Our Top Spot this week is a tongue-in-cheek viral piece of nearly four minutes, which introduces us to Kiril Vasakinov, billed as formerly being Russia’s most successful TV series creator/producer.
He invites us inside his home–a modest abode considering he was once so successful–and explains (in Russian, accompanied by English subtitles) that the TBS sitcom My Boys is a total rip-off of a comedy series he created in 1994 entitled A Woman And Her Wolves.
As exhibit A, he screens a scene from My Boys in which the star gal has her three male buddies draw pretzels, the one with the shortest pretzel having to accompany her on a boring evening event.
Next we see a clip from A Woman And Her Wolves which is pretty much the same, except with Russian actors.
Vasakinov observes, “As bad as Stalin was, he never stole anyone’s idea for a TV show.”
The angry producer then invites us to go outside and walk the former Soviet Union’s streets. He relates that this isn’t the first time that American TV has stolen from him. We then see a scene from his series Solovyova, in which a Kramer-like character stumbles around a front door, clearly the inspiration for what became Seinfeld in the U.S.
Later we see a clip from Vasakinov’s Everybody Loves Radzimierz, which was copied by American television, translating into Everybody Loves Raymond.
For the Russian producer, My Boys is the last straw, representing a pillaging of the last creative property he had to call his own.
A website address–kirilsoutrage.ru–appears at the end of this viral, serving to further promote TBS’ My Boys.
Jim Jenkins of bicoastal/international O Positive directed the viral piece for Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.
The Saatchi team included creative director Gerry Graf, associate creative director/copywriter Chris Beresford-Hill, associate creative director/art director Nick Spahr, copywriter Michael Illick, art director Dan Lucey, and senior producer Peter Ostella.
Editor/sound designer was Chris Franklin of Big Sky Edit, New York.
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