Creative agency, commercial and branded content production company Stun Creative has hired Galen Newton as its first director of digital and social media. The new position was created in response to overwhelming demand by Stun clients for comprehensive digital and social media services. Newton will report directly to Stun founding partners/principals Brad Roth and Mark Feldstein.
“Galen will give Stun the opportunity to greatly expand its services in the social marketing and digital space,” said Feldstein. “He’s an experienced digital and social pro who will work with the Stun team to guarantee that our content thrives in a multi-platform world, as we continue to expand and enrich our capabilities.”
Newton has enjoyed a distinguished career leading short-form video strategy for the Special Ops department at FOX television where he helped develop new, innovative ways to exploit the explosion of social video as a marketing tool. Newton also helped the team re-imagine different techniques to capture promotional content in the field and in real-time.
Newton led creative on FOX’s first digital and affiliate after-show for Empire, as well as the network’s first skippable ad campaign on YouTube (Grandfathered), FOX’s first custom video ads on Snapchat (Scream Queens, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Last Man on Earth and Grease Live!), and the first custom video ads for Instagram (Empire).
Before joining FOX, Newton oversaw video production and distribution for Bravo Digital Media from 2005 to 2013. There he was part of the Emmy Award-winning team behind the network’s ambitious transmedia initiative, Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen. Through strategic planning, he helped drive seven consecutive years of double-digit growth in digital video streams for the network. Earlier in his career, before joining Bravo, Newton worked at Stun as a project coordinator.
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