MEC Wavemaker, the content division of MEC, has boosted its U.K. management lineup with the appointment of Danny Weitzkorn to the new role of content partnerships director. Weitzkorn joins Wavemaker from Ball Street, the U.K. multi-platform football network, where he was client services and marketing director. Weitzkorn will now lead integrated content partnerships for clients including Compare The Market, Danone and Visa Europe. He will focus on delivering insight driven content solutions at the points on the purchase journey where they can most effectively impact a brand’s performance. Weitzkorn will report to Damien Gillman, MEC Wavemaker’s head of content partnerships….
NYC-based creative production collective Sibling Rivalry has added Shelby Ross as exec producer. Ross brings more than 20 years of commercial and film production experience to Sibling Rivalry after honing his skills at shops including Epoch Films and Smuggler. He then went on to create and executive produce global campaigns for clients such as Gatorade, HP, Northrop Grumman, Google, Samsung, Verizon, and Save the Children….
Toronto-based music and sound design company BoomBox has signed music director, producer and composer mr/tommy zee to its roster for Canadian representation. Based in Amsterdam, but now available to the Canadian market through BoomBox, mr/tommy zee is the founder of music collective HLGRM and previously worked as a creative director for MassiveMusic. His credits include work for global brands such as Nike, Audi, Google, BMW, Heineken, as well as the recent national Team Canada spot, “Ice In Our Veins.” The deal gives BoomBox’s clients exclusive access to mr/tommy zee’s roster of world class singers, songwriters and composers that he has built up over a decade. This marks the first time the former Torontonian is available for commercial work on his home turf in six years….
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.
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