Director Roderick Fenske, formerly of the Swedish collective Acne, has joined bicoastal/international Hungry Man...
Director Roderick Fenske, formerly of the Swedish collective Acne, has joined bicoastal/international Hungry Man. Fenske has an agency creative pedigree, having been at such shops as Saatchi & Saatchi San Francisco, Ogilvy & Mather, New York, and HHCL, London….Brigette Whisnant has been promoted to senior VP, director of film and digital production, at Energy BBDO Chicago. She joined the agency in 2006 as executive producer, having previously been at Fallon Minneapolis….Editor Charlie Johnston, who’s been with bicoastal Lost Planet for the past nine years, has been named a partner in the company….Construction has begun on Deluxe New York, a custom-built film lab, HD telecine, digital media management and EFILM digital intermediate production center. Nestled in a TriBeCa location, the facility is expected to be operational by early ’08. Key management positions will be announced in the coming months…
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