Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg has landed her first career representation as a spot director, coming aboard the roster of Los Angeles-based production house Hello!
Berg is best known for her Oscar®-nominated documentary, Deliver Us From Evil, an exposé on the Catholic Church’s cover up of serial rapist Father Oliver O’Grady. The director has also produced Emmy®-winning documentary segments for CBS, ABC News and CNN to name a few.
“Amy infuses her work with a raw realism that we think will translate well to spots,” said Carl Swan, executive producer at Hello!.
Berg recently completed a national PSA campaign for the RAINN Network starring Dylan McDermott, Kevin Bacon, Gabrielle Union and Christina Ricci.
Also among Berg’s credits is Polarized, one of the spotlight short films for the Live Earth campaign sponsored by Al Gore. Polarized, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, explores consumer habits and their contribution to the decline of the planet.
Currently Berg is working on two documentaries in different phases of development. The first chronicles the life of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto while the other centers on the infamous Bernard Madoff.
Berg is attached to shoot her first feature, Since Walker Left, which is a remake of the French film Since Depuis Qu’Otar Est Parti. Produced by Anonymous Content, Since Walker Left stars Catherine Keener with production slated for next summer.
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