Joinery has signed director Rory Kelleher for U.S. representation. His credits include Coors Light, Verizon, Guinness, Budweiser, Coca Cola, Bank of Ireland and Staples. Kelleher has won awards including Gold at New York Advertising Awards, Gold at Kinsale’s Shark Awards, Best Director and Best Animation at Ireland’s ICADS, multiple Silver Awards at The Art Directors Club of Europe plus a trifecta of honors at London’s Effects and Animation Festival….
Independent agency network Project: WorldWide has acquired Pitch, a fully integrated advertising agency based in Culver City, California. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2008 by Jon Banks and Kim Thomsen, Pitch has enjoyed significant growth fueled by clients including Burger King, Pepsi, Meineke, and Living Spaces. In 2013, Pitch increased revenues by 43 percent and clients by 50 percent, and has continued its ascent this year. The Pitch acquisition marks Project’s 11th agency in the network, which launched in 2010, and includes George P. Johnson, Partners + Napier, JUXT, G7 Entertainment Marketing, Motive, Spinifex Group, Raumtechnik, Shoptology, School, and ARGONAUT….
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