PRETTYBIRD UK has signed director Jim Longden who’s wrapped his first music video after joining the company. The promo for Jaxxon D Silva’s track “Crack in the Mask” features the artist playing an imprisoned character talking to his alter ego. Longden started working with Silva a decade ago when he shot his album and single cover artworks, developing a creative partnership in 2022 when they collaborated on the performer’s short film Don’t Look at Me. Longden is a 23 year-old filmmaker and photographer. After leaving school at 16, he started taking photographs and went on to be featured in publications including Vogue and Love Magazine. In December, Nowness will be showing all three of Longden’s short films. He made his debut short film To Erase A Cloud when he was 20 years old, followed by Don’t Look At Me when he had just turned 22, and his third short film Puddle of Muddles at the age of 23. Longden’s debut feature film, Superfluous, is now in development, and will enter production in 2024. Longden directs, writes, edits, composes and produces his films with the aim of creating a truly authentic and unique vision, In addition to PRETTYBIRD in the U.K., he is repped in France by Henry.TV, and in Germany by RadicalMedia…
Female directing duo XOXO–consisting of Tessa Doniga Johnson and Paula Martin-Ferro Sancho–will be represented in the U.K. by Pulse Films for commercial projects and music videos. The duo’s body of work spans such brands as Meta, Sephora, jean Paul Gautier and Ikea. XOXO comes aboard Pulse’s U.K. roster at an eventful time, with Mino Jarjoura recently joining as global president for commercials and music videos, and vets Jamie Walker and Chris Harrington heading up the U.K. division…
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More