Creative agency enso, an L.A.-based shop which helps brands like Google align business success with social impact, has appointed Niklas Lilja as innovation lead, a newly created position. In this role, Lilja leads the development of solution-agnostic innovation across all of enso’s clients, including Google Fiber and Google Get Your Business Online, to create maximum impact, engagement and utility. He works closely with the agency’s creative, activation, digital and account teams to lead and identify growth opportunities for prospective and existing clients.
Prior to joining enso, Lilja served as the director of innovation and creative director at Goodby Silverstein & Partners San Francisco, where his work included the launch of the Chevy Sonic, Chevy Game Time, GE’s “Plug into the Smart Grid,” Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby, “Summit on the Summit” for HP and “Birding the Net” for the National Audubon Society. Previously, he worked at 180Amsterdam on global integrated campaigns for adidas, adidas originals, Amstel, Glenfiddich, BMW and Sony. Lilja started his advertising career in 1998 at SEK in Helsinki, the global lead agency of Nokia. His work has been recognized in major award shows, including garnering eight Cannes Lions and two Gold Effies.
At enso, Lilja will work closely with Kirk Souder, co-founder and creative lead.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting โ quite literally โ into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat โ who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival โ has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive โ a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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