Global channel-in-a-box manufacturer PlayBox Technology UK Limited has named Mike Provancha to serve as its managing director.
Provancha has over 40 years of video experience in engineering, sales, and management. In addition to his engineering degree, he holds a bachelors degree in marketing. Starting his sales career with Ampex and subsequently Grass Valley Group, Provancha has held management positions at Abekas, Pluto, NVP and Masstech–where he was managing director of EMEA. He most recently was co-founder and managing director of LS Global Partners, an international business development firm.
With full responsibility for the growth and management of PlayBox Technology, Provancha will play a key role in meeting the company’s goals, as well as building on its reputation for service and providing superior products. PlayBox Technology has provided over 17,500 TV and branding channels worldwide.
Provancha will be based at the company headquarters located in Brookmans Park Teleport, just north of London.
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