Framestore Pictures has signed directors Anh Vu and Marcus Ubungen. The NYC-based Vu has a background in design and visual effects. Having started at Psyop in 2007 as a designer, Vu quickly elevated into Psyop’s director collective. To date, she has contributed to several award-winning campaigns for brands like Aetna, GE, Volkswagen, JBL, Samsonite, Stand Up To Cancer, Michelin and Silk.
San Francisco native Ubungen has worked at creative agency Goodby, Silverstein, & Partners directing content for clients Chevrolet, Motorola, Adobe, Google, and Specialized Bikes. In 2014 he turned to directing full-time and went on to shoot campaigns for Gatorade, Samsung, Toyota, and Porsche. His last short film Halloween Meets Gasoline was staff picked by Vimeo and screened at SXSW.
Both directors have recently launched compelling personal projects; Vu’s Never to Forget portrays the lives of women and children from the state of Rajasthan, India, and their fight for equality while Ubungen’s Beyond The Fields follows child boxers in rural Thailand.
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