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Archive for August, 2021

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Candyman, Annette, Climate of the Hunter

August 31st, 2021 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

The Bolter (Nonfiction, Frances Osborne, 2008) Biography of the Edwardian social rebel Lady Indina Sackville, whose hunger for love and sex drove her to five marriages and a life of scandal in England and colonial Kenya. Cameo appearances from bold-faced names abound in this piquant account of the swirling relationships of a shattered generation, written by the subject’s great grand-daughter.—RDL

Candyman (Film, US, Nia DaCosta, 2021) Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an artist living in the gentrified Cabrini-Green neighborhood of Chicago, becomes inspired by the local urban legend: Candyman. While just a little too didactic and self-congratulatory to be the equal of the 1992 near-Pinnacle, this sequel does a remarkable (and remarkably self-aware — other characters repeatedly ding McCoy’s art for its didacticism) job of renewing the legend for a new audience without copping out on the deep racial text at its core. DaCosta shoots Marina City like a beehive and Candyman like a peripheral-vision specter, and that’s just the highlights of her many-layered artwork. –KH

The Hot Rock (Film, US, Peter Yates, 1972) A museum heist to grab a diamond claimed by multiple African nations requires master planner John Dortmunder (Robert Redford) to stage a series of follow-up crimes. Lighthearted caper flick, based on a Donald E. Westlake novel, anchored by an undercoat of 70s grit.—RDL

Val (Film, US, Ting Poo & Leo Scott, 2021) Aided by home footage he’s been taking since childhood, Val Kilmer, his voice and health badly damaged by a bout with cancer, looks back on his successes and regrets. An unrevealing person cautiously reveals himself in this autobiographical documentary, with voice-alike narration from Kilmer’s son Jack.—RDL

Good

Annette (Film, France/Belgium/Germany, Leos Carax, 2021) The marriage of comedian Henry (Adam Driver) to soprano Ann (Marion Cotillard) buckles under the strain of his self-loathing in this musical written by art-pop duo Sparks. Much as it pains me to admit it, the weak link in this film is not the grandiloquence and artificiality of Carax (which repeatedly hits), but the script (and even the music) by Sparks. The music is great, but deliberately underpowered — the whole movie likewise deliberately undercuts itself, as a reach for a kind of pop-Wagnerian irony. Driver does almost too good a job integrating his character, adding another skew element to a movie not at all bereft of them. –KH

Okay

Climate of the Hunter (Film, US, Mickey Reese, 2019) Resentment between middle-aged sisters escalates when one suspects that the aging swain who has re-entered their lives is a vampire. Layers of stylistic affectation take precedence over narrative development in this talky supernatural drama.—RDL

Deadly Sweet (Film, Italy, Tinto Brass, 1967) A brooding protagonist who acts like a detective but is never explicitly identified as one (Jean-Louis Trintignant) investigates the murder of a club owner, falling for a witness (Ewa Aulin) he finds standing over the corpse. Pop art deconstructed detective flick apparently designed to turn Blow-Up into a genre, just as the Italian film industry did by obsessively imitating A Fistful of Dollars and Blood and Black Lace. Except this time it didn’t happen. Also known as I Am What I Am.—RDL

The Yellow Wallpaper (Film, US, Kevin Pontuti, 2021) Suffering from postpartum depression, a woman (Alexandra Loreth) goes mad thanks to really unpleasant wallpaper (and also patriarchal wilful blindness). Charlotte Perkins’ Gilman’s classic short horror story works not least because it compresses months of oppression into brutal momentum; although many aspects of Pontuti and Loreth’s film capture the story’s mood and themes it desperately needed 20 minutes vigorously trimmed rather than the lengthy rest cure it gets. –KH

Episode 460: The Price is Scarecrow

August 27th, 2021 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer V. R. Weather asks for a 101 on playtesting. Surprised that we have not directly tackled this basic topic before, we immediately comply.

The Tradecraft Hut profiles the peripatetic career of OSS and CIA operative Louise Page Morris.

In How to Write Good estimable Patreon backer Benjamin Rawls wants to know when it’s okay to lengthen your novel.

Finally the Conspiracy Corner maintains a six-foot distance from its latest subject matter, germ theory denialism.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


Dig out your plastic T-Rexes and get them ready to stomp and chomp on your players’ character miniatures as our pals at Atlas Games announce the upcoming Kickstarter for Planegea, their dino-filled 5E setting of prehistoric fantasy adventure.

You’ve got the Pelgrane greatest hits, but from now, until Monday September 6th, you can gather up the Deep Cuts. Bundle together Skullduggery, Lorefinder, The Gaean Reach, The Gaean Reach Gazetteer, and Owl Hoot Trail together in PDF at the Pelgrane Press shop and get a whopping 25% off!

The treasures of Askfageln can be found at DriveThruRPG. Get all issues of FENIX since 2013 available in special English editions. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, along with equally stellar pieces by Graeme Davis and Pete Nash. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish. While you’re at it, grab DICE and Freeway Warrior!

Fear Is a Fractal …and your world is a lie. A horror freed from an antique book reverberates through reality. But don’t despair. There is hope. A King waits for us. And Impossible Landscapes, the  first campaign for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game waits for you. In PDF now, hardback in May. Hailed as “one of the best RPG campaigns ever made” and “a masterpiece of surreal horror!”

Episode 459: Dragons Are the Federal Reserve

August 20th, 2021 | Robin

The T-Shirt Justification Hut gets scaly and doomy with a look at the connection between dragons and apocalypses.

In the Money Hut, we reveal high-frequency trading as yet another Carcosan front operation.

Then we fulfill a past promise with part two of Ken’s Bookshelf New England haul.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise , including the aforementioned Foxy Dragon at TeePublic.


Bears need hairstyles! Lumberjacks need beards! Be friends to both in Yukon Salon, a quick, humorous, family card game in a tin, from our snow-dappled pals at Atlas Games. Take Your Place at the Frontier of Style !

You’ve got the Pelgrane greatest hits, but from now, until Monday September 6th, you can gather up the Deep Cuts. Bundle together Skullduggery, Lorefinder, The Gaean Reach, The Gaean Reach Gazetteer, and Owl Hoot Trail together in PDF at the Pelgrane Press shop and get a whopping 25% off!

The treasures of Askfageln can be found at DriveThruRPG. Get all issues of FENIX since 2013 available in special English editions. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, along with equally stellar pieces by Graeme Davis and Pete Nash. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish. While you’re at it, grab DICE and Freeway Warrior!

Fear Is a Fractal …and your world is a lie. A horror freed from an antique book reverberates through reality. But don’t despair. There is hope. A King waits for us. And Impossible Landscapes, the  first campaign for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game waits for you. In PDF now, hardback in May. Hailed as “one of the best RPG campaigns ever made” and “a masterpiece of surreal horror!”

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Green Knight, M. R. James’ Medievalism, and Where to Take a Break in the Tale of Genji

August 17th, 2021 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

The Pinnacle

The Tale of Genji (Fiction, Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Dennis Washburn, 11th century/2015) A preternaturally handsome and charismatic Heian-era courtier and his descendants cause and endure suffering as a result of their romantic entanglements. The first long-form narrative readable as one would a contemporary mimetic novel, here in a lucid, accessible translation, limns the mores and atmosphere of a hothouse social milieu. The last third of this extremely long piece stands alone as a sequel to the rest, so you might want to set that aside that for later.—RDL

Recommended

The Green Knight (Film, US, David Lowery, 2021) Royal nephew Gawain (Dev Patel) seeks honor by answering the deadly challenge of the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson). Lowery’s departures from the original 14th-century poem will irritate purists, and some of his insertions may well confound everybody regardless of prior knowledge. Our 21st-century failson Gawain seeks self-improvement through a series of lush, eerie set pieces that don’t quite add up — yet Patel sells them and himself, and you’re never bored watching Andrew Droz Palermo’s cinematographic tapestries. Sean Harris’ exhausted Arthur imbues the film with special pathos. –KH

Jewel Robbery (Film, US, William Dieterle, 1932) Bored countess (Kay Francis) falls for a suave jewel robber (William Powell.) Adaptation of a frothy Hungarian play keeps the focus where it belongs, on the interplay between its charming leads.—RDL

Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M.R. James (Nonfiction, Patrick J. Murphy, 2017) Rather than a study of medieval elements in James’ ghost stories (although there is a decent amount of that) this book expounds the thesis that the discipline of “medieval studies” — just coming into being as James wrote — becomes the crucial lens through which to view James’ work. Rather than death or sex or body, the boundary James’ specters and protagonists transgress is the disciplinary boundary between antiquarianism and academe. I’m not sure I buy it, but Murphy also uncovers a lot of new details about the tales, and I did learn a good deal about “medieval studies” to boot. –KH

Pig (Film, US, Michael Sarnoski, 2021) Chef-turned-hermit (Nicolas Cage) returns to the city he abandoned in a stoic, implacable quest for his stolen truffle pig. Absurdist story elements played absolutely straight, in a strange feat of tonal control, with a plot adjacent to the noir and vengeance genres and an interiorized but nonetheless deeply Cagey lead performance.—RDL

Episode 458: Slacker Infant

August 13th, 2021 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we provide tips on GMing for a loose cannon character. Surely not a loose cannon player. None of us have ever had that experience.

Beloved Patreon backer Travis Johnson summons the power of Ask Ken and Robin to ask how to include the Bush Wars in The Fall of DELTA GREEN.

Estimable Patreon backer Keelan O’Hea turns the temperature in the History Hut down to zero Centigrade as he seeks a tour of the Belle Époque Paris morgue.

Finally the Consulting Occultist confronts a head-scratcher only one of his particular esoteric set of skills can solve: why is there a floating baby in a clamshell in the Chicago seal?

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


Bears need hairstyles! Lumberjacks need beards! Be friends to both in Yukon Salon, a quick, humorous, family card game in a tin, from our snow-dappled pals at Atlas Games. Take Your Place at the Frontier of Style !

You’ve got the Pelgrane greatest hits, but from now, until Monday September 6th, you can gather up the Deep Cuts. Bundle together Skullduggery, Lorefinder, The Gaean Reach, The Gaean Reach Gazetteer, and Owl Hoot Trail together in PDF at the Pelgrane Press shop and get a whopping 25% off!

The treasures of Askfageln can be found at DriveThruRPG. Get all issues of FENIX since 2013 available in special English editions. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, along with equally stellar pieces by Graeme Davis and Pete Nash. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish. While you’re at it, grab DICE and Freeway Warrior!

Fear Is a Fractal …and your world is a lie. A horror freed from an antique book reverberates through reality. But don’t despair. There is hope. A King waits for us. And Impossible Landscapes, the  first campaign for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game waits for you. In PDF now, hardback in May. Hailed as “one of the best RPG campaigns ever made” and “a masterpiece of surreal horror!”

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Suicide Squad, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Every Travis McGee Novel

August 10th, 2021 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

Every Travis McGee Novel (Fiction, John D. MacDonald, 1964-1984) Houseboat-dwelling South Florida “salvage contractor” Travis McGee contracts to get something stolen from his client by fair means or foul, in exchange for half the take. Meanwhile, we enjoy the South Florida scenery, the (usually doomed) lady guest star (all MacDonald’s characters really live and breathe), McGee’s witty (even mordant) observations, and the con-artistry and fisticuffs along the way. Not entirely hard-boiled, not pure crime fiction, certainly not “mysteries,” the 21 Travis McGee novels carved out their own niche and then spawned the “Florida crime” subgenre and emblematized the transition of the American knight-errant hero (McGee regularly compares himself to Don Quixote) from the cowboy to the P.I. to the thriller badass. Start with the first one, or the two I’ve already reviewed, or The Long Lavender Look (featuring one of my favorite McGee structures, man vs. town). –KH

Small Axe: Lovers Rock (Film, UK, Steve McQueen, 2020) Young members of London’s Anglo-Carribean community attend a house party in search of romance and/or catharsis. Experiential drama told with beguiling formal control that puts other slice-of-life flicks in the corner.—RDL

The Suicide Squad (Film, US, James Gunn, 2021) Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles a team of supervillains (Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, et al.) to wipe out a black project on foreign soil that turns out to be Starro the Conqueror. I give this “splatter war comedy” the bump over the Recommended bubble for the same reason I did Gunn’s first Guardians movie — it looks like the product of an actual directorial vision, with bright visuals, a strong script tone, and deliberate throwback 70s-style editing. (Dialogue a little less good than Guardians, ending rather better.) Going in, remember that Gunn cut his teeth at Troma. –KH

Good

Godzilla vs. Kong (Film, US, Adam Wingard, 2021) An ancestral grudge sets two enormous monsters at each other’s throats, when the real menace lurks in the high-tech facility of a sinister science businessman (Demián Bichir.) In a surprise move for this latest Godzilla series, Wingard asks the question, “Hey what if these tried to be fun?”—RDL

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (Film, US, Zack Snyder, 2021) Following the death of Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck) assembles a team of superheroes to defend the Earth from apocalyptic invasion. Everything about this film — the editing, the shot composition and lighting, the fights, the character development, the absence of ass jokes — vastly improves on the “Whedon cut” released to theaters in 2017, most especially the all-new neo-Wagnerian score by Tom Holkenborg. That said, it’s still four hours long and feels longer — especially with the entirely gratuitous alternate-history “Knightmare” dream ending (meant as a lead-in to the abandoned JL2) seemingly tacked on for no reason except to spend AT&T’s money. –KH

Okay

The House That Dripped Blood (Film, UK, Peter Duffell, 1971) Another Amicus portmanteau film, this one based on four Robert Bloch stories. Despite the title (and the presence of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Ingrid Pitt) the house never even so much as sprinkles blood — and this toothless approach also defangs half the horrors. Denholm Elliott as a writer haunted by his homicidal creation, and Christopher Lee as a man terrified of his young daughter, at least bring the horror via their performances but half-Good is just Okay. –KH

Private Detective 62 (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1933) Burned secret service agent (William Powell) turns private eye and falls for a socialite his crooked partner wants him to discredit. Powell’s charm and Curtiz’ sure direction lend watchability to a tossed-off script.—RDL

Episode 457: A Lot to Lay on the Genius Loci

August 6th, 2021 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut, we look at game balance. What is it, and when do we care about it?

We try not to step on any skulls in the Archaeology Hut as Beloved Patreon backers Liz & Siskey seek the scoop on Roman gravesite in Cambridgeshire containing a surprising number of beheaded remains.

In the Horror Hut, estimable Patreon backer Elias Helfer asks us for cosmic horror without any Lovecraft in it.

And finally Ken’s Time Machine makes the intervention that will lead the earlier widespread adoption of solar power.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


Bears need hairstyles! Lumberjacks need beards! Be friends to both in Yukon Salon, a quick, humorous, family card game in a tin, from our snow-dappled pals at Atlas Games. Take Your Place at the Frontier of Style !

You’ve got the Pelgrane greatest hits, but from now, until Monday September 6th, you can gather up the Deep Cuts. Bundle together Skullduggery, Lorefinder, The Gaean Reach, The Gaean Reach Gazetteer, and Owl Hoot Trail together in PDF at the Pelgrane Press shop and get a whopping 25% off!

The treasures of Askfageln can be found at DriveThruRPG. Get all issues of FENIX since 2013 available in special English editions. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, along with equally stellar pieces by Graeme Davis and Pete Nash. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish. While you’re at it, grab DICE and Freeway Warrior!

Fear Is a Fractal …and your world is a lie. A horror freed from an antique book reverberates through reality. But don’t despair. There is hope. A King waits for us. And Impossible Landscapes, the  first campaign for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game waits for you. In PDF now, hardback in May. Hailed as “one of the best RPG campaigns ever made” and “a masterpiece of surreal horror!”

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Blood Red Sky, Summer of Soul, and the History of Weird Tales

August 3rd, 2021 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

Blood Red Sky (Film, Germany, Peter Thorwarth, 2021) Worried mom’s transatlantic flight to a clinic to cure her nosferatuism is taken over by hijackers. Smart, well-executed combo platter of vampire tropes and Die Hard inspired action thriller beats.—RDL

The Green Ripper (Fiction, John D. MacDonald, 1979) When a terrorist assassin kills his girlfriend Gretel, Travis McGee infiltrates their compound to exact revenge. In this uncharacteristic installment, McGee switches from “fixer in a crime novel” about a third of the way through to a “thriller hero” that prefigures Jack Reacher. MacDonald keeps the suspense going throughout that section, a surprising shift in style. Perhaps in this 18th book in the series, he was open to shaking up the formula. –KH

He Ran All the Way (Film, US, John Berry, 1951) On the lam after shooting a cop, a doubt-wracked stick-up man (John Garfield) takes an anxious bakery worker (Shelley Winters) and her family hostage. Tight, expressionistic film noir notable for Winters’ poignant, layered performance.—RDL

Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil (Film, Netherlands, Pieter van Huystee, 2016) Dutch historians embark on a perhaps contradictory quest to both assemble Bosch paintings from top museums for a major exhibition, while also minutely examining them to find out which ones are really his. Though packaged as a standard old master profile, this documentary is actually something much more interesting—a fly-on-the-wall view of the sometimes sharp-elbowed curatorial politics behind  blockbuster art shows.—RDL

Money Bots (Film, Germany, Friedrich Moser & Daniel Andrew Wunderer, 2020) Documentary examination of high-frequency trading traces the history of algorithmic finance from its 70s origins, to the race for ever-faster data connections, to its present status as a weird parasitic infestation of the stock exchange system. Or as one interviewee suggests, maybe it’s all a cover for deep collusion between markets and traders, and thus not new at all.—RDL

Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Film, US, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, 2021) Featuring Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, the Fifth Dimension, the Staple Singers, Buddy Guy, and many many more, the five-day 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival concerts should rightfully overshadow the months-later (and much lamer) Woodstock. But instead, the film of this event remained mostly unbought and ignored for fifty years. While assembling this superb doc around the question “Why Didn’t We Know This?” the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter movement refocused Questlove on the question “Why Haven’t Things Changed Enough Despite the Changes We See in this Footage?” Rather than really answer either question, the doc shows a Harlem crowd and a Black musical scene both on the cusp of vanishing and at the peak of their cultural power. –KH

Good

The Thing’s Incredible: The Secret Origins of Weird Tales (Nonfiction, John Locke, 2018) Not so much the “secret” origin of “the Unique Magazine” but the first actually researched origin. Locke delves deep into the various memoirs, Lovecraft’s letters, and period trade magazines to piece together the actual story of Weird Tales’ founding, crucial early missteps, and disastrous near-disappearance after thirteen issues in 1924. While clearly Recommended for devotees and scholars, it’s pretty in-the-weeds stuff for someone who just wants the 101, and it assumes (rather than particularly demonstrating) the importance of its subject. –KH

Okay

Blood Red Sky (Film, Germany, Peter Thorwarth, 2021) On the Munich-New York redeye seeking a cure for her vampirism, Nadja’s (Peri Baumeister) flight gets hijacked. What on paper must have sounded irresistible (Passenger 57 with a vampire!) turns downright stodgy on the screen. It’s incomprehensible to me that a movie 11 minutes shorter than Die Hard feels about twice as long, with momentum-choking flashback scenes interspersed with ample running and murky badly-choreographed vampire fights. Nadja’s young son Elias (Carl Anton Koch) essentially serves as the viewpoint character, a decision that whatever its payout in pathos leaves the actual hijacking (you know, the other half of the story) nearly opaque. –KH

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