Author: Eric

Live-blogging* the “Friday the 13th” Marathon, Ep. III – “Friday the 13th Part 3 In 3-D” (1982)

Posted on by Eric

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Gateway Film Center, Columbus, Ohio – Friday, October 13, 2017*

To celebrate the most recent Friday the 13th falling in October, Columbus, Ohio’s Gateway Film Center pulled off a wonderful idea in high style: a back-to-back screening of the first four Friday the 13th films – known colloquially by many fans as “the good ones” – starting at 7:00 on the night itself and ending in Saturday the 14th’s wee hours, just like Friday the 13th Part 3 technically began. Naturally, I was second row aisle for all the carnage, and what follow are breathless, fragmented field reports from the scene, covering all the scenes that I saw fit. Read on if you’re maybe not above a little trespassing on condemned property, definitely not afraid of 3-D yo-yos, if you instinctively shrug off obscure talk downtown of a “death curse”, and know enough to come in out of the rain. We’re gonna party like Ted (Part 2) was bringing the booze and Ted (Part 4) was picking the entertainment… Continue reading “Live-blogging* the “Friday the 13th” Marathon, Ep. III – “Friday the 13th Part 3 In 3-D” (1982)” →

Live-blogging* the “Friday the 13th” Marathon, Ep. II – “Friday the 13th Part 2” (1981)

Posted on by Eric

Friday2

Gateway Film Center, Columbus, Ohio – Friday, October 13, 2017*

To celebrate the most recent Friday the 13th falling in October, Columbus, Ohio’s Gateway Film Center pulled off a wonderful idea in high style: a back-to-back screening of the first four Friday the 13th films – known colloquially by many fans as “the good ones” – starting at 7:00 on the night itself and ending in Saturday the 14th’s wee hours, just like Friday the 13th Part 3 technically began. Naturally, I was second row aisle for all the carnage, and what follow are breathless, fragmented field reports from the scene, covering all the scenes that I saw fit. Read on if you’re maybe not above a little trespassing on condemned property, definitely not afraid of 3-D yo-yos, if you instinctively shrug off obscure talk downtown of a “death curse”, and know enough to come in out of the rain. We’re gonna party like Ted (Part 2) was bringing the booze and Ted (Part 4) was picking the entertainment…

Continue reading “Live-blogging* the “Friday the 13th” Marathon, Ep. II – “Friday the 13th Part 2” (1981)” →

Live-blogging* the “Friday the 13th” Marathon, Ep. I – “Friday the 13th” (1980)

Posted on by Eric

Friday1

Gateway Film Center, Columbus, Ohio – Friday, October 13, 2017*

Columbus, Ohio’s Gateway Film Center is a nationally recognized bastion of chameleonic quality cinema independent in origin, intention, and execution, run by grateful, energized movie lovers for grateful, energized movie lovers. Art house fare, draft house fare, and grind house fare all coexist here in surprising harmony with standard but still carefully selected multiplex fodder. Add into the mix a dizzying number of Ohio premieres and classic film revivals with the accent equally on “classic” and “film” (as in 35 millimeter film, the format in which I saw “Creepshow” earlier this year, or 70mm, in which I saw an exclusive engagement of Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” a year and a half ago). Continue reading “Live-blogging* the “Friday the 13th” Marathon, Ep. I – “Friday the 13th” (1980)” →

Concert review: Screaming Females

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females

The Union, Athens, Ohio – September 29, 2017

As ever, Screaming Females have me at a distinct disadvantage. In the immediate wake of their whirlwind show at Athens, Ohio’s delightfully cozy college strip bar (not the kind you’re thinking) The Union, I was struck with two immediate feelings, both conflicting and complimentary: that I could well spend the rest of my lifetime and never quite fully figure this band out, and that the effort expended might somehow still be worth it. For a little less than a jam-packed hour, I was so engaged by the music I was experiencing, I was damn near mesmerized. When it was over, suddenly and with zero ceremony, it fell on me to collect myself for the walk back to my car and to take stock of what I’d seen – the high points, the disappointments, the might’ve-beens, the oh-my-gods. Technically, my list of complaints from a purely selfish perspective should’ve been robust, but the truth is that, both in that moment and this one, writing on four hours sleep on a picture perfect still Saturday morning, I honestly couldn’t care less. Continue reading “Concert review: Screaming Females” →

Movie review: “Atomic Blonde” (2017)

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“I chose this life, and some day it’s going to get me killed…but not today.”

The subtle tension between two recurring, prevailing images provides the brutal spy thriller Atomic Blonde with both its spine and sense of purpose. Long range tracking shots trace the cool, confident, runway-ready stride of statuesque stunner Lorraine Broughton through the mad, pulsating streets of 1989 Berlin. Wrapped in a sleek trenchcoat, armored by sunglasses and a slight, possibly wry, otherwise impenetrable smile, hands buried in deep front pockets, her focus willful and unbroken, the gorgeous MI6 agent walks with easy purpose through a riot of humanity toward a destination that is only ever clear to her. In her most private moments, when the armor finally comes off, Broughton’s bare skin is far from the tantalizing perfection that might be expected, not cliched delicate porcelain so much as cracked china, shocking in its physical compromises and worn from overuse. Continue reading “Movie review: “Atomic Blonde” (2017)” →

DVR Hindsight #16 (7/17/17): Game of Thrones – Season Seven premiere

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GoT

Game of Thrones – “Dragonstone” – Season 7, Ep. 1 (HBO) SPOILERS

“Through it all, the Wall has stood. And every winter that has come has ended.”

I can’t have been the only person yesterday whose afternoon and evening were spent keeping vigil in fairly rapt anticipation of the Game of Thrones premiere. “Are you ready for Sunday?” asked the amiable bartender (on Thursday), who’d seen me reading George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons in his fine establishment not two weeks earlier. Unprepared for the question, I was momentarily nonplussed. What the hell was Sunday? When he clued me (of all people) in, I did feel a touch foolish, but also realized at just what a remove from the hoopla surrounding Thrones’ return I’d inadvertently placed myself. This is, after all, a global phenomenon I heard not incorrectly described the other day as, “the last great water cooler discussion show in the history of television,” and I, as unabashed and informed a casual fan as you’d want to find without expending terrible effort in so doing, had paid the prospects of its revival embarrassingly short shrift. Much of that has to do with the fact that while the bulk of the show’s fans have waited with bated breath and rapidly deteriorating patience to re-enter the world of Westeros, I never really left Continue reading “DVR Hindsight #16 (7/17/17): Game of Thrones – Season Seven premiere” →

Movie review: “Wonder Woman” (2017)

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Wonder Woman

“Be careful in the world of men, Diana. They do not deserve you.”

There is so much advantage to setting the pace rather than being forced to keep up. Charitably speaking, the D.C. Cinematic Universe (DCU) – D.C. Comics’ staccato, end around attempt to approximate the wildly successful, expansive sandbox (known colloquially as the MCU) in which Marvel Comics’ roster of movie superheroes has spent its increasingly lucrative summer tourist months of late – has so far been something of a bumpy ride. Its most recent offering, the theoretically anarchic and even more theoretically fun Suicide Squad, in which a motley crew of Rogues Gallery castoffs (plus “The Joker” in a glorified cameo) are recruited as wise-cracking, angst-ridden expendables and flung at/fed to the latest in what, for D.C., is already becoming a long and tiresome line of impossibly powerful final boss demigods, was a mercenary garbage fire that lacked the spine to make its protagonists truly bad guys despite that kind of being the entire point. Continue reading “Movie review: “Wonder Woman” (2017)” →

Concert review: Mastodon

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also appearing: Eagles of Death Metal
Taft Theater, Cincinnati, Ohio – May 14, 2017

Words do scant justice to the concussive force and frightening authority with which Mastodon’s full-length debut Remission landed, like a meteor or similar harbinger of doom, in my life in 2002. Muscular and uncompromising, this young band seemed immediately driven to push into and conquer territory other artists were perhaps unnerved by or else hadn’t the capacity to envision. Remission was, at once, exotic and pulverizing, and had a particularly invigorating way about it, a smart bomb cast into the wasteland of the then-dying “Nu Metal” scene to finish the job definitively. In fifteen years as a metal fan, I couldn’t recall ever hearing an album like it. Another fifteen years later, and six more official longplayers into Mastodon’s career, I still haven’t. Continue reading “Concert review: Mastodon” →

The Harder They Fall: Anthony Joshua KO11 Wladimir Klitschko

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Joshua

The first thing you notice is that the size difference is fairly breathtaking. That, by the way, is just the two combatants as compared to the mere mortals surrounding them, who, it is impossible to ignore or discount, are in particularly conspicuous supply for this, the biggest Heavyweight boxing match in recent memory. But the size disparity is striking. These are two behemoths – 6’6” tall and 250 pounds apiece – not Joe Frazier heavyweights or Mike Tyson heavyweights. The calling card of those two long-ago all-time greats was savage ferocity. For Anthony Joshua, current alphabet titlist and the sport’s latest anointed savior, and Wladimir Klitschko, the long-time division kingpin turned 41-year-old comeback kid, it is sheer size, or at least that is the primary draw among many. Continue reading “The Harder They Fall: Anthony Joshua KO11 Wladimir Klitschko” →

Movie review: “Get Out” (2017)

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“I know what you’re thinking: rich white family, black servants…it’s the old cliche.”

These crazy kids, for a while you almost think the world is going to let them make it. Young, optimistic, and clearly in love, they make a striking and beautiful couple, though, unfortunately, the one descriptor, almost a reflex, still might possibly occur to an observer before the other. In some ways, they are, indeed, opposites, and also living proof of the attraction axiom. Their very names practically betray their backgrounds – hers as a daughter of suburban privilege, and his as an orphaned city kid who had to scrape by. Rose Armitage is the name of someone who could well have caught the first lifeboat and watched afar from relative comfort as the Titanic sank. Continue reading “Movie review: “Get Out” (2017)” →