VMLY&R Chicago has brought Aaron Evanson on board as executive creative director. The move marks his return to the Windy City–where his career began–after working at VMLY&R Kansas City, one of the agency’s principal offices.
Evanson will focus on the Chicago shop’s lead campaign work for clients, including Kraft Heinz, Panama Tourism and Wells. He will work alongside VMLY&R Chicago ECD Jeremy Schutte, who oversees platform work for clients, such as Northern Trust, and group creative director Mariana Costa. Evanson’s work has been recognized with industry awards, including Cannes Lions, the One Show and London International Awards.
While at VMLY&R Kansas City, Evanson led creative teams to multiple new business wins and buzzworthy campaigns, such as “Wendy’s Pretzel Love Songs,” which garnered more than 2 billion earned media impressions.
Evanson has nearly 25 years of brand-building expertise. He started his career at FCB Chicago, where his Kraft campaigns created pop culture buzz and record sales. His work on the “It’s Not Delivery, It’s DiGiorno” campaign is still going strong today, and because of Evanson’s winning work, he was the youngest FCB creative to ever earn the title of VP.
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