Bicoastal content creation studio Logan has added production veteran Matt Winkel as executive producer of its Los Angeles office. Winkel brings more than 15 years of production experience to the company, including expertise in postproduction, VFX and virtual reality. Prior to joining Logan, Winkel helped lead virtual reality efforts for director Chris Milk at VRSE, including projects for Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary and The New York Times’ first virtual reality effort, “Walking New York.” As executive producer for postproduction at Tool of North America, he built the post-production department to serve as a bridge between live-action and digital. Winkel earned his stripes at Digital Domain and Motion Theory before founding Black Swan. Winkel’s credits include producing large-scale initiatives for Apple, Google and Facebook, as well as creatively leading an installation for Nike.
Alkemy X has brought on board editor Craig Brasen who comes over from Go Robot! where he spent nine years working on projects for brands such as T. Rowe Price, UPS, NASCAR, AT&T, Pedigree and IBM. Also joining Alkemy X is executive producer Leah Garner Orsini who has worked in visual effects and live-action production for 10 years. Her career has included stints at MTV in New York, Sugar Film Productions and Reel FX in Dallas, and Zoic Studios in Los Angeles. After moving to New York in 2012, she started at Method working on Kill Your Darlings, which was picked up at Sundance, and then spent two years at Framestore before joining Alkemy X, which has bases of operation in NY and Philadelphia….
Longtime agency producer Sarah Holme has assumed the role of executive producer, head of sales at Santa Monica-based editorial company Butcher. Holme spent over a decade on the production side at agencies, including BBDO where she worked on Procter & Gamble and Mars, among other brands, JWT, Cossette, Calvin Klein and most recently a yearlong position as sr. producer for the likes of American Honda Motor Company, Qualcomm and Patron at Publicis-owned digital agency Razorfish….
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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