Advertising production veteran David Verhoef has joined production and postproduction collective The Cabinet as partner/CEO, alongside partner/director/editor Doug Cox and executive producer Jim Vaughan.
“Budgets have become increasingly tight in the past few years, and as a freelance agency producer I found that I was acting more and more as a production line producer myself to be able to make the budgets work,” said Verhoef. “Via The Cabinet, I now have all the tools at my disposal to make great content, no matter how challenging the budget.”
Cox and Verhoef met 10 years ago, when both were on staff at Publicis & Hal Riney in San Francisco. “When you spend 15 hours a day in an edit studio together and don’t kill each other, you are pretty much friends for life,” Cox noted. “David was one of those buttoned-up guys who made my job easier, and, in return, I did the best I could to deliver the caliber of work he expected. This partnership, for me, was only a matter of time.” Bringing the association full circle is Riney’s newest Blue Diamond Almonds campaign, which Cox is directing and editing.
Of his new partner, Verhoef said, “Doug is one of the most talented individuals I’ve been fortunate enough to work with in my career. A director, an editor, you name it. I consider him a national-level talent who just happens to live in San Francisco.”
Verhoef’s career spans three decades and has yielded an array of award-winning work for global brands including Nissan, Converse, Coke, McDonald’s and Microsoft. In addition to his dozens of industry awards as a producer, he has also been honored with a Cannes Gold Lion as a copywriter and Art Directors Club Best of Show as a director.
“With David and Jim, we now have two of the best agency producers in the business,” said Cox, noting that The Cabinet prides itself at coming up with creative solutions to insure every possible penny is represented on the screen.” He added, “We make the process painless because we’ve been in the trenches. Whether you need help finishing something you cut in-house or need full tilt production support from start to finish, we’re here to help.”
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.
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