Industry vet Chris Miller has joined forces with executive producer Steven J. Levy and his N.Y. company Habana Avenue to form Spots & Content, a full service production company for brands and ad agencies. Miller is exec producer of the new venture. which is the first of a number of planned companies being launched under the Habana Avenue Network of Companies as part of Habana’s expanded offering of integrated production services. Habana Avenue is best known for producing national broadcast opens, commercials, live events, corporate long form films & national sales meetings. Spots & Content represents the vehicle through which Habana more aggressively diversifies into the advertising industry. Spots & Content opens with a roster of eight directors: Billy Kent, Kohl Norville, Art Haynie, Rob Markopoulos, Doug Coleman, Mary Boss, Bo Mehrad and David Palmer. Spots & Content will also represent “& Company,” a visual effects firm. Miller has spent the greater part of the last decade running sales and marketing for commercial production companies Highway 61 and Bridge Street Films….License To Thrill Music LLC, an independent music publisher providing one-stop music synchronization and licensing for advertising, films, television, radio, movie trailers, video games and new media, has entered into a music publishing partnership with Canadian composer Michael McCann. License To Thrill Music will represent original works by McCann available for use in advertising, film, TV and other media productions. McCann’s music credits range from national branding spots, (BP, The Gap/Old Navy); title music for multiple television series including ReGenesis (nominated for Best TV Theme at the Hollywood Music Awards); film and videogame trailers (Tom Clancy’s EndWar, The Law of Enclosures); full game scores (including his award-winning music to Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent); and original/licensed music for TV programs from VH1, LifeTime TV and Alliance Atlantis….Digital Intermediate (DI) colorist Scott Gregory, whose credits include such films as Twilight, Lakeview Terrace, Disturbia and The Bucket List, has joined Ascent Media’s Company 3. Gregory will be based out of Company 3’s facility in Santa Monica, where he will focus exclusively on DI work for feature films. His first project will be The Mad Cow, an independent feature from directors Jamie Bradshaw and Alexander Doulerain. Gregory spent the past year at PostWorks, Los Angeles, Previously, he spent four years at Technicolor Digital Intermediates….
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More