Brian Billow–a former creative director at DDB Chicago where he worked on such accounts as Anheuser-Busch, McDonald’s, OfficeMax and Wrigley’s–has come aboard the directorial roster of bicoastal/international Hungry Man. Prior to DDB, he was a creative at McCann Erickson, New York, contributing to spots for the MasterCard “Priceless” campaign, Budget Rental Cars, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Rolling Rock and Xbox. Among Billow’s directing credits are commercials for McDonald’s, Wrigley’s and Vermont Lottery. His filmography also includes the short titled Bodega, which he both wrote and directed. The short, which has generated considerable buzz on the film festival circuit, tells the story of an extremely creative guy whose vocation is robbing convenience stores….New York-based Sound Lounge Music & Sound Design has hired Marcus Smith as executive producer. He most recently was co-founder and executive producer for New York music house Siblings where he worked on commercials for such clients as JCPenney and Nikon. Smith also produced the original music for this year’s Academy Award-winning and Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award-nominated documentary Taxi to the Dark Side directed by Alex Gibney (who recently entered into a deal for TV commercial representation via Beverly Hills-headquartered Saville Productions)…..New York-based multiplatform production company Transistor Studios has brought Jacob Bondre on board as its lead interactive developer. He has served in senior creative and development capacities at various shops, including Whatever Solutions and Media Inc., Blast Radius, OgilvyOne and Ogilvy Interactive….
Review: Director Alex Parkinson’s “Last Breath” Starring Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu
A routine deep sea diving mission in the North Sea goes terribly wrong when a young diver is stranded some 300 feet below the surface in the new film "Last Breath." His umbilical cable has severed. The support vessel above is aimlessly drifting away from the site through violent, stormy waters. And the diver has only ten minutes of oxygen in his backup tank.
As if that wasn't enough, it's also a true story.
If merely reading this is giving you heart palpitations already, you can only imagine the white-knuckle experience of watching this all play out on the big screen. It's 40ish minutes of pure suspense and anxiety as the story shuffles between the man at the bottom of the ocean, Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), his fellow saturation divers (Woody Harrelson as Duncan and Simu Liu as Dave) in the diving bell below the waters who are unable to help and the crew in the support vessel above (including Cliff Cutris and Mark Bonnar) scrambling to get their systems back online and operational as the clock rapidly runs out. Ten minutes has never felt so short โ and then it just gets worse as the clock starts counting up, showing Chris's time without oxygen.
At one point, Liu's character Dave, a no-nonsense, all-business diver says matter-of-factly at that it's a body recovery, not a rescue. Deep sea saturation diving is a dangerous business, described at the start of the film as the most dangerous job on earth. Chris tells his fiancรฉ, in a short introduction, that it's no more dangerous than going to space. She replies that it's funny that he thinks that is comforting.
The real incident happened in September 2012 โ Dave, Duncan and Chris were just one team of divers sent to the ocean floor off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, to repair oil... Read More