Ready Set, the Los Angeles-based sales and talent management firm founded by Lisa Sabatino Lange, has added a pair of companies to its roster for West Coast representation: editorial house Final Cut, and design and experiential collective Sibling Rivalry. They join a Ready Set lineup which includes live action and digital production company Stinkfilm, and music house Ring The Alarm….
Gold Valley Films, Inc., a full service facility producing family 3D animated feature films, is opening its own international sales company, Gold Valley Films International (GVFI), under the helm of industry veteran Ariel Veneziano. Veneziano comes on board as resident of GVFI where he will oversee worldwide sales, acquisitions, distribution and marketing from GVFI’s Los Angeles headquarters. GVFI’s first animated feature title is Cinderella 3D, an adaptation of the Brother Grimm’s fairy tale, in stereoscopic 3D. Budgeted at $20 million, the film is written by Francis Glebas (The Lion King, Aladdin) and directed by Lynne Southerland (Mulan II). Victoria Ying (Frozen, Big Hero 6) oversees the visual development. The film is currently in production with planned completion in May 2017….
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