Visual effects artist Ryan Markley has joined Minneapolis-based creative studio Splice. Known in the VFX community for having created the title character in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D” and blowing up MacLaren’s Pub in “How I Met Your Mother,” Markley has worked in a variety of capacities throughout his career in film and television. During this time, he’s exhibited a knack for both leading a team and taking direction, and along the way, he’s offered this experience in the form of guidance to junior 3D artists. Markley has had tenures at Worldwide FX in Louisiana (working on all the Millennium Films), Scoundrel VFX, as well as working on theme park media and augmented reality at Falcon’s Digital.
“What’s great about Ryan is that he can work quickly towards a photo-realistic result,” explains Ben Watne, head of Splice’s VFX department. “And he’s got incredible range. He can handle a wide variety of CGI tasks and do them all well–and on a deadline. I know whatever he’s assigned will be done right, and that’s a great feeling to have when taking into account the complexity of the work we put forward to our clients.”
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 — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — 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 — 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.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More