Jenn Wexler’s THE RANGER screening in New Orleans as part of
The Overlook Film Festival. Show starts TONIGHT!
THE RANGER
Friday, April 20th – 8:30 PM – Canal B
Saturday, April 21st – 11:15 PM – Le Petit
April 20, 2018
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THE RANGER at The Overlook Film Fest in NOLA
April 17, 2018
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GEP pal Graham Reznick talks “A Quiet Place” with Hollywood Reporter!
From Simon Abrams: I’m pretty thrilled that we’re having this conversation, Graham, mostly because I’ve been a big fan of your work as a sound designer on indie horror films like Automatons and The Roost, two Glass Eye Pix-produced movies that both gave me one of my favorite post-film reactions: Who’s responsible for ____? I have to know more! Even more thrilling: I wanted to know more about sound design, a field of work that I knew — and probably still know — next to nothing about. Your work made me pay closer attention to what both of those films were doing on a completely different level than what I was used to. I started thinking about horror movies in terms of sound and how their sense of atmosphere was developed through the layering of noises on a soundtrack. Basic stuff for you, but something that I know I — and probably some of our readers — often take for granted since we often think of movies as a primarily visual medium.
April 17, 2018
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Cracked: THE RANGER “A Park Safety PSA Turned Into A Horror Movie”
You know those hokey old low-budget after-school specials in which Smokey Bear told you that only you could prevent forest fires — which was technically true, if only in the sense that you had no intention of ever stepping foot in a forest? Well, what if you watched a bunch of those in a row while having a bad acid trip? The director and co-writer of The Ranger admitted to being inspired by the former, and we can only assume that the latter was involved as well.
April 11, 2018
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Diabolique Magazine: LIKE ME “This is a movie worth buying rather than just streaming.”
From the opening seconds, Like Me (2017) had me in its grip with its mesmerizing splash of color. Even the Glass Eye Pix logo became a mini LSD trip as it flashed across the screen, and not in a cheesy way. Robert Mockler and company were able to capture a hyper-neon reality and ride it for the duration of the film’s slim 83-minute run time. For a debut movie Mockler really makes a visual statement here.
Starring Addison Timlin, Ian Nelson, and Larry Fessenden, Like Me is a meditation on loneliness and disconnectedness in an overly connected world. Timlin plays a sort of YouTube criminal/thrill seeker. You can’t really like her, but you can’t take your eyes off her either. She’s at turns obnoxious, vulnerable, scary, adorable, and broken. Timlin possesses the role to the point you may forget she’s an actress playing a role. Ian Nelson plays an acerbic critic of her work.
Though Nelson gets less screen time, there is a complexity to his character as well. I found myself hating him and agreeing him with within the same video rant. Filmmaker Larry Fessenden is probably the most sympathetic character in the film and it might be my favorite character he’s played since his own film, Habit (1995). Fessenden often shows up in smaller cameo roles, but he really displays his chops as a sad sack hotel owner with an unfulfilled artistic heart that gets sucked into Timlin’s web of deceit and danger.
The shift in color pallets towards the end of the film and the jarring jumps from phone footage – that has a more muted/realistic tone – back to the film’s hyper-color world is used to great effect. This helps Like Me be a movie you experience rather than just view. There are times when the film is obnoxious, too. I think intentionally so to match Timlin’s character and her video experiments. Repeated images, stuttering soundtrack, extreme close-ups of teeth chomping junk food are repulsive. But because she’s eating brightly colored foods, like Fruity Pebbles and gummy worms, it’s also strangely pretty.
Robert Mockler has planted his flag and declared himself with Like Me, and I’m excited to see what he does next. The Kino Lorber Blu-ray is gorgeous and for me this is a movie worth buying rather than just streaming. It includes a making-of documentary as well.
April 4, 2018
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THE RANGER review round-up!
“a film that has a lot of affection for both the punk community and the history of horror
and wants to be a new entry into both those worlds.”
– Rue Morgue
“an off-beat and exciting new icon of horror.”
– Pajiba
“Levine and Holm anchor the film, bringing a sort of
anti-chemistry that is terrific fun to behold.”
– Daily Grindhouse
“Nostalgia done right.”
– Ghastly Grinning
“I absolutely enjoyed this move. Each character’s unique attitudes and personalities making me love
and hate them all at the same time. Not just with the writing, but the cast was great
and were all believable in their roles.”
– Nightmarish Conjurings
March 30, 2018
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Front Row Boston: How Boston’s Punk Scene Influenced Horror Film THE RANGER
A group of teens sit at a table in a graffiti covered club that throbs with music. They experiment with drugs, crash onto the dance floor, and party with the free joy of their youth – until the cops come crashing in. In short order, things go from bad to worse as they attack an officer, steal a van, and hide out in a closed-down state park… only to end up in the crosshairs of an unhinged park ranger. At its core, The Ranger is a film about the clash between self-expression and conformity, of self-determination vs. oppressive authority. About finding yourself in a world that tries to tell you how you should be. Currently making its way through the festival circuit – including this past weekend at our own Boston Underground Film Festival – The Ranger‘s message is loud and clear, not only in plot, but in the blindingly pure punk aesthetic of its wicked cool wardrobe and solid soundtrack.
Read the entire interview HERE
March 28, 2018
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The Ranger SOLD OUT in NYC!
Jenn Wexler’s THE RANGER sold out at the IFC Center in NYC!
March 27, 2018
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Rue Morgue: Joshua Leonard on UNSANE, BLAIR WITCH and DEPRAVED
By MICHAEL GINGOLD
UNSANE, the Steven Soderbergh psychothriller that opened Friday, features as its villain Joshua Leonard, whose horror résumé stretches back to his big-screen debut in the 1999 trendsetter THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. We got a few words with the actor contrasting the two movies, and his first words on his next fright feature, Larry Fessenden’s DEPRAVED.
In UNSANE, Leonard plays a stalker who appears to be working as a meds-dispensing orderly in a mental institution where heroine Claire Foy has been committed against her will; see our review here. Like the bulk of BLAIR WITCH, UNSANE was shot digitally—on an iPhone 7. However, Leonard notes, “There are as many differences as there are similarities between BLAIR WITCH and UNSANE,” starting with the fact that whereas the former was improvised, the latter was fully scripted (by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer). “BLAIR WITCH always felt like a bunch of teenage kids getting together in their mom’s garage and making a punk album. I believe that’s part of the reason the film worked; we were figuring out everything as we went. It’s a very different experience making a movie with Steven Soderbergh—not only because it’s scripted, but you’re working with somebody who’s a master of his craft, with a specificity of vision that I can’t even aspire to having in my lifetime.
“The other big difference was technological,” he continues. “At the time we made BLAIR WITCH, the digital equipment was in such infancy that part of the conceit of the movie had to be: OK, it’s going to look like shit, but it’s going to look that way because these characters are student filmmakers who bought their camera for 300 bucks at Walmart.”
Leonard just wrapped a project with another well-established auteur: DEPRAVED, the variation on the Frankenstein legend written and directed by Larry Fessenden (see first details here). The film also stars David Call as Henry, a former military surgeon who makes a monster (Alex Breaux) in a Brooklyn lab with the help of Leonard’s character. “I play a guy named John Polidori [after the British writer who penned “The Vampyre” during the same Swiss getaway where Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN]. It’s interesting, because I just realized that in DEPRAVED, I’m playing a guy who works in the pharmaceutical field, and not a great guy. So it’s another role with the pharmaceutical industry being a backdrop bogeyman for the story, which is an interesting parallel with UNSANE.
“I play college best friends with Henry,” Leonard continues, “who’s really the brains behind the Frankenstein operation. He’s not called Frankenstein in our film, but that’s the riff, and together we come up with a way to ostensibly keep soldiers alive on the battlefield using his skills and my medical technology. So our monster in this movie is a bit of a proof of concept for what could be a medical breakthrough. That’s our way in.”
March 23, 2018
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Check it! Fessenden Birthday Celebration on the Creepy Christmas Instagram
The Creepy Christmas Film Fest is Back!
After a 10 year hiatus, Glass Eye Pix is chilled to no end
to announce the return of the Creepy Christmas Film Festival.
Jingle your bells on over to Instagram and explore our magical cabinet of curiosities
And enjoy today’s post of GEP pal BEN DUFF’S Birthday Card to Fessenden
@creepychristmasfest
Originally created by Beck Underwood in 2008 as an advent calendar style online film fest, this year’s fest will be co-curated by Glass Eye cohort, Ben Duff and feature a terrifyingly talented group of artists.
An eclectic potpourri of short films will spice up your holidays with playful animations, dramatic narratives and wacky visual sugarplums as a new and original work premieres each day from Dec. 1st – 25th.
For the original advent calendars and more Fest info, go to:
