Production and entertainment company m ss ng p eces has added comedy director J.J. Adler to its roster.
Adler is a director and writer who’s helped create comedy spots for brands like P&G, Virgin Mobile, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Verizon, and with agencies including The Martin Agency, R/GA, Mother, Droga5, Grey, and BBDO. Her commercials have won top honors at Cannes, The Webby Awards and The One Show, among others. Business Insider recently honored Adler as one of the 30 Most Creative Women in Advertising.
Adler was a founding creative and head director at The Onion’s Peabody Award-winning webseries “The Onion News Network.” She also co-executive produced and directed season one of the The Onion’s 2011 IFC TV series of the same name.
Adler’s graduate thesis film, a short dark comedy, NEW MEDIA, made its festival premiere at the Sundance film festival where it won several awards. Her short documentary Unattached won accolades including a 2008 Student Academy Award® and a grant from A&E IndieFilms.
“J.J. is the most exciting voice in comedy right now and I’m thrilled to be reunited with her,” said Brian Latt, managing partner at m ss ng p eces. The two had worked together earlier at Tool of North America, Adler’s roost before she came over to m ss ng p eces.
Adler said she’s long been a fan of the m ss ng p eces team including Latt, founder/managing partner Ari Kuschnir and managing partner Kate Oppenheim.
Among Adler’s lauded spot work is “Girls Who Code” which won a Cannes Film Craft Bronze Lion back in 2016. Conceived by McCann New York for Girls Who Code, the national non-profit working to close the gender gap in technology, this video satirized stereotypes about why women are underrepresented in computer science. This anthem piece presents absurd theories for why girls “can’t” code, pointing to ridiculous reasons such as “they have boobs”, “they menstruate,” and “they’re beautiful.” With its funny and provocative tone, the campaign was designed to spark conversation about unconscious bias and call out stereotypes related to gender and appearance that have been used to exclude women from traditionally male-dominated fields like technology.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More