New media collective and production company Artists And Derelicts (AND) has signed director Armen Djerrahian. With a talent for photography and film rooted in the urban underground cultures of Paris, Djerrahian brought his passion for writing and directing to New York. Since making the move, Djerrahian has had the opportunity to work with some of the industry’s most iconic artists and brands, including a Vibe Magazine shoot with Usher, a series of short films he wrote and directed for Van Cleef & Arpels and ELLE, and an ad campaign he worked on with Spike Lee, among others. In 2010 he was nominated for a BET “Best Video of the Year” Award for directing R&B artist Melanie Fiona’s video “It Kills Me”…Julia Pepe has joined global editorial company Cutters as a producer in its NY office. Pepe comes over from mcgarrybowen’s Chicago office, where she was an associate broadcast producer. During her nearly three years with the agency, she produced high-profile, cross-media commercial and branded content projects for Cars.com, Disney, Kraft, and Sears. Pepe is also a filmmaker in her own right, having written, produced and directed independent films focused on a wounded Marine and other soldiers returning home from Afghanistan. Her background also includes stints working for various PBS productions, and serving as a reporter in the local NPR newsroom in Washington, D.C….
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