Whitehouse Post has secured independent rep firm The Family, led by Diane Patrone and Anna Rotholz, to handle the East Coast. Whitehouse continues to be repped by Them in the Midwest, and Novick & Associates on the West Coast….
Digital studio Reel FX, Dallas and Santa Monica, has added Summer Whitley, Will Andeer and Tina Ghezzi. Whitley will handle commercial West Coast/Texas sales. Andeer is covering commercial sales in the Midwest. And Ghezzi will serve as an interactive account director. Whitley has nearly 17 years in the film business, representing directors for nearly a decade as an in-house sales representative for Directorz, before launching her own company, Summer Reps, in October 2008. She has worked with such clients as Doritos, Home Depot, Patron, McDonald’s, Ford and Taco Bell. Andeer repped Mix Kitchen Original Music talent before joining Reel FX. Ghezzi’s move to Reel FX reunites her with Dan Ferguson, the company’s director of digital interactive. Her experience includes a business development position at casual gaming studio Blockdot, working with Ferguson on casual games, mobile apps and interactive experiences for such agencies as ARC, Draftfcb, Sanders/Wingo, R/GA and brands like American Airlines, Cadbury, CarMax, National Geographic and Ubisoft. Ghezzi also worked as a sales director at digital startups Screenshot Digital and LiveIntent, developing relationships and working with premium publishers and media agencies. After crossing paths with Ferguson again, Ghezzi joined Reel FX to work alongside him and continue to grow the studio’s interactive division….
After working in many facets of advertising and commercial production over the last 14 years, Erika Levy launches Empress Represents, specializing in broadcast, branded content, digital and interactive on the West Coast. The company launches with an initial roster of five clients: Coyote Post, Dirty Robber, Flawless FX, Loaded Pictures and Section Studios. Levy is best known in the advertising industry for her role as VP of sales & marketing at Wiredrive. In 2010, she moved to Denver and became marketing director for Booyah Online Advertising. In 2012, she joined forces with Fueld Films to launch The Republic Collective, a national network of talent targeted at serving regional markets….
Neil Maycock has been appointed VP, product strategy, for Quantel. He is responsible for all Quantel product management across news and sports, production and postproduction. Key to the role is strategic product development, ensuring that Quantel solutions continue to meet and exceed the market’s quickly evolving needs. Maycock will also be looking to build on the opportunities created by the coming together of Quantel and Snell technologies and markets. Maycock began his career with Pro-Bel as a software developer. In the 25 years since then he has held a number of senior roles in R&D, sales and marketing, most recently as chief marketing officer and then chief architect at Snell….
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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