Director Shyam Madiraju has joined Backyard, Venice, Calif. He made his first mark directing at V3, which became Anonymous Content Emerging Media. While there, he gained inclusion into SHOOT’s 2006 New Directors Showcase. He made the transition to director from the agency side of the business. Prior to V3, he served as creative partner at Ogilvy, Los Angeles, where he oversaw creative on the Cisco Systems’ account….The Whitehouse, bicoastal, Chicago and London, has added Corky DeVault and Adam Robinson to its editorial roster. The latter comes aboard as an editor after several years assisting with the company. Meanwhile DeVault spent the last nine years at Joint in Portland, Ore., which is Wieden+Kennedy’s edit arm. At Joint he cut jobs for such clients as Nike, EA Games, Coca-Cola, AOL and Old Spice….Bicoastal Cosmo Street has added editor Mike Colao. He comes aboard after seven years at Final Cut NY and a short freelance directing stint. His credits include spots for such clients as Nike, New Balance, Smirnoff, Jet Blue and Subway as well as videos for the Shins, The Kills and Albert Hammond….Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, has hired Zach Canfield as global director of creative recruiting. He will assume this newly created position at the agency effective Oct. 20. Canfield comes over from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, where he was creative recruiter and manager….Santa Monica-based audio facility The Mix–launched in May by partners Josh Eichenbaum, Ted Lobinger and Steve Davis–has brought Chris Vera on board as executive producer. She formerly served as an account supervisor for Visa and Sara Lee at TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles, where she also played a role in new business development….
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