Director Bram Van Riet of Caviar (Venice, Calif., Brussels, Amsterdam) shows us the schoolyard isn’t the only place bullying goes down in a new :60 PSA, “Safer Internet,” for the European Union and Schoolnet out of LDV United, Antwerp, Belgium. The PSA demonstrates how seemingly harmless cyber jabs can be anything but.
The spot opens on a young girl surfing the net in her bedroom. She types “Hello Everybody” on a social networking site, clicks “Post,” and the games begin. An electronic beat ushers in rapid-growing pimples, the apparent physical manifestation of another user’s mean-spirited posting. The girl’s computer chimes and we see that another user has presumably called her a pig, because her nose morphs into an oinking snout.
We cut to another bedroom where a young man posts on his computer, “You fat cow!” Back in her bedroom, the girl’s belly and cheeks balloon, splintering the backside of her chair, then her face distorts as if rubberized; the result of three other girls’ insensitive use of photo-finishing software. Finally, with her face stretching like Play-Doh and the room quaking, the girl stops the madness by clicking “Report Abuse” on her computer. Over the teary-eyed and thoroughly frightened girl, a super appears, “Block bullying online.” The PSA closes on a black screen over which the tag, “Keep it fun, keep control,” and the site www.keepcontrol.eu appears.
The LDV United team included creative director Kristoff Snels, copywriter Melanie Daems, art director Kris Lenaers and producer Petra De Roos.
Kato Maes exec produced for Caviar, Brussels, with Tatiana Pierre serving as producer. The DP was Nicolas Karakatsanis.
Editor was Simone Rau of Caviar, Brussels.
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