Nice Shoes has opened the Nice Shoes Creative Studio headed by executive producer Geraint Owen. Joining Owen are newly signed creative director/director James Coulson, creative director/director Harry Dorrington and VFX/animation director Steve Parish. Entering its 18th year as a shop known for its color grading and finishing, Nice Shoes has expanded its creative capabilities and constructed a new workspace for the Creative Studio team on the company’s NYC premises.
“We make stuff, and the Creative Studio combines the best thinking and the best making,” said Owen. “It’s start to finish, immersive storytelling through purposeful design, with the highest regard for craft–what we call ‘Content by Design’.”
As founder of design and live-action company Süperfad, Owen spent the last 12 years making work for a long list of clients including Adidas, X-Games, Target, Bloomberg, American Express and Durex. He’s known for assembling teams that create smart, eye-popping solutions. Owen joined Nice Shoes in mid-2013 and began forming his approach and talented new team.
Coulson began his career at the BBC in London. He’s led teams in all aspects of production and post for Imaginary Forces, Psyop and B Reel in New York and oversaw the re-brand of The Sci Fi Channel to Syfy. His clients include BMW, Nike, HBO, IBM, Def Jam and MTV.
Dorrington is a creative with a reputation for graphics and animation, a shelf full of notable awards, and an Emmy nomination. His career has spanned the BBC, English & Pocket (UK), Lambie-Nairn (UK), R/Greenberg Associates and Gravity/Rhino in NY.
Parish has vast experience in both television and film, having worked at QuietMan, Smoke & Mirrors, and The Mill. His endeavors span campaigns for Pepsi, GE, AT&T, HBO, Coca Cola, Spike Lee, and The Beatles Rockband “Abbey Road” commercial. At Industrial Light & Magic, Parish worked on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and more recently Elysium and Thor: The Dark World while at Whisky Tree.
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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