Author: Eric

Concert review: The Smashing Pumpkins/Marilyn Manson

Posted on by Eric

mankins

Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheater, Tampa, FL – July 24, 2015

The historic first joint live venture between The Smashing Pumpkins and Marilyn Manson has been dubbed, with characteristic humility and understatement, “The End Times Tour”. It does make a weird sort of sense that the leaders of perhaps the two most prominent cults of personality to survive the free-for-all that was ‘90s alternative rock would one day tour together. It also makes sense that the two would exhaust most every option that allowed them to maintain top billing and/or autonomy before grudgingly doing so. The infamous “Mr. Manson” and persnickety Pumpkin King Billy Corgan achieved their respective heights through mixtures of talent, ambition, artistic vision, and sheer guile (the exact percentages may be tweaked or spiked in the favor of one category or other). Continue reading “Concert review: The Smashing Pumpkins/Marilyn Manson” →

Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band (second opinion)

Posted on by Eric

dmb nobles

Klipsch Music Center, Noblesville, IN – July 18, 2015

The Dave Matthews Band is among the great singular outliers in my personal musical landscape – itself a massive, loosely bound, often logic-optional continuum that, built up over the course of thirty years, was already surprisingly lousy with them. As a dyed-in-the-wool metal fan, my longstanding passion for this particular band has led, variously, to rounds of strident interrogation, sound condemnation, and, occasionally, clandestine approval*, from my peers, though that’s really nothing compared to the dismissive shade I’ve seen thrown from more respectable corners of the pop, rock and indie arenas. “Is Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming any good 20 years later?” shouted the headline of, to me, a particularly provocative AVClub article on the occasion of the album’s inevitable anniversary reissue last fall. I read with bated breath. Continue reading “Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band (second opinion)” →

Movie review: “The Babadook” (2014)

Posted on by Eric

babadook

“I’m sick, Sam. I need help. I just spoke with Mrs. Roach. We’re going to stay there tonight. You want that? I want to make it up to you, Sam. I want you to meet your dad. It’s beautiful there. You’ll be happy.”

A storybook ghoul looms just behind a terrified child, dark, claw-fingered arms outstretched to a seemingly impossible wingspan, rising and expanding like a phoenix from the ash, then hanging there, poised to descend, poised to strike, savoring the fear. Fierce, bulging eyes pierce the otherwise enveloping darkness, punctuating its lusty rictus grin of longsaw teeth, frozen on the crudely illustrated page, at least for the moment. The creature had been safely contained on the wrong side of the child’s bedroom door, but it knocked, insistently, some would say maniacally. “Let me in!” it bellowed in the little boy’s imagination, though in reality, all it could ever do was to say, “Ba-ba…dook! Dook! Doooook!” and bang on the door as he retreated under the covers. Heaven help you, little boy, if it ever got in. Heaven help you and your mother. Continue reading “Movie review: “The Babadook” (2014)” →

Movie review: “Terminator Genisys” (2015)

Posted on by Eric

arnold smile

“That’s the kind of man your son was. (thinks) Is! Will be! Ugh…time travel gives me a headache.”

The original Terminator had the spark of genius. It was something altogether amazing and new. As a stand-alone sci-fi potboiler, and a model of low budget 1980s ingenuity, the story of a young woman under siege by an unstoppable robot assassin from the future is a stone classic. Just typing this sentence makes me want to drop everything and spontaneously rewatch it. Bleak and ruthless, consistently thrilling, pleasingly enigmatic, and, in the end, more than sufficient, The Terminator didn’t cry out for a sequel any more than the wellspring of any action franchise does. The sequel it received, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was nevertheless a true rarity in the annals of effects-driven blockbuster action filmmaking, functioning as both a signpost along the road, indicating the exciting, innovative way forward for an oft-beleaguered art form, and a de facto destination, dynamic, fully-formed, crowd-pleasing, jaw-dropping. Continue reading “Movie review: “Terminator Genisys” (2015)” →

Concert review: Flogging Molly

Posted on by Eric

molly

Lifestyle Communities Pavilion, Columbus, OH – June 29, 2015

I first saw Celtic punk standard-bearers Flogging Molly, appropriately enough, a little over a decade ago, with a dear friend in a packed tent at Dublin, Ohio’s annual Irish Festival. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The Dublin Irish Fest is a fairly big deal in the outer ‘burbs of Columbus, having grown over the years into a sprawling operation now claiming seven separate music stages, many hundreds of scheduled performers and tens of thousands of expected attendees. In the late days of July, the Fest shuts down or redirects with extreme prejudice approximately 5-6 blocks of a lower upper-class neighborhood within whimsical, (just barely) figurative spitting distance of the building in which I used to work. Even in humbler days, whenever Molly headlined – or, let’s be honest, closed down – the Irish Fest, the resulting logistical clamor was sufficient to bring the rest of the operation to a standstill. Continue reading “Concert review: Flogging Molly” →

Post No. 100: Centennial Homesick Blues

Posted on by Eric

brisbus

Every 25th post, darkadaptedeye takes a planned break from normal business to plumb the shallow depths of its author’s psyche and/or overtly explore the locked attic of memories it only ever really dabbles in otherwise. You might think of it as a pit stop, or maybe a soft reboot. In “Danse Macabre”, Stephen King termed his own such digression “An Annoying Autobiographical Pause”, which I choose to think was kind of charming. Please know I take seriously the challenge of making patent self-indulgence interesting – actual results be damned – and I appreciate you being game. We’ll return to our irregularly scheduled programming shortly…

In retrospect, one of the smarter things I did when laying out the architecture and modus operandi of this blog was to build in a venue, with every 25th post, that allowed me tacit approval to traffic in explicitly personal matters. I knew from its inception that I wanted DAE’s focus to be on the music, movies, and assorted other passions that are such an integral part of my life, but I never imagined that meant I could keep the wolves of self-possession at bay indefinitely. The idea of a “personal” 25th post incentivizes me, at the very least, to keep track of how many I’ve published, which is a fun, purely self-serving benefit. I hear near constant tell of actors who proudly or sheepishly proclaim that they never, ever watch themselves on screen. I may be a tiny voice in the howling void, but I laugh at the notion such reasoning could possibly extend to authors. Continue reading “Post No. 100: Centennial Homesick Blues” →

Movie review: “Inside Out” (2015)

Posted on by Eric

inside

“What do we do? What do we do?! What do we do?!?!”

“We could try crying until we can’t breathe!”

“Or we could pull out that one curse word we know! It’s a doozy!”

Over the course of its nearly unprecedented winning streak (for family features, only the early Snow White/Bambi/Fantasia days of Disney are probably the least bit comparable), the Pixar animation studio has shown a thorough and innate understanding of the process and pitfalls of growing up, not to mention a remarkable facility with the sorts of stories, and themes, and details, and moments, that tend to subconsciously bind children of basically any age to their parents, and vice versa, while also reinforcing existing bonds, whether said moments should happen in life or in a packed theater. As a childless, more-or-less confirmed bachelor, I am, one might imagine, not the veteran of countless kids’ movies, inside the theater or out, though I have long been an unvarnished Pixar enthusiast. Unlike its parent, The Walt Disney Company, Pixar has always strived, with an edifying success level, to create films that are intended to be enjoyed by the whole family, and not just because it makes for good ad copy. Multi-directional, all-encompassing appeal is a perilously thin line to walk, but can also be an incredibly noble calling, and up until Pixar’s recent doldrums, marked mostly by superfluous sequels and radio silence, I was grateful just to be included in the crowd. Continue reading “Movie review: “Inside Out” (2015)” →

Concert review: Rush

Posted on by Eric

rush

WARNING: What follows contains, necessarily, not only the requisite whole lotta words (even for me) but also a good number of details (set list specifics, other surprises) that I, personally, would not necessarily want to know if I still had a pending ticket to see this tour. Please tread lightly if you do.

Abandon all objectivity, ye who enter here, for I am a Rush fan. Sorry & Thx.

Nationwide Arena, Columbus, OH – June 8, 2015

There’s a level on which I’m so close to the music of Rush that it makes it functionally impossible to write about the band. That would help explain the excessive amount of time I’ve spent pondering how to start this review over the past several days, or the handful of false starts I did put to page only to subsequently abandon. Note that I never said “write objectively”, because that’s already a non-starter. When it comes to Rush, I am strictly dispassionate, in much the same way that Jack Skellington, George Bailey, Ebenezer Scrooge (reformed), Clark Griswold, or Buddy the Elf can either take the subject of Christmas or leave it. The Canadian power trio has been entrenched as my favorite band for just over two decades now, a position only three other artists have ever even officially held, with comparatively little sense of permanence and for half the time combined. Continue reading “Concert review: Rush” →

DVR Hindsight #12 (6/12/15): iZombie finale, Hannibal season three

Posted on by Eric

liv

Though I obviously wield and write from a position of considerable (imaginary) power with this blog, I’m not typically in the business of assigning pop culture homework to my readership, or at least when I do, it’s well-considered. If, by this point in our relationship, you’ve stubbornly discounted my delightfully subtle recommendations, and are not, for example, either already caught up with FX’s The Americans, well into the process of doing so, or at least in strong consideration of taking that plunge (seriously, it’s thirty-six episodes…that’s not even a long weekend!), then I have probably reached the limits of what I can do for you. I feel, however, that it’s time to offer a rare exception in the case of two extraordinary, macabre police procedurals – one just ending its first season as the other begins its third – that glide below the radar of most viewers and settle (or unsettle, as the case may be) comfortably into some of the darkest corners of the television landscape Continue reading “DVR Hindsight #12 (6/12/15): iZombie finale, Hannibal season three” →

Concert review: The Rolling Stones

Posted on by Eric

stonesflyer

Ohio Stadium, Columbus, OH – May 30, 2015

The self-coined appellation is an inherently tricky business. Nicknames are one thing – a fun trifle, maybe, or a calculated way to push a promising career – but capital letter Designations, as if the artist’s name alone is insufficient to possibly contain his, her, or their grandeur, imminence, or supremacy, are quite another. As promotional tools, they might be laughable or they might be unforgettable. The air these artists occupy, and the heights they signify, are generally too rare to allow a third option. Was Elvis Presley, in fact, the “King of Rock and Roll”, a name that resonates decades after his death (and is still often abbreviated to, simply, “The King”), or Michael Jackson the “King of Pop”? You tell me. At their heights, I’d say almost certainly, and those honorifics have since followed them into immortality. Was Aretha Franklin really the “Queen of Soul”? Yes, indeed, unless you can produce a better contender (and you can’t). Was James Brown truly the “Godfather of Soul”? All that and then some…of soul and, frankly, a few other genres. No one self-applies these kind of titles lightly, but as an almost aggressive kind of proclamation. Whether, in fact, you believe the hype is almost beside the question. Hype is eventually recast as legend, and legend is what endures. Yes, but can it surprise? Continue reading “Concert review: The Rolling Stones” →