Editorial, finishing, and VFX studio Uppercut has added two editors to its roster. Sean Fazende joins the team in Los Angeles and Milena Z. Petrovic will work globally, with home bases in NYC and Europe.
Uppercut has seen considerable expansion in the last year, with the addition of Lisa Houck as managing director and the studio’s new offices in Atlanta, building upon its New York flagship location. Fazende, who was previously at Cut+Run, joins Uppercut’s West Coast team, which also includes editor Danielle Sclafani.
Fazende grew up in Texas, transfixed by the endless loop of music videos on MTV. His love of storytelling prompted him to attend Boston University’s film school. After graduation, he moved to L.A. to begin his career cutting music videos, working with artists such as Lorde, Selena Gomez, and Calvin Harris. His fast-paced editing style naturally segued him into commercial work for various brands and agencies.
Petrovic grew up in a family of filmmakers in Serbia, where she began editing and directing at the age of 12. She graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and has since won numerous awards for her feature, documentary, and commercial work. She won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film Editing for the feature The Belgrade Phantom. Her short film Bluebird had its premiere in Cannes, and her commercial work has won awards at such festivals as D&AD, Cannes Lions, Clio, Eurobest, Ciclope, APA, etc. She relishes creative collaboration across a variety of mediums, including fiction, documentary, music videos, and advertising. Uppercut becomes her first U.S. roost.
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