Alkemy X has hired Rupert Cresswell as creative director. He will work closely with executive producer Eve Ehrich to continue to build the company’s design and animation team, working across branded and entertainment projects.
Cresswell comes to Alkemy X from MPC, where he spent nearly eight years as a director and creative director working on projects for clients such as Adidas, Samsung, Jaguar, Ford, Google, Sky One and Fox Searchlight. His stylized work is characterized by a meticulous eye for design and a subtle fusion of live action and visual effects to augment the everyday with fantastic elements. Cresswell’s first narrative short, Charlie Cloudhead, starring Paul Higgins and Daisy Haggard, enjoyed a successful international festival run. His work has garnered numerous awards and accolades and he has been tapped as a thought leader, speaking at industry conferences including IBC, PromaxBDA and SIGGRAPH.
London-born Cresswell studied graphic design and illustration at the prestigious University of the Arts London, organically navigating into the advertising arena after landing his first professional gig as a runner at a SoHo post shop. He quickly immersed himself in the industry, rapidly amassing hands-on experience in the broadcast promo space working for clients such as Bloomberg, NatGeo and Sky before stepping into the role of director. He joined MPC London in 2012, helming VFX-driven spots for clients while refining his aesthetic at the intersection of design, visual effects and live action. He stepped up to a creative director role when he moved to MPC’s New York location in 2017.
Alkemy X maintains offices in NY, Philadelphia, L.A. and Amsterdam.
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