On the heels of bringing creative/director Nando Costa on board as a partner in the company (SHOOT, 6/19), Bent Image Lab, a Portland-based production house and creative laboratory, has signed veteran animator and director Ken Lidster, who comes over from London animation studio Loose Moose.
The addition of Costa and Lidster are designed to diversify and fortify Bent as a content creation studio. Costa’s design and motion graphics work complement Bent’s core CG, stop motion and mixed media animation prowess. And Lidster brings a lauded body of animation work and experience, particularly in stop motion fare, that enhances Bent offerings.
Lidster, a Canadian native, moves to Portland after having spent two decades in England, working at Aardman Animations in Bristol, and then as a founding partner in Loose Moose. He has directed assorted spots, mostly humorous in nature, over the years for such clients as Energizer, Chips Ahoy!, Kellogg’s, Oscar Mayer, Quaker Oats, Target and Lipton Brisk iced tea. For the latter, Lidster helmed lauded campaigns that featured the voices and animated likenesses of Bruce Willis and Danny DeVito, among other celebs.
Lipton Brisk’s “Dojo” directed by Lidster for JWT New York showed a fight pitting martial arts legend/action film star Bruce Lee against the villainous Karate Kid and his master, Mr. Miyagi. The stop motion :30 earned an animation category honor in the 2000 AICP Show, and inclusion into the film archives of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Lidster’s work has been screened at festivals and TV stations around the world. His film Balloon won a British BAFTA honor for Best Animated Film of 1991, the Grand Primero Cinanima Solverde ’91, and a Silver Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival.
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