Author: Eric

Movie review: “Streets of Fire” (1984)

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Streets of Fire

“I’m not paying you to add any thrills to my life, Cody. That’s not how this works.”

Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire wields its appellation “A Rock & Roll Fable” with a heavy emphasis on “fable” in the mythic or legendary sense of the word, almost as a hedge against having to explain why, despite outward appearances (of, it must be said, unflagging prettiness), it is not populated by recognizable human beings. The “Rock & Roll” part is also important, insofar as the characters in Streets of Fire, a gaggle of ineffectual tough guys, gun molls, and collateral damage otherwise, only ever seem at all comfortable expressing their feelings when either singing, playing, or listening to live music. On that score, I can relate. A gritty, visually arresting street opera minus approximately 60% of the necessary attendant emotion, the movie is yet another flawed yet beloved artifact of my youth that I have struggled to fully embrace as an adult, in large part because its unassuming strengths and glaring weaknesses are so clearly at war with each other. Continue reading “Movie review: “Streets of Fire” (1984)” →

Steelers Thoughts #16 (7/19/18): The Ring of Distant Bells

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NFL: Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers

I can, thankfully, only imagine the tedium with which dedicated sports beat reporters fill their offseasons. Freed from the strictures of working at a more traditional, or even outwardly identifiable, sports website, I wile away those same days in a barely distracted haze, neither slave to their all-consuming 24-hour news cycles nor subject to their unquenchable thirst for reckless speculation and calorie-free commentary. At certain points of the journey, however, as forks in the road come into view, I can still rouse myself and adopt more or less the same passionate guise in week three of July that I’ll wear in week ten of the regular season. As the Steelers zero in on the commencement of another training camp in picturesque Latrobe, Pennsylvania, their biggest lingering distraction has finally been sorted out, for better or worse Continue reading “Steelers Thoughts #16 (7/19/18): The Ring of Distant Bells” →

Movie review: “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018)

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“The greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved, and capable of loving.”

In purely technical terms, we have been without Fred Rogers for fifteen years. I know, it surprised me too; although by the time of his passing in 2003 he had, for me, long since drifted out of sight, if never quite out of mind. The mind is funny that way, as I learned while watching Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a spellbinding new documentary that does generations perhaps suffering similar problems of perception, in addition to those not yet born, the courtesy of presenting the man and his work on roughly equal footing. Both are nothing less than inspirational. Technicality has no place in the realm of feelings, of course, and so those fifteen years might well be millennia to some – whether or not they are wholly cognizant of the loss – so difficult is his absence, so great is the distance from there to here, so dark and cold it can be to sit, day after day with insufficient comfort, in the shadow of a sun obscured. Yeah, my trusty house brand of hyperbole shrinks in the face of the legacy of Fred Rogers Continue reading “Movie review: “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018)” →

DVR Hindsight #17 (7/3/18): Glow – Season Two

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GLOW2_Lead

To make me click “Play” instead of just investing a checkmark, a Netflix original needs to appeal to me on multiple levels. Despite its deluge of weaponized options, the sly, only seemingly slight pro wrestling comedy Glow, whose second season dropped this past Friday, is the first Netflix original since Marvel’s Jessica Jones debuted to pull me into an arrangement anything like the appointment viewing I still maintain offline (albeit with the help of a DVR that runs at 80-95% capacity at all times, like one of those massive coal furnaces on the Titanic). For what it’s worth, Jessica Jones’ second season still sits wrapped beneath the tree while I’m already writing about Glow approximately twelve hours after cracking the seal. Continue reading “DVR Hindsight #17 (7/3/18): Glow – Season Two” →

Concert review: Slayer

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also appearing: Lamb of God, Anthrax, Behemoth, Testament
Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio – June 7, 2018

It can be distressingly easy to take Slayer for granted. Can be, has been, continues to be. The band is both force of nature and fact of life, and has stood a silent, menacing vigil as the unofficially understood gatekeeper of extreme metal for well over three decades. If ever a metal band this side of, let’s say, Black Sabbath, could be said to have projected a palpable aura, it was Slayer, though not quite in a way they probably ever intended, despite the over-the-top illustrated deviltry that, blaring from both their garish album artwork and overpriced t-shirts beyond count, is the hallmark of their image. I sometimes picture them – or, more to the point, bald, bearded, stern, stocky, tattooed and temperamental guitarist Kerry King – as bouncers at some dingy club, or as symbolic hired muscle working a neighborhood poker game made up of aspiring metal bands and fans – stentorian, intimidating, unbending – ensuring only the worthy are ever dealt in. Continue reading “Concert review: Slayer” →

Movie review: “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018)

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Solo

“You think everything sounds like a bad idea…”

The Star Wars saga’s very longevity has become, if you’ll forgive the slight Jedi inference, a double-edged sword, laser-honed, amazingly precise despite its innate power and massive destructive capability, and, therefore, deceptively difficult to wield. This was, of course, already the case when a single storyteller, flawed visionary/kindly internet punching bag George Lucas, held the franchise in his eccentric hands; You can bet the issue has only compounded and is now accelerating toward what promises to be a spectacular end since that control was usurped by The Walt Disney Company, a monolithic trillion dollar entertainment conglomerate focused almost exclusively on the generation through perhaps overly dedicated fan service of a veritable Matterhorn of filthy lucre. To wit: Opening weekend box office for Solo: A Star Wars Story – just north of $100 million domestically – was smashing by most any other rational measure, though pillow soft if not scandalous for such a priority representative of the Mouse That Roared. Continue reading “Movie review: “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018)” →

Scott Hutchison: An Appreciation

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hutchison

“I hate when I feel like this, and I never…hated you.”

Looking back now, surveying the wreck, I can see, and concede, that I wasn’t quite ready to share four walls of any description with Scott Hutchison, and that my limited exposure to his work, intense and gratifying as it was – right up, at times, to the edge of transcendence – left me terribly ill-prepared to process the sad end to which he came. The self-effacing singer and oft-stunning lyricist of revered folk/indie rock thunderhead Frightened Rabbit died at some point last week, surely by his own hand, in the woods near a marina in his native Scotland, his body finally discovered at the end of a desperate, wide-ranging, communal search effort two days after he’d gone missing. If it appears I am unconcerned about the specifics in this case, you are correct. There’s nothing to be gained in any sense I value by trailing behind Scott Hutchison and somehow observing as he whittled away his life’s final hours in isolation. My heart’s broken enough already, thanks. Continue reading “Scott Hutchison: An Appreciation” →

Movie review: “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018)

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avenger-infinity-war-spidey-iron-man-mantis

“All that for a single drop of blood…”

None of the a**holes showed up at my class reunion. Foiled yet again. Thus, my idle, childish daydreams of summarily nuking the place and spiriting off for reflective meditation to some scenic hillside with a four-pack of CBC Creeper Triple IPA and a phone full of Miles Davis, Rivers of Nihil, and Frightened Rabbit became, instantly, far more problematic. Thanos, dread purple bogeyman of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), suffers no such compunctions about ending life on an impossibly large or even planetary scale – it is both his modus operandi and, to hear him tell, destiny – and must therefore be stopped at every cost imaginable. Though it doesn’t come right out and state the obvious, Avengers: Infinity War is but the first of two chapters detailing that herculean struggle, and that’s a damned good thing for the hopeful. Continue reading “Movie review: “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018)” →

Event review: Ring of Honor Wrestling – “Masters of the Craft”

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ROH

Express Live! Columbus, Ohio – April 15, 2018

I had so much fun at my first ever Ring of Honor live event that I barely know where to start. So I guess I’ll begin with some context.

I have pretty much always been a professional wrestling fan, though there were times I was more loath than others to admit it, sometimes even to myself. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly my problem was. I’ve always been fascinated with the storytelling prowess and superlative athleticism that go into the in-ring product, and discovering as a tween that the results were predetermined did little to deter my interest, actually deepening it in scope and intensity as the years passed. Perhaps it was simple seasonal boredom, or a zest to explore other arenas once I’d determined this one had grown stale. I did use my two self-imposed sabbaticals from conspicuous wrestling consumption semi-productively Continue reading “Event review: Ring of Honor Wrestling – “Masters of the Craft”” →

Movie review: “Ready Player One” (2018)

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“People come to The Oasis for all the things they can do, but they stay for all the things they can be.”

Having long since gracefully aged out of the demographic – and unwilling to do more than cursory supporting research – I have little knowledge or interest in whether Ernest Cline’s polarizing bestseller Ready Player One qualifies as a “Young Adult” novel along the lines of lucrative recent “plucky dystopian teens overturn the new world order” franchises The Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner, and on past the horizon. In its broad strokes, Cline’s tome, with its laser focus on Eighties nostalgia, seems somehow even more cynically calculated than its fellows. This is arguably the property’s most noteworthy achievement, for all that implies, since broad strokes are what its filmed adaptation seems most keen to deliver. Continue reading “Movie review: “Ready Player One” (2018)” →