Caroline Gomez has joined bicoastal Big Block as director of business development. Formerly director of marketing at Motion Theory where she also helped to launch its sister company Mirada, Gomez will operate from Big Block’s Santa Monica studio and will also work closely with executive producer Corwin Carroll at Big Block’s New York location. She will identify new business opportunities and synergies to maximize Big Block’s resources and drive sales. She will also manage relationships with agencies, creatives and brands and promote Big Block through social media and at events, award shows and conferences. Big Block has expanded and diversified since its inception in 2011 and now creates, produces and distributes media and content for commercials, interactive, television, feature films and Broadway theater, with several digital entertainment ventures in development. Big Block’s designers, live action directors and artists have been recognized with an AICP Next Award, a One Show Bronze Pencil Award, a PromaxBDA Award, a Bessie Best of Show Award and an Emmy Award nomination. Big Block was launched by business developer Scott Benson and managing director Kenny Solomon. Big Block is majority co-owned by Jamie Bendell, an executive producer of the company’s Off Broadway run of “Heathers: The Musical” and other live theater productions, making Big Block a Certified Woman-Owned Business…..
Biamp Systems, a leading provider of innovative networked media systems, has appointed Hugh Daly as area manager for the north central region. Daly’s addition to the Biamp team is in response to the company’s continued growth and expansion across the North American AV and enterprise markets. With more than 20 years experience as an AV sales executive in the Midwest, Daly comes to Biamp after working with such companies as AVI Systems and Neotek….
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