Johnathan Brownlee has been appointed CEO and president of the Dallas Film Society and executive director of the Dallas International Film Festival (DIFF).
A transplant from Canada, Brownlee is an award-winning Canadian/American entertainment veteran with a diverse international body of work, spanning more than 20 years. Three of Brownlee’s feature films, “Occupy, Texas,” “Three Days in August” and “Decoding Annie Parker,” have screened at DIFF. Brownlee created DIFF’s first screenwriting competition whose winner, “Three Days in August,” was produced in Texas, premiered at DIFF and was released nationwide at Studio Movie Grill.
“I’m extremely honored to lead DFS and looking forward to growing our education and community initiatives and leading DIFF’s transformation into a festival that reflects the incredible diversity of Dallas Fort Worth and the ever-changing landscape of entertainment,” said Brownlee, “There is nothing like watching a film in the theater, but we are also fortunate to be living in a time when television, streaming content and virtual reality are leaders in creative storytelling and our mandate at DFS is to present all of these experiences to our audience.”
Brownlee’s career highlights the symbiotic relationship among entertainment, art and commerce as he has created television series sponsored by Home Depot, HSBC, Ford, British Airways and Club Corp, to name a few. He has also produced content for The Salvation Army, Amnesty International, World Wildlife Fund, Toronto Humane Society, and KIPP Schools to support their fundraising campaigns. Brownlee has taught both creative and “the business of the business” workshops at Harvard, MIT, Vancouver Film School, LA Film School, Brandeis University, and Booker T. Washington High School for the Arts, and served as the LA representative for the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
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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