Content studio Big Block has signed director Marcus Kuhne, who’s well established in the Spanish filmmaking community. Kuhne has already made a smooth transition to the American market. His gravity-defying visual for The Chainsmokers hit “Don’t Let Me Down (featuring Daya),” which documents a drive through a sun-soaked California canyon gone wrong, garnered Kuhne a 2016 MTV VMA nomination for Best Electronic Video. Recently Kuhne helmed rapper Trinidad James’ video for “Hipster Stripclub,” churning out a dark, acid-laced short that blurs the lines between reality and hallucination. Kuhne has also helmed branded web content for Ray-Ban and Reebok….
Cut + Run has opened its new postproduction space in San Francisco. Helmed by executive producer Deanne Mehling and sr. editor Pete Koob, the office is located in the heart of the city. Leveraging the partnership between Cut + Run and VFX sister company, Jogger, the office has already enjoyed a wide range of collaborations such as Xbox with 215McCann, Draft Kings with BSSP and PlayStation with Venables Bell & Partners. Housing three edit bays and a fully equipped flame suite, the new space aims to extend to Cut+Run’s San Francisco clients the same high level of talent and client service found in the company’s offices around the world….
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