls should not be enjoying. Locked up with no bail money, they despair until a local petty gangster (James Franco) springs them. Two of the girls stay with him as his entourage and, ultimately, his hitmen; while the other two drop out, exhausted, disoriented and longing to experience that rush of freedom one more time.

Spring Breakers is Korine’s first film since Mister Lonely to feature professional actors. He challenges his impressive young cast in unexpected ways, with long, seemingly improvised takes and a demand for shifting tones of sweetness and menace.

The film lands on the more narratively linear end of Korine’s career and has moments that recall each of his previous films, especially the virtuosic tableaux of Gummo and the agonizing desperation of Mister Lonely. But Spring Breakers also brings a few new tricks to the table, including remarkable shifts in mood and a breathtaking cinematographic confidence; there are signature moments of montage in this film that will influence generations to come.

Harmony Korine thinks in pictures that no one else could even dream up.

Noah Cowan

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Spring Breakers: interview with Vanessa Hudgens

Vanessa, were you familiar with Harmony Korine’s work before you were cast in Spring Breakers?

I feel like I knew a little bit. Harmony worked with one of my manager’s other clients on Kids, and that was one of my dad’s favorite movies. When this came along, he was really excited. I think James Franco was already attached, and then I read the script and I’m such a big fan of his. I’m a real believer in putting things out in the universe, and eventually if you want it bad enough it all happens. For months I was saying, I want to work with James Franco over and over again, and when this came up, I thought “We need to make this happen!”

Were the other actresses attached to the project at that point?

No. There was no one else attached. We were just figuring out the characters. I was like, I’m really just excited about the project and don’t care which character I play. Then he made me read for Candy and the next time he had me come in again and do a few reads with a few girls.

You needed to find the perfect partners in crime for your part. The relationships in the movie are such strong bonds girlfriends who have been best friends since childhood. It is such an amazing connection that females have, it’s unlike anything else. In order to show it on film, we needed to establish a connection. At that point I heard about Ashley Benson, who came on board as well. I actually used to go to acting class with Ashley, when I was 15 or 16. We were in the same class but our paths in life had been completely different. We never really got to know each other at all. And it’s so funny now, coming back to that and being able to dig into each other’s past. It’s a small world.

Do you remember what you thought the first time you read the script, the feelings it triggered? It’s not the kind of movie that we would expect you to be part of…

Recently, I’ve been doing a few projects that are way darker and deeper and heavier. Reading these situations in the movie where our characters go wild that harsh, hard element was something that I really liked. I felt like I would be a little bit in my element, like I’ve had a taste of it. It’s so much fun and I wanted more of it. And Candy seems like the one who even though she’s bad-ass and tough and hard, she still has that sweet fun side underneath it all, this bubbling little girl, just so excited about everything, and I feel like that’s partly who I am. Under this deep, dark and heavy character, inside of myself, I’m just jumping for joy at the fun that I’m having.

How did you prepare for this role?

It starts, honestly, just reading the script. One of the first things we did was to get close to the girls right away, because we wanted to build an amazing bond and relationship, and create a sense that we had known each other for years. And then go further past that, of course, and study girls who are just hard and rough and tough and who are in this other drug-like world. It really is a completely different world, their headspaces are so different. They’re just living in the moment.

How do you think the character got to the point where she gets arrested? What kind of background do you think she is from?

I think our characters just do whatever they need to do to get what they want. As women, they know that they’re hot and empowered, and they know that if they’re tough enough and they act like they know what they’re doing then people will believe them. Together as a crew, they know they can conquer the world and get whatever they want. And the only way they know how to get to spring break is to rob a bank.

(...)

The wardrobe and costumes seem to be such an important aspect of the movie. Were you involved in the creation of them?
Heidi Bivens had an amazing idea about how she wanted it to look. It’s really like pop art. All our costumes are so bright and really in-your-face, a lot of fun graphics that contradict the way that we act, which is such a funny spin on things because we are getting ****ed up and are wearing Hello Kitty. It’s a funny spin on how youth nowadays can be doing things that are really crazy, and at the same time having interests that are so pure. It’s such a present mindframe, I feel, just not thinking about the future. This is how our characters are. They just don’t think about the future, they are just doing what they feel is right. Their interests are all over the place.

(...)

In the movie you have a love scene with him. Do you think your character fell in love with him?

For sure! It’s probably not the purest of places, but it’s this tainted idea of what love and fame and fortune is. The characters are so wrapped up with the idea of being the biggest and the baddest and the hardest. He really supports it and motivates us to be the hardest and baddest we can be. Probably like a first love.

Drug induced, and it’s all about sex, and money, and bitches, and hoes, it’s love and it’s tough and it’s hard. That’s what our characters are about.

So what’s your favorite scene so far?

I don’t know. It’s all been such a crazy whirlwind blur that everything is kind of falling together in this mad, wild, dream-like state. I think that the part I enjoyed most is the robberies, where we get to be tough, fun girls living in the moment. Robbing that restaurant was pretty amazing, because it felt so real, because we did it from the beginning to the end. Ashley and I felt so hyped up, we were on such an adrenaline high. I literally rolled into the car and was just staring at the stars in the sky after all this madness. I was suddenly seeing such a serenity and connection to the universe, I was so in awe, my mind was blown. It was a moment I will never forget. This movie is so fun, it’s so crazy, it’s so vivid and alive, so in your face and juicy. I can’t wait to see it.

Spring Breakers: interview with Vanessa Hudgens�|�The Upcoming

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Future Thread Titles
I think [Selena and Vanessa are] great, terrific, awesome.
I thought [Selena and Vanessa would] be perfect. They’re exactly who I wanted.
"There are signature moments of montage in this film that will influence generations to come."
"Spring Breakers also brings a few new tricks to the table, including remarkable shifts in mood and a breathtaking cinematographic confidence."
"Spring Breakers screening has the longest line in Venice this year."
"Spring Breakers is brilliant! Edgy, refreshing, a thriller fantasy with a twist!"
"Spring Breakers gaudy, woozy, compelling; wildest film in competition."
"Vanessa Hudgens, in particular, steals the show: the former good girl from High School Musical plays darkest and most insane."
"Spring Breakers is visually ravishing."
"The cinematography is superb and the performances from the actors outstanding."
"The performances by the four BFFs are outstanding and very courageous."
HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Harmony Korrine & the amazing cast of #SpringBreakers. I LOVED IT. A new classic. - Eli Roth
"I do think that Spring Breakers will make millions on DVD and is likely to cause aneurysms and heart attacks at the MPAA screening."
"Spring Breakers was absolutely ridiculous and absurd but it's also Harmony Korine's best movie since Julien Donkey-boy."
"Spring Breakers successfully rips party/youth culture a new one."
While we're on the subject of celebs making art, props to Franco, Hudgens and Gomez for owning the skeeze of Spring Breakers.
"Most films are "arty" in a bad way, ie boring. Spring Breakers is arty in a good way, exploitative and paced like a bullet."
"It even manages to make something out of Hudgens, who heads to the basement of her usually vacuous screen persona, lifts a trap door, and descends even further into a nihilistic, ****-it, charismatic kind of place. She may be the real deal, ya'll."
"She has VASTLY improved! Everyone is talking about her performance."
"Solid performances from everyone, but it's V, Ashley, and James movie. Absolute ****ing scene stealers."

Previous Threads
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go sox · 09-10-2012, 04:10 AM

ugh..girls...love this :

Quote:
Can now tell you confidentially and after much thought that both #TheMaster and #SpringBreakers are masterpieces (wildly different, however)
that is a beautiful beautiful thing

Mandee, where did you read that quote and who said it?

George_93 · 09-10-2012, 04:35 AM

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Also, I had no idea that was @VanessaHudgens. ********** blew my mind. Great acting on her part. #SpringBreakers #Tiff12

Tweet from @matthewstasoff. No idea what he does but i LOVEEE this comment.

Go sox, that tweet was from @rymacduff. He's a reviewer for concordia university television in montreal

Elif_ZV · 09-10-2012, 04:45 AM

How I love that they're surprised by V's acting

JustღBreathe · 09-10-2012, 08:40 AM

Toronto International Film Festival 2012: Spring Breakers | The House Next Door

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TIFF 2012: ‘Spring Breakers’ purposefully veers off its own rails | Sound On Sight

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Though surprising in its sensibly high production value, Spring Breakers does fit well in Korine’s filmography of beautifully raw and enlighteningly disturbing observational pieces, even if it does rapidly grow more and more preposterous as its characters move from aspirations of assimilation to ones of new, if manipulated, individualism. The piece does occasionally feel as though it’s abandoned its presumed original intentions, though this is not to say the honestly fitting abandonment is not an acceptable and undeniably memorable one that will surely mature with favor upon further reflection.

|Sweet Disposition| · 09-10-2012, 10:28 AM

That centerpiece montage mentioning in the first review is a bit of a spoiler

Elif_ZV · 09-10-2012, 10:41 AM

Thanks for those

JustღBreathe · 09-10-2012, 11:10 AM

I edited it now. Left only the link

CarolineS · 09-10-2012, 11:19 AM

Thanks for the new thread and all the links and comments

|Sweet Disposition| · 09-10-2012, 11:25 AM

Aww... you didn't need to edit out! A really great review you could have just put that little part in spoiler tag.

The whole article is amazing to read

Quote:

Here is a film, to borrow a phrase from Don Delillo, about "the neon epic of Saturday night," a DayGlo beach-borne fantasy of bright lights smeared and shining; it exists in this strange and beautiful place upon which Malick, Mann, and MTV incongruously converge. This is art-house maximalism with a tenor like poetry, an incisive and critical drama unafraid to relish and indulge in the subject it intends to deconstruct. You could call it "high-trash" cinema; it collects the cast-aside bric-a-brac of an ostensibly bankrupt culture—Harmony Korine operates here like some rigorously anthropological Katamari, rolling up anything and everything in his path—and transforms it into something earnestly, maybe even transcendently, gorgeous.

Spring Breakers manages in one beer-steeped swoop to both criticize and ultimately redeem the most vacuous detritus it can find: dubstep, coke, video games, beer bongs, keg stands, dreadlocks, cheap 40s, Gucci Mane's face tattoo, the state of Florida, and the titular spring break as not only a vacation but as a very real-seeming state of being. I don't want to oversell its intellectual or aesthetic aspirations, but in many ways the film is like Weekend reimagined as a daring iteration of Girls Gone Wild. Or, hell, maybe Jean-Luc Godard's Step Up Revolution: It's a radical take on a sexy summer drama by a man with serious artistic ambitions. It's also quite obviously the best film currently touring the festival circuit.
Korine, deliberately or not, seems to set his film up for failure from the outset. The galling, conversation-starting montage which opens Spring Breakers suggests that one is settling in for a very different sort of experience: Sumptuous, slow-motion tracking shots across endless rows of disconcertingly young-looking bodies as they cut loose on the beach are clearly designed to implicate the audience in the film's immediate and rather lecherous voyeurism (a few close-ups of rump-shaking resemble no less than Chris Cunningham's music video for Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker," though naturally these faces, when they're acknowledged at all, remain model-perfect). What's established here—and established with great skill, mind you—is an angry cynicism regarding the subject matter that would have grown exhausting had it been retained over the course of the film. But when Spring Breakers switches gears minutes later, shifting from the bodies on the beach to those of its winsome quartet of protagonists, that in-built bitterness dissipates almost entirely, and a sudden empathy and generosity overtakes the proceedings; rather than cruelly mocking or dismissing his leads in contempt of their insipid sensibility, Korine probes them for something deeper.

The vapidity of their milieu is certainly criticized (the film is savvy enough to express its discomfort with the atmosphere of spring break even when the parties, and bodies, are being relished with glee), but the characters themselves are redeemed, perhaps even exonerated, by the strength of their conviction and depth of their will. Despite being a kind of classical "downfall" narrative, about young girls falling into the wrong crowd and having their innocence apparently corrupted (an archetypical outline that Korine undermines with remarkable wit), Spring Breakers is more about the strength of these women rather than some weakness that portends their fall from grace. What I think everybody assumed might happen when the news of the cast broke—Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson are on loan from their lives as teen idols—is that Korine would make a point of undermining their wholesome image by transforming them into trashy Lolitas; what happened instead, incredibly, is that he made them into much fiercer and more overtly powerful figures than their daytime iconography could have accounted for.

What's going on here, in effect, is reverse ****-shaming: Spring Breakers makes a point of exaggerating the vivacious sexuality of these women in order the dispel the myth that assertive or even aggressively sexual women can't be strong, deep, and generally well-rounded people. Which isn't to say that Spring Breakers casts its leads as unimpeachably romanticized heroes (comic-book superheroes by the end, perhaps, but otherwise not exactly ideal role models), but the very fact that it avoids stereotypical victimization or any other condescending bull**** is reason enough to laud its core ideology.

There's so much more to love here (on strictly aesthetic terms, Spring Breakers is straight-up astounding, recalling everything from the neon skylines of Miami Vice to the jagged, repetitious editing of The Tree of Life and beyond), and even more to digest further. Even on a more basic level, the film is enormously entertaining, particularly the hilarious, actorly turn by a Riff Raff'd-up James Franco: Stretches of the presumably ad-libbed riffing on his Scarface-inspired kingpin's lifestyle offer some of the most quotable one-liners

Spoiler:

This is a film that should, in theory, offer principally superficial pleasures, and yet somehow its glossy, appealing aesthetics form only one part of a considerably richer work.

JustღBreathe · 09-10-2012, 11:28 AM

lol I was just too lazy to put in a spolier box.

nikkilover! · 09-10-2012, 11:37 AM

Thanks for all of those reviews!

minixoxmya · 09-10-2012, 11:53 AM

Thanks for all of the reviews! So awesome to see people getting it and enjoying it!

mandee · 09-10-2012, 12:18 PM

I will say...LA Weekly has a great review too. he's over the moon about it. he's already gone into posting quotes on his twitter

does anybody know when the last screening is? There is suppose to be one more right?

George_93 · 09-10-2012, 12:24 PM

I think somebody mentioned the 14th...


Fan Forum > Archived Celebrities > Vanessa Hudgens > Candy (Spring Breakers S&S) #9 ~ "Gomez, Hudgens and Benson don't just shed their Disney personas, they shatter them."