Multimedia production company More Media has added director Mike Morelli to its roster. This is Morelli’s first commercial signing.
“More Media has such good taste and a keen eye for talent, immediately I felt like my style would find a home there,” said Morelli.
Morelli’s passion for filmmaking goes back to his childhood, watching "bad" 80s movies on VHS. Noting their exaggerated and cheesy effects, Morelli viewed their flaws as accessibility, and reason enough to try and make his own films. In high school, Morelli was already winning awards for spec commercials and music videos. In the years since, he’s developed a distinctive style, anchoring absurdist stories in psychedelic and surreal visuals, which touch on the camp of the ‘80s that first inspired him.
“I grew up on guys like Michel Gondry and Jonathan Glazer, where they often implemented a lot of visual effects in their work. However, no matter what they were doing, the concept was the central driving force behind the piece,” said Morelli. “Similarly, I like to root my visuals in hard concepts.”
In this vein, he’s created music videos and spots for an array of artists and major brands, including a particularly memorable short for the makeup brand NARS. In the short entitled Stick of Me, Morelli portrays a woman twisting up her new tube of lipstick to reveal–oddly–a miniature and elated version of herself, squeaking hello at the camera. This sort of clever, unexpected work, which flouts tradition and puts a smile on your face, is classic Morelli–and exactly what More Media was attracted to.
“When Mike reached out to us with his work, we were blown away with his level of skill in effects, film making, and video manipulation,” said Blaize Saunders, executive producer at More Media. “It was innovative, thoughtful, and highly creative. [CEO and EP] Stephen Buchanan and I knew we’d found someone we like to have on our team.”
In addition to his commercial work, Morelli’s made music videos for chart-topping electronic group Louis the Child and released a feature film, SHITHEAD, which has garnered him recognition, including the Audience Award at ARFF Paris and Best Screenplay at the Maverick Movie Awards in 2019.
Most recently, Morelli has pushed the envelope and explored the potential of new technologies in film, a passion he hopes to bring into his work at More Media, a company known for its innovative and eclectic repertoire. His short film The Vanishing American Dream, shot using groundbreaking stereoscopic-3D volumetric capture techniques, won Most Creative VR Film at CineQuest 2021. Shortly thereafter, Morelli released a viral short called Tweaker’s Delight, another trippy, colorful mix of virtual reality and generative art, and a culmination of his many experiments with volumetric video, 360 cameras, and AI.
“At More Media, I’m looking forward to creating some groundbreaking content,” said Morelli. “I’d like to keep pushing the boundaries of the medium of filmmaking, to continue raising the bar and exploring what new possibilities lay ahead.”
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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