Havas Media Group has launched Havas Market, a strategic full-service eCommerce offering. Jess Richards, EVP managing director, commerce, will lead it in North America; previously, she served as Havas Media’s head of social, growing the division’s North America’s practice by more than 350% over the past five years. Comprised of eCommerce experts worldwide, Havas Market will give brands within and beyond the retail sector strategic counsel around how to identify the right customers, where to retail, how to show up in retailers’ marketplaces (e.g. Target, Amazon, Walmart), and more. The approach will be guided by Havas Media’s unique Mx process that uses connection, context and content to create the most meaningful experience for a consumer. To pull from expertise across markets, Richards and team have created an advisory board, called the Commerce Accelerator Group, comprised of rising stars across the U.S. This accelerator group will help drive thought leadership and identify new ways to help brands rethink customer relationships…..
Cambridge, U.K.-based studio Vine FX has promoted two of its supervisors. Pedrom Dadgostar is now head of 3D and Ezequiel Villanueva head of 2D. An experienced 3D supervisor, Dadgostar began his career at Bandito VFX before a three-year stint at MPC Advertising where he worked on a selection of high-profile and award winning commercials including Ridley Scott’s “Hennessy: The Seven Worlds” and Channel 4’s 2018 trailer for The Great British Bake Off. Since joining Vine, Dadgostar has been instrumental in the growth of the 3D department, producing work most recently for War of the Worlds, season 1. With 12 years of VFX experience, Villanueva has spent time at both MPC and Double Negative, where he built up a credit list including The Lion King, Mad Max: Fury Road and Wonder Woman. He is currently leading Vine FX’s 2D team on the upcoming eight-part series, The Serpent, co-produced between BBC One and Netflix….
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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