Integrated production studio The Collective @ LAIR has signed NYC-based director Krista Liney for commercials, branded content and direct-to-client fare worldwide. She continues to serve as SVP of brand creative at A&E Networks while spreading her directorial wings via The Collective @ LAIR with her first career commercial representation.
Liney’s directing credits range from promos for the History Channel series Vikings to Tyga and Justin Bieber’s “Wait a Minute” music video, which has generated more than 130 million YouTube views to date.
Over the course of her longstanding career at A&E Networks, Liney first served as an executive producer for History Channel shows and a director of promos. Liney’s bold creative vision and unique brand of storytelling soon elevated her to the role of SVP, brand creative, for History Channel, giving her creative oversight for notable shows, from the lauded miniseries Hatfields & McCoys to the mainstay series Pawn Stars.
As a producer, Liney earned a primetime Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series category in 2016 for History’s Roots: A New Vision. That short-form work was cut from a full-length feature, also produced by Liney, which won an NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary.
Liney has also used her platform to champion campaigns produced for women and by women, directing spots for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, National Women’s Soccer League, and Lifetime Network’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Her skillset demonstrated in multiple capacities ranging from network creative director to exec producer and director has been informed by her ability to harmonize corporate brand needs with engaging and original storytelling. Previous clients include GEICO, RAM, DISH Networks, Porsche and DirecTV.
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