Tool of North America, the integrated production company behind notable commercial, VR, experiential, and digital work, has hired Julia Sourikoff as head of VR & 360. In this newly created role, Sourikoff will lead Tool’s rapidly growing VR division and report to Dustin Callif, managing partner, digital, and Oliver Fuselier, managing partner, live action.
Sourikoff joins Tool from the Future of Storytelling, where, as sr. producer she helped launch the thought leadership summit in 2010. In that capacity, she led the growth of the online community to over half a million thinkers, innovative practitioners, and cutting-edge technologists, working with world class brands like Adobe, American Express, General Electric, Google, Microsoft, and Time Warner. In 2015, she partnered with execs from Oculus Story Studios, the Tribeca Film Festival, and Sundance’s New Frontier, to produce the VR salon “A Closer Look.”
“Julia brings an extensive knowledge of VR technologies that will help solidify Tool as leaders in the medium,” said Fuselier.
Callif added, “Julia’s passion for storytelling makes her the perfect person to helm Tool’s VR division. Her addition will help us leverage Tool’s experiential capabilities to produce creative and story-driven VR and 360 projects that also have smart distribution strategies.”
Sourikoff’s appointment follows several recent high profile VR projects from Tool and its roster of directors and digital artists. In August 2015, Tool produced Infiniti’s “Driver’s Seat” campaign from CP+B, two distinct virtual reality experiences directed by Steve Mapp, with design and mobile app development executed by Tool’s digital team. In December 2015, to kick off Tool’s new digital studio in Lyon, France, interactive director Aramique launched a VR exhibition in Paris’s Palais de Tokyo called “The Eight Phases of Enlightenment.” And most recently, in March 2016, Tool’s John X. Carey directed the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s campaign from Wieden+Kennedy Portland, “Together We Are Stronger,” aimed at bringing people together to overcome the challenges of MS. Tool has experimented extensively with VR platforms and technologies including Google’s 360 video, Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, and Samsung Gear VR.
“I’m looking forward to working with Tool’s talented team of creative technologists and distinguished roster of artists to explore how things like game mechanics, user interface design, and sensory perception can inform how best to tell stories in VR,” Sourikoff said. “Tool believes that VR can be the ultimate canvas for human expression, and a medium that can empower us to transcend the limits of our objective realities.”
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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