The Detroit chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) recently named Erich Wiemer of START Editorial the winner of its fifth annual Filmspotting competition. Filmspotting was modeled after the national AICE Trailer Park competition. Since its inception, there have been various forms of the competition throughout all of the local chapters of AICE. This year, assistant editors from the Detroit AICE member companies were challenged to conceive, design and execute a :30 or :60 political advertisement using any existing source material. Wiemer’s ad “Choices” promoted a proposal that called for fair ballot access for third parties, and pointed out that there more choices than just red or blue. On his concept, Wiemer explained, “Personally, I’m not happy with either candidate on the ballot for this upcoming election, and I wish there was an alternate choice. I was struggling with how to show the idea of ‘choices’ in a non-political manner and I bounced a few ideas off of senior effects artist Jon Jovich. He suggested the visual of someone shopping and began sorting through footage. The idea began to come together.” The spot featured footage from films such as Heaven on Earth, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Raising Arizona, as well as Sony Bravia footage. Second place was awarded to Doug Lapp of Mad River Post, who took a cue straight from the local headlines. Lapp’s ad parodied Michigan’s recent film tax incentives by promoting the Michigan ‘Adult’ Film Incentive. “When I learned of the political theme for this year’s competition, I decided I didn’t want my ad to be too serious,” commented Lapp. “I made an offhand joke that Michigan should pass an ‘adult’ film incentive and my ad was born.” His spot, titled “Proposal 2” included footage from the film The Amateurs and elements and graphics from the Internet….Zoic Studios, a Los Angeles-based digital production company active in commercials, episodic TV and features, has signed producer Lisa Pierce, formerly of Stardust, and promoted staffer Steve Meyer from lead compositor to 2D supervisor…..New York-based production, design, effects and post finishing house Guerilla FX (GFX) has signed Vance Miller as character animator/technical director, He comes over to GFX from the graphic design company Eyeball, New York, where, for the last two years, as the company’s technical director, he was the lighting and rendering specialist on most of their 3D projects, supervised and fine tuned their rendering pipeline, and filled roles as both 3D animator and 2D compositor on a variety of projects for such clients as AT&T, Best Buy, Bioshock, Cinemax, Cingular, Country Music Channel, Jeep, McDonald’s, MTV, Mystic Aquarium and VH1…..
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