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In a sea of Santa Monica whites and tans, it was hard not to stare at the formidably chic woman with the dancer’s posture dressed in head-to-toe black.

Anjelica Huston was scanning the lobby of the Shutters hotel, and I needed to get her eyes on me. “Witchturla!” I shouted, a bit too enthusiastically. It worked. Her black eyes lit up in recognition as she made her way through the lobby’s soignée boulevardiers.

It was her secret word, although the secret was out when her evocative memoir of growing up expat Hollywood royalty in Ireland, “A Story Lately Told,” was released last week. She says she invented the word to torment her childhood friend Joan (who grew up to be Joan Juliet Buck, the editor of French Vogue; everyone in Ms. Huston’s sphere grew up to be somebody) when she was ignoring her for another playmate. She kept using it, and refused to tell Ms. Buck what it meant. “It means nothing, but doesn’t it sound really, really filthy?” Ms. Huston said, eyes sparkling. Somehow this seems to me to be pure Huston, this calculation to quietly keep our attention with the promise of something just a little scandalous.

Continue reading the article at NYTimes.com.

Emmy-award winning director David Harner teams up with Peter Mayer Advertising on the latest commercial campaign for CenturyLink. Take a look at behind-the-scenes shots with the director, cast and crew. See the rest of the photographs on Saville’s Facebook Page: link.

Britain’s nominee as Best Foreign Language Film for the Oscars features an all-Filipino cast and a story that traces the sacrifices and hopes of an impoverished family from the countryside that tries its luck in the dark and squalid ghettos of the Philippine capital Manila.

Metro Manila, written and directed by Briton Sean Ellis, is one of three foreign language films nominated in the best foreign language category for next year’s Oscars which delves into the lives of Filipinos.

The Philippines’ nominee Transit focuses on the struggles of migrant Filipino workers in Israel, while Singapore’s entry Ilo Ilo is about a Filipino nanny who works for a Singaporean family.

The US film academy will select the finalists in January ahead of the Oscar ceremony on March 2.

“I thought it was a very beautiful and poetic story about family and about sacrifice and about hope,” Ellis said of his movie, which won an audience award at the recent Sundance Film Festival. The movie premiered in Manila last week and opens in Philippine cinemas on Wednesday.

Continue reading here.

Saville Executive Producer Rupert Maconick is interviewed by KCAL9 reporter Serene Branson regarding the dangers of texting and driving, in association with Werner Herzog’s 35-minute PSA “From One Second to the Next – It Can Wait.”

VENICE (CBSLA.com) — A Venice-based production company is trying to save lives by alerting drivers to the dangers of texting while behind the wheel with a 35-minute PSA.

Saville Productions made the half-hour documentary “From One Second To The Next – It Can Wait”. The short film, helmed by German director/actor Werner Herzog, was funded by AT&T and other major wireless carriers. It features testimonials from victims whose lives were forever changed when they were struck by distracted drivers tapping messages like, “I’m on my way,” or taking swift glances at their cell phones.

XZavier Bilbo, eight, is among those victims. He was run over by a texting driver while holding his sister’s hand. He is paralyzed from the neck down. His legs, gone. “There are times when the pain is so bad I can’t breathe,” XZavier’s mother says.

Saville Productions’ Rupert Maconick hopes sharing the boy’s story, and others’, will be a catalyst for texting drivers to change their behavior when they see the devastating outcomes their actions can have.

Continue reading on CBS.LosAngeles.com.

If you haven’t already, make sure you make time to watch Werner Herzog’s new documentary on the dangers of texting and driving.

At 35 minutes, it’s long for a PSA. It was sponsored by AT&T, with the support of the other three major wireless carriers—Verizon, Spring, and T-Mobile—and created with the help of AT&T’s agency, BBDO New York. You may want to spread it across a few viewings. There are natural breaking points, with a format that tracks four different stories of devastating accidents, told by the people involved—victims, perpetrators, families, and responding officers. But get through the whole thing.

The first story is about Xzavier Davis Bilbo, an 8-year-old paralyzed from the diaphragm down after a driver distracted by texting ran a four-way stop sign and hit him while he was crossing the street with his sister. Narrated in large part by his mother, it’s heartbreaking enough on its own.

But there’s powerful insight throughout the entire half-hour, much of it in the conversations with the two drivers—Chandler Gerber and Reggie Shaw—who agreed to appear on camera. Each killed more than one person, in separate accidents. While you’ll probably want to hate both of them, they don’t make it as easy as you might think.

Continue reading on Adweek.com.

As gripping as scenes from “Grizzly Man” or “Into the Abyss,” Werner Herzog’s new 35-minute documentary on the dangers of texting while driving might be one of the most effective public service messages ever. If the classic driver’s ed scare movie “Red Asphalt” were imagined by one of the world’s eeriest auteurs, the result would be “From One Second to the Next,” an educational effort sponsored by AT&T that is available on Youtube and will show in more than 40,000 schools

The docu begins with the anguished mother of Xzavier, a boy who was paralyzed when a women failed to stop while she was texting. It continues — for viewers strong enough to keep watching — with a man who killed two Amish children, a woman with catastrophic medical bills and families that lost their fathers.

Continue reading on Variety.com.

Thirty-five minute film ‘From One Second to the Next’ promises to scare drivers straight

It can be ridiculously tempting to text while driving. The phone lights up. It’s right there on the seat next you. Maybe a fast glance wouldn’t be so bad.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s new documentary on the topic will guarantee you never touch that phone while behind the wheel ever again. From One Second to the Next examines lethal situations from both the victims and perpetrators’ perspectives to show just how devastating texting while driving can be.

The film was commissioned by AT&T and will shown to high schools, safety groups and government agencies across the country, the Associated Press reports. Though it has a clear, educational agenda, it’s no less emotionally resonant than Herzog’s other films, which often find the director plunging into the extremes of human existence.

“What AT&T proposed immediately clicked and connected inside of me,” Herzog told the AP. “There’s a completely new culture out there. I’m not a participant of texting and driving — or texting at all — but I see there’s something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us.”

Continue reading on Rollingstone.com.

One woman was texting “I’m on my way.” Another man was typing out “I love you.” And another can’t even recall what he was writing.

Those three messages, typed by drivers at the wheel, cost five people their lives and an 8-year-old boy the use of his body from the diaphragm down.

The drivers’ stories, and others’, are the subject of a new, 35-minute documentary directed by acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog focusing on the perils of texting while driving. Herzog’s “From One Second to the Next” profiles the victims of distracted driving and even features conversations with the drivers themselves.

The wrenching film expands on a series of short videos Herzog directed for a public awareness campaign, “It Can Wait.” The campaign was sponsored by AT&T in an effort to curb the practice of texting while driving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 3,331 people were killed by distracted driving in 2011, and that “at any given daylight moment across America,” 660,000 drivers will be using mobile devices while at the wheel.

Herzog, whose previous films include “Grizzly Man,” “Encounters at the End of the World” and “Aguirre: Wrath of God,” among many others, told the Associated Press that although he doesn’t text himself, he was drawn to the project because the topic “has to do with catastrophic events invading a family.”

“In one second, entire lives are either wiped out or changed forever. That kind of emotional resonance is something that I knew I could cover,” Herzog told the AP. “I’m not a participant of texting and driving — or texting at all — but I see there’s something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us.”

Continue reading on Huffington Post.

Ad agency Jung von Matt/Neue Elbe and directing duo Alex & Steffen stage a visual feast of CGI fun, referencing various effects-driven fantasy blockbusters from the past 20 years, in this lighthearted yet heart-pounding German spot branding Fanta as “The official sponsor of FANTAsy.” When a giant Transformers-type cyber-terror lays siege to a desert castle, a pro wrestler gets catapulted into the fray, bouncing harmlessly off the bot’s metal hide, and a plucky princess slides down a saurian’s back to save the day. Turns out the action—superbly staged and worth several viewings—is taking place in the imagination of a little girl at a family picnic. The intricate sandcastle they’ve built sits nearby, its parapets manned by action figures. Some might say it’s a sad commentary that a kid’s imagination is fueled by soda-pop-culture/Hollywood hype, though in our media-saturated age, this seems about right, and the melee she envisions provides more thrills than most mega-budget flicks can manage. Good thing they didn’t probe her brother’s imagination. That little devil would’ve used the robot to conquer the world and hogged all the Fanta for himself!

Source: Adweek

Congratulations to Kit Lynch-Robinson for winning the Bronze award at Cannes Lions 2013 for “Meat Snacking Helmet” helmed for Mattessons Fridge Raiders with Saatchi & Saatchi London.

Excerpt from Cannes Lions:

“To create a hands-free snacking and gaming device, allowing gamers to eat Fridge Raiders without disrupting their game play. We needed to reach gamers in an authentic way. So, rather than use traditional advertising we partnered with an online gaming celebrity called Syndicate Project to help co-create the device. With 3.6m subscribers on YouTube, 415,000 Facebook fans and 605,000 Twitter followers, he not only gave the brand credibility, but acted as our media channel. We asked his followers to submit their ideas for the gaming device to the Fridge Raiders Facebook page.

The response was incredible; over 15,000 ideas submitted across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We responded by sending back blueprints of the best ideas, which were made into prototypes to be tested by Syndicate Project. Fans were kept up to date with Facebook updates, Tweets and videos on YouTube. After weeks of product development, the final working prototype was delivered to Syndicate Project by Royal Marines. He then ‘unboxed’ the device online to his millions of fans.”

Continue reading at Canneslions.com