I'm willing to open this Gift

Credit where credit is due: Carl Erik Rinsch is to Slashfilm what some obscure local indie punk band is to that hot chick from the bar. Yeah, they were on his nuts before his nuts were out there to be had. Now, before I go on and on about whether or not this nut-slobbering is warranted and about the future of the man in question, let's start by showing you his highest profile work to date: A mini-movie made as a commercial for Phillips televisions.

Now that I have your attention. Rinsch is the protege of Ridley Scott (and just so happens to be his son-in-law), which is why some sections of the nerdverse are somehow poo-pooing how drool-licious that short was. That short, or The Gift as it is known, is pretty much sci-fi perfection to me. Looking like a cross between Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, and Neill Blomkamp's District 9, The Gift touches all of my tender spots in less than 5 minutes, so I'm happy as shit that this is building huge buzz to the point where the feature film version is in the midst of a bidding war. Slashfilm discovered today that this has been planned for awhile, with Rinsch having already penned a story and funded concept art (which you can see at the link up top). The film will be called Small and will launch from the end of this short, making it a prologue of sorts. From all reports, Rinsch is set on making this world sci-fi plausible (again, I feel District 9) yet infused with Blade Runner (which he may have just said to make his father-in-law proud). Personally, in exactly the same way I don't care that Duncan Jones, who directed the brilliant Moon, is the spawn of David Bowie, I could care less how Rinsch rose to fame. All that matters is if he earns the spot once he has it, and if he makes something half as captivating as that short, he can have boned whoever he needed to in order to hit the tops.