Director David Frankham has joined bicoastal Smuggler. He was most recently with bicoastal The Artists Company….In partnership with bicoastal Cohn+Company, music video house Notorious Pictures, also bicoastal, has launched a commercial division and has signed U.K.-based director Tim Hope for spot representation in the U.S. The 2-D/3-D/live-action helmer was featured in Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase at the 2002 Cannes International Advertising Festival. He continues to work through London-based Passion Pictures for commercials outside the U.S., as well as for music videos…..Cine International and DRSA have merged to create Cine/DRSA International, New York. Valerie Light, Paul Rosen and Don Stogo will be partners/executive producers at the new company, which will be a division of Screen Gems….Commercial editorial company Harley’s House and music/sound design shop Primal Scream have entered into a creative alliance to provide ad agencies with a full slate of services from the same site. Primal Scream has moved into new headquarters, part of the recently expanded Harley’s House facility in Santa Monica. Per the deal, both companies maintain their current ownership and are free to work with other editing and music/sound design houses…..Editor Louis Lyne has joined Griot Editorial, Southfield, Mich….The partners of Boston editorial facility Spot, Larry Andersen and Carl MacNeal, have parted ways and are now running separate edit houses. Andersen is retaining the Spot name and relocating the company to nearby offices. MacNeal will be launching Edit Pod, Boston, also in a new location….New York-headquartered production company The Firm has signed London-based director Laurie Castelli for stateside commercial representation. Castelli is repped for spots in Europe by Democracy, London….Creative concept/design company Room and creative editorial house Cutting Room, sister shops based in Venice, Calif., have brought Greg Everage on board as executive producer….. Executive producer Dina Chang and senior editor Arash Ayrom have joined Humunculus, a Venice, Calif.-based broadcast design and animation house recently launched by founder Saam Gabbay who shares creative director duties with writer/director/producer/designer Brumby Boylston….
Review: Director Michael Gracey’s “Better Man”
"I came out of the womb with jazz hands," pop star Robbie Williams recounts in "Better Man," his new biopic. "Which was very painful for my mum."
Badum Dum.
But also: Wow. What an image, to illustrate a man who, we learn, agonized from early childhood as to whether he had "it" — the star quality that could make him famous.
Turns out, he did. Williams became the hugest of stars in his native Britain, making 14 No. 1 singles and performing to screaming crowds (though he never gained traction in the United States.) And whatever else we learn from director Michael Gracey's brassy, audacious and sometimes utterly bonkers biopic, the key is that Williams' need to entertain was primal – so primal that it triumphed over self-doubt, depression and addiction. It should surprise nobody, then, that this film, produced and narrated by Williams (now 50), is above all entertaining.
But wait, you may be saying: Five paragraphs in, and you haven't mentioned the monkey?
Good point. The central conceit of Gracey's film, you see, is that Williams is represented throughout by a monkey — a CGI monkey, that is (actor Jonno Davies provides the captured moves and speaking voice). This decision is never explained or even referred to.
There's a clue, though, in one of Williams' opening lines: "I want to show you how I really see myself." Gracey based his film on many hours of taped interviews he did with Williams. He says the pop star told him at one point that he felt like a monkey sent out to entertain the masses — particularly in his teens as a member of the boy band Take That. It was Gracey's idea to take this idea and run with it.
We begin in 1982, in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Young Robert Williams is bad at football and... Read More