Luke Taylor has been appointed head of branded entertainment & channels at Pulse, a production company with bases of operation in London, NY, Los Angeles, Paris and Berlin. Taylor will be based in the London office where he will work under Marisa Clifford, CEO (UK & Europe).
A roster director at Partizan before co-founding BigBalls Films, Taylor brings with him a wealth of experience within the branded entertainment space, previously producing marketing content for music acts including Mark Ronson, Lupe Fiasco and Calvin Harris and such brands as Nike & HTC. His branded series credits include the cult-hit social networking drama Kate Modern and BAFTA Award-winning Who Killed Summer for Vodafone.
In addition to branded entertainment, Taylor’s company BigBalls has had a heritage in building and launching successful global channels such as Copa90 and Line9, the successful action sport channel. Looking forward, Taylor will work closely with U.S.-based CEO Thomas Benski and the team to further enhance the brands channel offering.
Pulse’s branded entertainment endeavors span global brands such as Bose, Skype and Bacardi, and projects including Converse’s “Rubber Tracks” and 20th Century Fox’s series of shorts with Dawn of the Planet of The Apes.
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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