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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Does a Razor Crest Get Flyer Miles?

July 14th, 2020 | 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

Child of Light (Nonfiction, Madison Smartt Bell, 2020) Biography of the American novelist Robert Stone (Dog Soldiers, Outerbridge Reach) lucidly documents a life spanning from the IBM Selectric 60s to the era of literary festivals, creative writing programs and the word processor. Bell, a friend and colleague, details Stone’s struggles with such obstacles as depression, chronic pain, and prodigious substance abuse, fortunately anchored by an enduring marriage to his savvy, protective spouse Janice.—RDL

Craig Ferguson Presents: Hobo Fabulous Season 1 (Television, US, Joe Bolter, Comedy Dynamics, 2019) More (but not a lot more) than a tour film split up into episodes, the series follows Craig Ferguson on his 2019 tour and into introspection about the nature of stand-up and of his life as he approaches sixty. How much you’re likely to get out of it depends on how much you care about those things, and how much you appreciate Craig’s discursive, open style. –KH

Hamilton (Film, US, Thomas Kail, 2020) Immigrant overachiever (Lin-Manuel Miranda) takes a pivotal role in the Revolutionary War, selling of the Federalist Papers, and establishment of the federal banking system, frequently shouldering aside equally advancement hungry politician Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.) Among the audacious moves of this aesthetically ambitious work about ambition: fusing hip hop and Broadway, taking on American pop culture’s least favorite period of American history, and bringing recitative back.—RDL

The Mandalorian Season 1 (Television, US, Jon Favreau, Disney+, 2019) Devoutly helmeted bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) reneges on a delivery when he discovers that his quarry is a (green, big-eared, Force-wielding) child, and his client (Werner Herzog) an imperial revanchist. Where the Abrams flicks revere the iconic moments of classic Star Wars, Favreau and his collaborators love the setting, allowing for storytelling that arises from the original without recapitulating it. In doing so it reaches into Lucas’ inspirations in Ford and Kurosawa, adding hefty portions of Leone and “The Rifleman.”—RDL

Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms (Nonfiction, John Hodgman, 2019) In a series of comic autobiographical essays, Hodgman turns quotidian anecdotes of tour life, the Chateau Marmont, pre-career jobs and his airline mileage plan of choice into platforms for wit and humane observation. An ideal “imagine-yourself-safely-on—a- beach” read. —RDL

Good

The Old Guard (Film, US, Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2020) Andromache (Charlize Theron) and her immortal mercenary team break in a new recruit (Kiki Layne) while hunting their CIA contact (Chiwetel Eijofor) who (shockingly! inevitably!) betrayed them to a weaselly pharma executive. Fight coordinator Danny Hernandez’ lackluster fights mostly land between the balletic melodrama of John Wick and the gritty realism of Atomic Blonde — kind of the problem with the whole film, in a way. Fightin’ immortal mercs is a great high concept, but nobody seems to want to do anything original or (God forbid) fun with it here. –KH

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