Recently launched talent-focused production company Ampersand has brought Jennifer Gee aboard as its executive producer. She connects with Ampersand managing director Phillip Detchmendy, an exec she’s long admired.
Early experience on the studio side working at Castle Rock and Twentieth Century Fox eventually brought Gee to her commercial producing career. Having produced at Furlined, as well as serving as head of production/EP at Partizan and HOP at Serial Pictures, Gee has, like Detchmendy, worked with some of the industry’s top directors.
Gee’s experience had teed her up to expertly foster Ampersand’s coterie of talent. Gee said she was drawn to her new roost because “Phillip’s vision for Ampersand offers me an entirely fresh perspective about the kind of position I could curate for myself in this business. Ampersand represents the kind of environment that would define my career path. Work hard but create a world of friends, family and fun while making great films.”
Gee noted, “We envision a boutique company that revolves around the chemistry of creativity and outstanding filmmaking.” These aims include recalibrating the traditional production company model and infusing it with the distinct visions of Ampersand’s directors, while also scouting for fresh talent to add to the growing roster.
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