Framestore Pictures, the live action production company under the umbrella of Oscar-winning creative studio Framestore, has tapped Kevin Batten as its West Coast sales representative. Over the past two years, Batten has worked as the commercial arts manager and production consultant at his production consulting firm Pop-Arts Management, which launched in April 2014. Pop-Arts currently represents the following clients: Assembly, macguffinfilms, Brewster Parsons, Bully Pictures, Community Films, Future Perfect, little ears, Gentleman Scholar, House Special, Hutch Co Technologies and Joinery. With over 20 years of experience, Batten started his career in advertising as a producer at Digital Kitchen in Seattle, moving on to Los Angeles to work at Deutsch, and eventually as a managing director at Logan and Sons….
ICM Partners is now representing cinematographer Laura Merians for commercials and feature films exclusively….
Dattner Dispoto and Associates (DDA) has signed editor Brad McLaughlin for representation. His recent endeavors include director Debra Eisenstadt’s Before The Sun Explodes….
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