Director Tom Routson has signed with Moxie Pictures, bicoastal and London, for global spot representation. He comes over from Tool of North America where he has been a prolific comedy helmer for more than 10 years.
Routson’s credits span commercials for such clients as DHL, Bud Light, Allstate, ESPN and Heineken. He directed the lauded Budweiser “Lizards” campaign out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. His international reach is reflected in AICP Show-honored work for such clients as Pohjola Insurance’s “Rock Star” via TBWA Finland, Helsinki, which was honored in the Talent/Performance category, and Nestle Milkybar Munchies’ “When Kids Attack” via Lowe, London, which garnered an AICP honor for Humor.
Additionally Routson has made inroads into emerging platforms, directing and conceiving of Triangle, a live-action interactive short that was one of four produced last year by Tool as part of its “Touching Stories” initiative to explore storytelling potential on Apple’s iPad (SHOOT, 8/20/10). Routson’s strong narrative Triangle is a choose-your-own ending tale of greed and betrayal in which a priest and a tattooed roughneck vie for the affections of a beautiful young woman. At the same time, all three are competing for a suitcase full of money. The adventure ends with someone laying dead in a vacant lot while someone else walks away with the cash–only the viewer (who becomes a video game player of sorts) decides who survives.
Routson made his first industry mark as an agency creative before successfully establishing himself as a director. He served as an art director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, moved over to Fallon as an art director and then returned to Goodby as an associate creative director. In 1999, he decided to pursue a full-time directorial career and signed with Tool.
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