Musings from the basement...

My Frodo is the best buddy a guy could have

September 14, 2020 0 Comments

Frodo was just a few weeks old when he joined the family. He was the runt of his litter, a tiny tuxedo cat. My mother-in-law gifted him to us, for our son, even though I insisted no surprise pets. I pretended to be outraged. I wasn’t. Even today, I’ll still offer some mock outrage about it. Everyone knows it’s silly. I love him so much. Frodo liked to bite when he was young. He especially liked to bite my son. There didn’t seem to be much reason for it. We think he just didn’t like the competition for love. Once, my son was standing at the toilet doing what you do. Frodo strolled in, jumped up, and bit him on the ass. We all laughed….
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Random Musings

Here’s me being interviewed about GoodFellas and Raging Bull for TRT World’s Showcase

July 1, 2020 0 Comments

I recently sat down with TRT World, an international news outlet out of Turkey, to talk about two of Martin Scorsese’s landmark works, GoodFellas and Raging Bull as part of their Showcase series. Here is my interview: And here is the full episode, which is worth watching. They do a great job of diving into these topics: My book, The Films of Martin Scorsese: Gangsters, Greed, and Guilt, is due out September 20 of this year via Rowman & Littlefield. It is now available for pre-order. Learn more about it here.

Films, Promotions, Videos, Works by Eric

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Miles Davis, music, and toll of institutional racism

June 4, 2020 1 Comment

Miles Davis has been one of my favorite artists for close to 25 years. If I started going on about how his work has touched me, the scope of his influence, and the importance of his creative legacy, I’d be here all night. The act of expression through creation is sacred to me, and few exemplify this more powerfully than Miles Davis. Yet Youtuber Adam Neely makes an excellent point in the video below: A now infamous police brutality incident in 1959, just after the release of Davis’ masterful Kind of Blue album, almost robbed the world of 30 more years of groundbreaking music. It’s an unfortunate story all on its own, but it’s just one thread in a much larger tapestry. Miles was just…
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Music, Politics, Random Musings, Rants

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Sex, Saws, Stumps & Samara: Revisiting Fangoria 2005

May 20, 2020 0 Comments

This was originally published all the way back in 2005, at DVD in My Pants. The following version does not include all of the photos taken (by me!) for the piece. The formatting may be wonky, too. I’m posting it mostly to keep it alive online. Two days of axes, gore and bloody stumps might sound terrifying, but for fans of the horror genre, it was just what the (mad) doctor ordered on September 24 and 25 in Secaucus, New Jersey. For two days genre fans gnawed at Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors, where hundreds horror fans and a full slate of special guests offered up 48 hours of the mysterious, macabre and meaty. Read on as  launches the first in a month-long celebration of all things horror….
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Films, Uncategorized, Works by Eric

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