According to indieWIRE’s specialty box office report, Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonelymade more money last weekend per-screen than any other film in limited release. The IFC release took in $16,769 in its single engagement at the IFC Center in New York, which is pretty astounding when you consider that a) he hasn’t released a movie in almost ten years, and b) Korine’s last film, julien donkey-boy, made just $85,400 in its entire run. Because today is Lazy Video Link Day, let’s celebrate Harmony’s big-money victory by watching the scene from julien in which Werner Herzog spends some quality time with a bottle of cough syrup. Oh, and we reviewed Mister Lonely and talked to Harmony about obscene Southern rap and his favorite YouTube videos, too.
Yet another filmmaker moonlighting as an ad director: Harmony Korine directed the above TV advert for Thornton’s, a British department store chocolate store [thanks, Marie!]. There are some unmistakeable Korine touches here (and even vague references to images from julien donkey-boy and the upcoming Mister Lonely–which, by the way, is AWESOME). But still, it’s somewhat ironic that I’m able to show you a more-or-less conventional, Holiday season-timed TV ad directed by the bad boy of 90s independent cinema, and a short film made specifically for the web by a canonized, old-guard, Oscar winning filmmaker that goes out of its way to upend standard conceptions about online advertising. Interesting, no?
Where has Harmony Korine been in the eight years between his 1999 Dogme 95 effort Julien Donkey-Boy, and his IFC-acquired, Cannes/Toronto entry Mister Lonely? It has something to do with a fire, a screenplay about pigs, and a cult of Amazonian fishermen called The Malingerers. He talks all about all of that, and also why he’ll never make “genre films”, in this video interview (which doesn’t seem to be embeddable, but if you can figure it out, let me know). Is it truth, or some kind of Herzogian fantasy? You decide.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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