After 26 years at Chicago-based agency Leo Burnett Co., senior VP/director of TV services David Beller has announced he is retiring; Burnett has not yet named his successor….Director Nick Lewin has moved from bicoastal X-1 Films over to sister company, Crossroads Films….Director Marty Weiss, formerly of Santa Monica-based TrailHead, has joined Venice, Calif.-headquartered Cucoloris for exclusive spot representation….Bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures has signed director Anton Beebe. This is his first representation in the U.S…..Director Randy Spear, formerly of Los Angeles-based Palomar Pictures, has joined Dublin Productions, Hollywood….Bicoastal production house Anonymous has added executive producer Andy Traines, who comes over from bicoastal Omaha Pictures….Four years after moving its headquarters to the West Coast, Backyard Productions is scaling back its Chicago operation to a sales and marketing office run by partner/head of sales Roy Skillicorn; concurrently, Chicago-based Backyard executive producer Sheila Stepanek and director Shaun Conrad are relocating to Southern California, where they will work out of the shop’s Venice branch….Bicoastal Zooma Zooma director Sam Raimi, who just wrapped a film titled The Gift, is again available for commercial work. The Gift is an autobiography written by Billy Bob Thornton about his mother’s psychic powers. The cast includes Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi and Greg Kinnear….Minneapolis-based production house Salvation has opened, featuring director Walter Pitt….
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