Santa Monica, Calif.-based Cultivate.Media, headed by managing director/executive producer Mark Thomas, has secured Meredith Bergman of Mercury Rising to handle representation in NY and on the East Coast….
Audio post company Sound Lounge has named Taylor Maggard to serve as its marketing director. She reports to EP Mike Gullo. At her new roost, Maggard is responsible for leading all integrated marketing campaigns, strengthening Sound Lounge’s brand voice and expanding the company’s digital presence. In addition to her digital marketing and brand strategy expertise, she has a significant background in event coordination and design. Prior to joining Sound Lounge, she served three years as the director of marketing for Related Risk Management & Compliance in New York. Maggard is a graduate of the University of Florida with a degree in advertising….
DP Kevin Sarnoff, with a body of work including commercials and music videos, has signed with Dattner Dispoto and Associates for representation….
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