Brickyard VFX has named Andrew Bell as managing director of its Boston studio and promoted Amy Appleton to executive producer. Bell comes to Brickyard from MPC, where he spent more than 15 years growing the studio, most recently as a managing director of MPC Los Angeles. Appleton has been at Brickyard for 10 years, producing hundreds of high-profile projects for clients that include Frito-Lay, Progressive Insurance, Cadillac, Columbia Sportswear and Royal Caribbean.
Bell began his career in 1999 as a PA with MPC in London. He worked his way up through the company, handling production responsibilities for several years before crossing the pond in 2008 to help open the studio’s first expansion facility in Los Angeles as head of production. Bell became the managing director in 2011, a role he held until fall 2016, when he began consulting for Apple.
In addition to the management moves, Brickyard Atlantic has recently upgraded its technology infrastructure and is installing a grand roof deck with views of the downtown Boston skyline.
Brickyard maintains shops in Santa Monica, Calif., and Boston.
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