Agency Redscout has named David Mikula as its creative director and Jamie Kim as director of creative production. Mikula and Kim will lead Redscout’s creative department in partnership with Redscout’s industrial design director Gina Reimann. Both will report to Redscout’s founder and CEO Jonah Disend, and will be based in its New York headquarters. Most recently, Mikula was a creative director at Digital Kitchen and prior to that he worked as a creative at Wieden + Kennedy. During his career, he has worked with brands such as Nike, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Whole Foods, Dodge and Coca-Cola to create award-winning user experiences, products and campaigns. Most recently, Kim was a founding partner at WE ARE PI. Prior to that, she held roles at Wieden + Kennedy as a sr. producer and AKQA as a digital producer. Her work has earned numerous industry accolades including an Effie Award, Cannes, Webby Award, D&AD, FWA and Eurobest….Cinelicious Pics is a newly launched distribution company bringing handpicked cinema to U.S. audiences for the first time via theatrical release, VOD, Blu-Ray & DVD and television. The company was inspired by a unique partnership between entrepreneur and film restoration expert Paul Korver and former head of film programming for the American Cinematheque, Dennis Bartok. Cinelicious Pics’ key ingredients include an eclectic mix of new U.S. independent and foreign features and docs plus restored art house and cult classics, brought to pristine viewing quality by sister post & digital restoration studio Cinelicious, founded by Korver. Both companies are located in Hollywood. Cinelicious Pics will roll out its first releases theatrically in the fall of 2014, starting with director Adam Rifkin’s documentary portrait of a truly outsider artist, Giuseppe Makes A Movie; Icelandic director Ragnar Bragason’s dark, intense drama of faith, loss and heavy metal music in the 1990s, Metalhead; and the acclaimed documentary Elektro Moskva from filmmakers Elena Tikhonova and Dominik Spritzendorfer, uncovering the secret history of Soviet Space Age Electronic Music and a new generation of indie rock musicians in Russia re-using these long-lost electronic synthesizers. Cinelicious Pics plans to release a dozen films annually….
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More