Director Steve Beck, formerly of Industrial Light + Magic Commercial Productions, San Rafael and Los Angeles, has joined bicoastal Reactor Films. Word is that Reactor is also about to add director/designer Linzi Knight, who continues to be partnered in Toronto house Red Rover….In an effort to satisfy the debts of New York-headquartered Shooting Gallery Inc. (SGI), its Toronto-based parent, itemus, has issued a preliminary base shelf prospectus that—if approved—would permit itemus to issue shares of itemus stock to SGI creditors; itemus is liable for up to $10 million of SGI debt. Meanwhile, a group of SGI investors has filed suit against SGI, itemus and former SGI president/CFO Stephen Carlis, alleging that SGI failed to pay investment returns and accusing Carlis of fraud and deliberate misuse of funds. As earlier reported (SHOOT, 7/6, p. 1) SGI’s financial problems undermined its profitable commercial and music video shop, Shooting Gallery Productions, which closed in late June…..Director Tryan George has come aboard bicoastal M-80 Films. George was most recently with now defunct The End….Director Eric E. Fitzpatrick and bicoastal Cohn+Company have parted ways….89 Greene, New York, is adding editor Paul Kelly who comes over from BUG Editorial, New York. Kelly’s official 89 Greene start date is Sept. 1….Larry Pecorella, partner/composer at Chameleon Music, Chicago, has signed with Com/track, Chicago, where he joins composers Bryan Rheude, Dave Hutten and Justin Hori; the Chameleon Music staff—including in-house rep Marya Fletcher—will merge into Com/ track….In other Windy City news, Chicago-headquartered post shop The Filmworkers Club has acquired Astro Color Laboratories, Chicago. Filmworkers also owns Chicago-based sister shop, Sanitary Lab….Creative ad boutique Elvis & Bonaparte, Portland, Ore., has shuttered. Several of the shop’s personnel are expected to launch a new venture, according to Dave Helfrey, the agency’s former VP/creative director …Caroline Jones, a creative director/copywriter who founded, among other ad shops, Mingo, Jones, Guilmenot—now the Chisholm/Mingo Group, New York—and Caroline Jones Inc., also New York, died of cancer on June 28 at the Calvary Hospital, Bronx, N.Y. She was 59….Ronald Monchak, a longtime creative executive in the Detroit advertising community passed away June 26 of leukemia. Monchak retired as chairman of D’Arcy Detroit, Troy, Mich., in 1993…
Daniel Craig Embraced Openness For Role In Director Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer”
Daniel Craig is sitting in the restaurant of the Carlyle Hotel talking about how easy it can be to close yourself off to new experiences.
"We get older and maybe out of fear, we want to control the way we are in our lives. And I think it's sort of the enemy of art," Craig says. "You have to push against it. Whether you have success or not is irrelevant, but you have to try to push against it."
Craig, relaxed and unshaven, has the look of someone who has freed himself of a too snug tuxedo. Part of the abiding tension of his tenure as James Bond was this evident wrestling with the constraints that came along with it. Any such strains, though, would seem now to be completely out the window.
Since exiting that role, Craig, 56, has seemed eager to push himself in new directions. He performed "Macbeth" on Broadway. His drawling detective Benoit Blanc ("Halle Berry!") stole the show in "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." And now, Craig gives arguably his most transformative performance as the William S. Burroughs avatar Lee in Luca Guadagnino's tender tale of love and longing in postwar Mexico City, "Queer."
Since the movie's Venice Film Festival premiere, it's been one of the fall's most talked about performances — for its explicit sex scenes, for its vulnerability and for its extremely un-007-ness.
"The role, they say, must have been a challenge or 'You're so brave to do this,'" Craig said in a recent interview alongside Guadagnino. "I kind of go, 'Eh, not really.' It's why I get up in the morning."
In "Queer," which A24 releases Wednesday in theaters, Craig again plays a well-traveled, sharply dressed, cocktail-drinking man. But the similarities with his most famous role stop there. Lee is an American expat living in 1950s... Read More