Watch This Now: Carl Erik Rinsch's The Gift

Philips has just released Carl Erik Rinsch's futuristic action thriller short film The Gift, which is about a robotic manservant who flees the police. Rinsch is not only Ridley Scott's protege, but also a commercial director for Scott's company RSA.

You might recognize Rinsch's name as he was originally tapped to direct a prequel/remake of Alien, but Fox convinced/pushed Ridley Scott to helm the project himself. I was one of the few people actually interested in Rinsch's involvement. Rinsch's commercials show an amazing sense of imagination, visual effects artistry and composition. We've profiled his amazing commercials on the site, more than once. If you havent checked his television spots out yet, you should do after watching this short film.

Watch the short film embedded after the jump.

Click Here to watch the short in High Definition on YouTube. I've watched this short like five times now and I'm amazed at how Rinsch has seemlessly blended computer generated worlds and characters with live-action. And I love how Rinsch used the project dialogue "It's a unicorn, Never seen one up close before" to build a powerful macguffin that we never actually ever see, which becomes the impetus for this futuristic chase between the Russian police and a robot. I really wish we could see more of this world, and I'm excited to see what Rinsch might be able to do with a feature project.

Currently he is developing a remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon and is in preproduction on an epic period samurai film titled 47 Ronin to star Keanu Reeves (not to be confused with the adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel Ronin), also for Universal.

In February, we wrote a piece about an upcoming collaboration between Philips and five filmmakers from Ridley Scott Associates, called Parallel Lines. Scott's commercial division RSA was asked to create a series of groundbreaking short films in a genre of their choice, using the same unifying theme, and the same bits of dialogue. RSA directors submitted forty-five treatments and Philips selected five it believed were the most ground-breaking: Jake Scott, Greg Fay, Johnny Hardstaff, Carl Erik Rinsch, and Hi-Sim.

Last night Philips released the first two short films from the project, Johnny Hardstaff's future film noir sci-fi thriller titled Dark Room and Hi-Sim's computer animated adventure Jun & the Hidden Skies. If you haven't yet watched Dark Room, I highly recommend you watch it today.