Bicoastal music shop ELIAS has expanded, launching its fourth office—this one in Nashville, TN, led by executive creative director Vincenzo LoRusso. Relocating from ELIAS’ headquarters in Santa Monica, LoRusso will continue to oversee the music company’s entire slate of work out of its Santa Monica, New York and recently opened Chicago and Nashville offices. The Nashville location serves as a central hub between all ELIAS’ studios, allowing LoRusso greater flexibility to collaborate with his entire national team and growing roster of diverse musical talent in the Nashville area. The expansion will also allow the company to better serve the area’s thriving tech and advertising industries.
LoRusso re-joined ELIAS in 2010 and has been instrumental in growing its creative team to include talent with diverse backgrounds in composing, producing, engineering and sound design, further expanding ELIAS’ in-house expertise to offer brands creative voices entrenched in the current music space. Prior to that, LoRusso boasts over two decades of experience as a Grammy nominated producer, and mixer working with artists such as Debbi Harry, Perry Farrell, Alex Ebert, Johnny Cash and Joan Osborne as well as members of Cypress Hill and Guns & Roses. Formerly, as creative director and lead composer, he helped launch Massive Music’s West Coast office and led the production team that developed and launched the Elias Music Library.
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