Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the studio founded by Seth Green, John Harvatine IV, Matthew Senreich and Eric Towner, has named advertising veteran Steve Bastien to serve as head of its commercial division, Buddy Spots, which focuses on stop-motion, 2D, puppets and experiential installments.
Bastien, an ad exec with 20+ years’ experience, joins Stoopid Buddy Stoodios from Midnight Oil where he served as group account director. During his career, Bastien has overseen a wide range of accounts, including Disney, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Netflix, Sony, and Warner Bros.
Bastien will join producer Leigh Kelly in driving the Buddy Spots division forward. Buddy Spots’ body of work includes commercials for Carl’s Jr., Pepperidge Farms and Target. In 2019, the division won a Clio Award for "The Predator Holiday Special," which was created for 20th Century Fox.
Buddy Spots is currently in production on a number of projects, including one for Microsoft Xbox and a new spot for Pepperidge Farms.
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is home to the longest running stop-motion show on television, the Emmy Award-winning Robot Chicken, as well as the Emmy-nominated SuperMansion with Bryan Cranston. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is currently in production on season 2 of Crossing Swords, which premiered as part of the Hulu Originals slate earlier this year. The company’s multiple-building campus and state-of-the-art facility located in Burbank is active in live-action, puppetry, stop-motion, 2D and CG animation. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios’ body of work spans the entertainment gamut, ranging from charming hand-crafted animation all the way to high-end live-action feature films.
Review: Writer-Director Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man”
Imagine you could wake up one morning, stand at the mirror, and literally peel off any part of your looks you don't like — with only movie-star beauty remaining.
How would it change your life? How SHOULD it change your life?
That's a question – well, a launching point, really — for Edward, protagonist of Aaron Schimberg's fascinating, genre-bending, undeniably provocative and occasionally frustrating "A Different Man," featuring a stellar trio of Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson and Renate Reinsve.
The very title is open to multiple interpretations. Who (and what) is "different"? The original Edward, who has neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes bulging tumors on his face? Or the man he becomes when he's able to slip out of that skin? And is he "different" to others, or to himself?
When we meet Edward, a struggling actor in New York (Stan, in elaborate makeup), he's filming some sort of commercial. We soon learn it's an instructional video on how to behave around colleagues with deformities. But even there, the director stops him, offering changes. "Wouldn't want to scare anyone," he says.
On Edward's way home on the subway, people stare. Back at his small apartment building, he meets a young woman in the hallway, in the midst of moving to the flat next door. She winces visibly when she first sees him, as virtually everyone does.
But later, Ingrid (Reinsve) tries to make it up to him, coming over to chat. She is charming and forthright, and tells Edward she's a budding playwright.
Edward goes for a medical checkup and learns that one of his tumors is slowly progressing over the eye. But he's also told of an experimental trial he could join. With the possibility — maybe — of a cure.
So... Read More