Swedish comedy director Carl Sundemo has joined Stockholm-based production house Bacon for Scandinavian representation. His body of work spans such brands as KLM, Liquid Death and Naked Wines. Over the past couple of years, Sundemo has established himself as a dead-pan comedy director with a flair for magnificently crafted universes-and a willingness to completely blow up those universes at any time. He brings to directing his experience as an editor and education as an art director….
Bulgarian director Zornitsa Dimitrova has signed with Dublin-based production company Banjoman for commercial representation in Ireland. Her film school graduation short, A Dark Moment of Faith, won several YDA Gold Screens (including the Special Jury Prize), a 1.4 Award, Berlin Commercial Award, and six Clios, as well as a D&AD nomination. Dimitrova has in the commercial realm turned out work for such brands as eBay, Bosch, HEAD Tennis and McDonald’s Germany;. For the latter, she directed an International Women’s Day project, “Female Empowerment,” which offers a gutsy middle finger to the patriarchy….
Brand and experience design agency handsome has brought Nicholas Kim on board as its chief strategy officer. He’s the former global chief experience officer of Innocean and chief strategy officer at Publicis. Kim has supported clients including Google, Samsung, Unilever, GE, Nike, Hyundai and HP with customer experience and design innovation strategies across digital and physical platforms….
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