Changes at the Helm
David Naylor & Associates (DNA), Hollywood, has taken on exclusive spot and music video representation in the U.S. for London-based production company Pagan. A prime focus for commercials will be Pagan director Vaughan Arnell, who made his first mark in the industry as half of the directing team Vaughan +Anthea, with Anthea Benton, in the mid-1980s. The duo was successful in both videos and spots. Arnell and Benton then began solo directing careers in ’96. Vaughan continued to be active in clips (The Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There”) and commercials (Orange, Audi, Levi’s, Stella Artois). He joined Pagan in ’02. Additionally, Pagan has the mono-monikered Rankin, a noted photographer, publisher and most recently film director, whom DNA will handle stateside. David Naylor is president of DNA. His counterpart at Pagan is Adam Saward….. Director Grant Baird has joined MotivFilms, a Santa Monica shop founded in ’00 by director Eric Bute and exec producer Jim Rutherford. Baird first became known on the agency side, having served as creative director and head of production at Bozell-Bonneville and at Bonneville Communications, Salt Lake City…..MRB Productions has added directors Todd Kellstein, Brian O’Connell and Vincent Pagazza, joining company mainstay helmer Mark Teitelman…..Category:News
Review: Director Pablo Larrain’s “Maria” Starring Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie glides through the final days of Maria Callas' short life in Pablo Larraín's "Maria," a dramatic, evocative elegy to the famed soprano. It's an affair that's at turns melancholy, biting and grandly theatrical, an aria for a once in a generation star.
Reality is of little consequence on the stage and in "Maria." It's all about the raw feeling, which serves the movie well, more dream than history lesson about La Callas. Early on, she pops some Mandrax and tells her devoted butler Ferruccio (a simply wonderful Pierfrancesco Favino) that a television crew is on the way. Are they real, he wonders.
"As of this morning, what is real and what is not real is my business," she says calmly and definitively, making a feast out of Steven Knight's sharp script. It's one of many great lines and moments for Jolie, whose intensity and resolve belie her fragile appearance. And it's a signal to the audience as well: Don't fret about dull facts or that Jolie doesn't really resemble Callas all that much. This is a biopic as opera — an emotional journey fitting of the great diva, full of flair, beauty, betrayal, revelations and sorrow.
In "Maria," we are the companion to a protagonist with an ever-loosening grip on reality, walking with her through Paris, and her life, for one week in September 1977.
The images from cinematographer Ed Lachman, playfully shifting in form and style, take us on a scattershot journey through her triumphs on stage, her scandalous romance with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) and her traumatic youth. In the present, at age 53, she sleeps till midday, drinks the minimal calories she ingests, goes to restaurants where the waiters know her name looking for adulation and has visions of performances staged just for... Read More
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