Director Lena Beug has signed with bicoastal/international Moxie Pictures for exclusive global spot representation. For the past year she had been handled in the U.S. and U.K. by bicoastal/international RSA. Beug broke into the commercialmaking arena via the former Reginald Pike in Toronto, earning inclusion into SHOOT’s New Directors Showcase in 2006….Bicoastal, design-driven live-action/animation/visual effects shop Buck has brought Bradley Munkowitz (a.k.a. GMUNK) on board as senior design director. A noted motion design industry artisan, GMUNK had been working independently prior to joining Buck. Earlier he had been at bicoastal Imaginary Forces….Director John Moore is again available for commercials via executive producer Tom Mooney’s New York-based spot production house Moon after wrapping the feature Max Payne, which topped the box office chart this past weekend….Howard Wulkan has joined Yessian Music as director of creative development. Based in New York, he will work in tandem with Yessian N.Y. managing director Marlene Bartos to create new business opportunities for the company, as well as to explore new music licensing prospects and branding and marketing initiatives in both the business to business and business to consumer arenas. Wulkan comes from a 16-year run in record labels and distribution, having worked for Universal Music, PolyGram and Warner Music Group’s Cordless Recordings. Yessian maintains shops in New York, Detroit and Los Angeles….Ed Colman, formerly owner/president of SuperDailies, has joined Burbank, Calif.-headquartered FotoKem, a provider of lab and postproduction services, as its new director of commercial services….
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