Barton F. Graf 9000 has added the creative team of art director Michael Hagos and copywriter Sam Dolphin. Hagos and Dolphin will report directly to executive creative directors Scott Vitrone and Ian Reichenthal.
Hagos and Dolphin have unofficially been working together since they were in graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University and later formally became a team while helping to launch the New York office of Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners. Together, they have produced award-winning work for Comcast, New York Post, Street Easy, and Rock the Vote.
“I love the different ways they find creative solutions,” said Gerry Graf, Barton F. Graf founder and chief creative officer. “When I look at work, and I can’t figure out how the team came up with the idea, those are the people I really like. Michael and Sam are campaign thinkers who fundamentally understand that breakthrough ideas also need to sell stuff.”
Before his time at Goodby, Hagos was working as a freelancer for a variety of agencies including Red Antler and Venables Bell and Partners. Prior to that, he spent time some time at Mother NY and Sid Lee, producing creative work for companies such as Target, Virgin Mobile, Stella Artois, Proust eMusic, and JCPenney. Before becoming Hagos partner, Dolphin worked as a copywriter at Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore., where he created work for Dodge, P&G, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Nike, American Express, Sony, Special Olympics, and Herbal Essences, among others.
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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