Movies
Two Dudes Hunt ‘Something Else’ in This Fun Clip [Tribeca]
Last year, Bloody Disgusting broke the news that indie filmmaker Jeremy Gardner was returning to the director’s chair with Something Else, which he’d co-direct with longtime collaborator Christian Stella, who was DP on The Battery and co-director on the duo’s Tex Montana Will Survive!. Now, the duo will see their creature feature have its World Premiere at the forthcoming Tribeca Film Festival on April 26th.
Ahead of the premiere comes this first clip in which two guys are hunting something down as they debate what an alien actually is. It’s the perfect kind of comedy wherein their conversation is serious but as an observer it’s hilarious. I can’t wait to see this!
In the film, “Dealing with a girlfriend suddenly leaving is tough enough. But for Hank, heartbreak couldn’t have come at a worse time. There’s also a monster trying to break through his front door every night.”
Starring are Brea Grant, Henry Zebrowski, Justin Benson, Ashley Song, and Nicola Masciotra.
The film was produced by David Lawson (The Endless, Spring). Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson also produced via their Rustic Films banner. Additional producers include Arvind Harinath of Kavya Films with Venu Kunnappilly executive producing. Tiffany Boyleand Elsa Ramo are co-EPs.
In Garder’s 2013 indie The Battery, two former baseball players (Gardner and Adam Cronheim) are forced together by a zombie apocalypse and find their relationship becoming strained as they struggle to survive each day.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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