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Episode 590: Rolled a Critical and Saved a Clown

March 15th, 2024 | Robin

We hope you can make it to the Gaming Hut for a discussion of quorum and attendance vagaries.

In the History Hut we answer the request of beloved Patreon backer Jeromy French to flesh out a topic we have previously only alluded to—the Toronto clown-fireman riot.

Finally Ken’s Bookshelf features a mere half of our resident bibliomane’s book raid on the Potomac region.

4th segment

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.


The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Hatfields vs McCoys, Taylor Tomlinson vs Expectations, and Annette Bening vs Box Jellyfish

March 12th, 2024 | 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 Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance (Nonfiction, Lisa Alther, 2012) With a novelist’s eye for structure, Alther unravels the post-Civil War string of reprisal killings between two sprawling families on the Kentucky-West Virginia border that left sixty dead and bequeathed a curiously corny, heavily sanitized legend to later pop culture. Impressively chronicles a story in which every significant incident occurs in a minimum of two contradictory versions, then circles back for context and analysis.—RDL

Gary Gulman: Born on Third Base (Stand-up, HBO Max, James Webb, 2023) Gulman continues to evolve his particular blend of the shaggy-dog joke and the autobiographical monologue (or as he calls it, “mommy look at me”) with ever-increasing precision, tightness, and skilled delivery. Any stand-up who does both a Pop-Tart joke and a Seinfeld takedown had better bring their A game, and Gulman does just that.—KH

Sopyonje (Film, South Korea, Im-kwon Taek, 1993) Misanthropic itinerant singer of the dying pansori tradition (Kim Myung-gon) goes to appalling lengths to mold his adopted daughter (Jung-hae Oh) into his artistic successor. Gorgeously mounted drama of suffering for art.—RDL

The Murder Man (Film, US, Tim Whelan, 1935) Binge-drinking crime reporter (Spencer Tracy) scoops the competition on the slaying of a crooked investment broker. Fast-talking crime drama takes its hero in an atypical direction.—RDL

Taylor Tomlinson: Have it All (Stand-up, Netflix, Kristian Mercado, 2023) It’s tough to brag and be funny, but Tomlinson’s wild swagger carries her through a set centering on how far she’s come since her last specials. Once more, her mastery of vocal code switching and physical acting take already great material and make it excellent.—KH

Good

Knife + Heart (Film, France, Yann Gonzales, 2018) Heartbroken gay porn auteur (Kate Moran) becomes an unlikely investigator when police show little interest in the masked killer stalking her actors. Like many latter-day giallo homages, this references the subgenre’s style and motifs but sets aside the horror-thrilling pacing, in this case for a surreal indie drama of 70s queer life that owes more to Cocteau than to Argento or Bava.—RDL

Nyad (Film, US, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin, 2023) At age 62, long distance swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) appoints best pal Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster) as her coach in a bid to complete the Cuba-Florida marathon that beat her when she was 28. Acting-driven sports film convincingly portrays marathon swimming as the grotesque self-mortification of a trauma-forged achiever, bringing more than a little ambivalence to its inspirational triumph beats. —RDL

Schmigadoon Season 2 (Television, Apple+, Cinco Paul, 2023)  Disenchanted with life in the real world, Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) attempt to revisit the magic of Schmigadoon, only to find themselves in the nihilistic Schmicago, where the tropes of 60s and 70s musicals hold sway. Though the Broadway song parodies are even sharper this time around, the second season struggles to keep the protagonists at the heart of the narrative, which makes more of a difference than you might think.—RDL

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Episode 589: Ordo Veritatis Chicago

March 8th, 2024 | Robin

Players say they hate linear scenarios. Seasoned convention GMs extoll the efficacy of the greased rail session. In the Gaming Hut we ask what’s up with that.

Beloved Patreon backer Monster Talk requests a Ripped from the Headlines on the now world-famous Chicago rat hole.

Finally, in keeping with our pre-Oscars tradition, we sneak into the Cinema Hut to finally reveal our respective movie top tens for 2023.

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.


The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: May December, French UFOs, Yokai, and Modern Yoga’s Eliptony Layer

March 5th, 2024 | 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

100 Monsters (Film, Japan, Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1968) Murderous landlord scoffs at the need to perform a protective rite after a night of spooky storytelling, inviting the righteous vengeance of yokai spirits. A straight-laced start to the Yokai Monsters trilogy mostly focused on human wrongdoing. The kid in you may complain that it takes too long for the creatures to show up.—RDL

May December (Film, US, Todd Haynes, 2023) TV actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives in Savannah to research her upcoming role as Gracie (Julianne Moore), who at 36 seduced a 13-year-old and remains married to him (Charles Melton) 20 years later. If Haynes’ influences were Ridley Scott and John McTiernan instead of Douglas Sirk and Joe Losey, he could have called this movie Alien vs Predator, and watching Portman as a soulless chameleon work on (and against) Moore’s damaged sociopath is voyeuristic delight. Haynes shoots the film alternatingly flat and fuzzy, like a somewhat jazzed-up true-crime drama, while playing with a wildly melodramatic score almost from the first beat.—KH

UFOs Season 1 (Television, France, Clémence Dargent & Martin Douaire, 2021) After his rocket project goes explosively awry, an uptight engineer for France’s aerospace agency is ordered to take over and shut down the woebegone department that logs UFO sightings. Students of eliptony will knowingly nod at this investigative dramedy’s familiarity with deep saucer-hunting lore.—RDL

Good

An Accidental Studio (Film, UK, Bill Jones & Kim Leggatt & Ben Timlett, 2019) Documentary traces the trajectory of independent studio Handmade Films, started by George Harrison to rescue Monty Python’s Life of Brian and later responsible for The Long Good Friday, Withnail and I, and Nuns on the Run. Tells the cyclically repeating story of a business started by artists to avoid creative meddling from the suits, only to fall prey to it, here in the form of Harrison’s money man Denis O’Brien.—RDL

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat (Nonfiction, Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker, 2023) Apostate veterans of the wellness movement examine the predispositions, including a full smorgasbord of full-bore eliptonic and occult beliefs, that left the yoga scene ripe for colonization by anti-vaxxers and QAnon. Based on the eponymous podcast and written in an unabashedly polemical mode.—RDL

Past Lives (Film, US, Celine Song, 2023) Married playwright (Greta Lee) reunites with the middle school crush (Teo Yoo) she left behind when her parents emigrated from Korea. Muted drama of nice people being sensible could use a sharp note or two to bring contrast to all the wistful beauty.—RDL

Three Miles Down (Fiction, Harry Turtledove, 2022) In 1974, a young oceanologist/budding sf writer gets recruited to the secret project behind the secret Project AZORIAN—an alien spacecraft on the Pacific ocean floor actually sank the Soviet sub K-129, and the CIA is bringing it up. Contrary to the subtitle, this isn’t a “novel of first contact” but a novel of the precursor to first contact. Turtledove keeps it short and single-viewpoint, but doesn’t actually follow through on the great idea at the core.—KH

Okay

The Marvels (Film, US, Nia Dacosta, 2023) Bound by an entanglement that causes them to body switch, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) battle a Kree leader (Zawe Ashton) whose scheme to revive her homeworld endangers the fabric of the universe. The first acts of sequels are harder to set up than originals. It’s therefore unsurprising that, for all of the likeability of its actors and characters and tentacle cats, a sequel to not one but three different previous works wobbles in establishing a clear, basic question to carry us through the narrative.—RDL

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Episode 588: Full Stop Anti-Marooning

March 1st, 2024 | Robin

Keep your ancient documents well-hidden in the Gaming Hut, as beloved Patreon backer Brian Thomas asks us how to construct a Bookhounds of London one-shot around explorer Aurel Stein, the Great Game, and the Diamond Sutras.

When architects go wrong they wind up not in their own hut, but on the Crime Blotter, as is the case, as requested by estimable backer Derek Upham, 19th century heist mastermind George Leonidas Leslie.

In the Narrative Hut we ask ourselves if procedural crime dramas are, in the older literary meaning of the word, romances.

Finally in the Eliptony Hut we answer the call of legendary backer Jake Maas for a look at Newfoundland’s Isle of Demons.

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.

The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: True Detective, BlackBerry, and Psychedelic-Era Crowley Cultists

February 27th, 2024 | 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

BlackBerry (Film, Canada, Matt Johnson, 2023) Hardass corporate executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) muscles into gormless techie Mike Lazaridis’ (Jay Baruchel) company, saving its new product, the Blackberry smartphone. Darkly funny Canadian ode to capitalism transcends the produpic mostly on the strength of Howerton’s performance as a somewhat sympathetic (and entirely necessary) sociopath, but a tight script that knows what to leave out gets a dose of the credit as well.—KH

Impetigore (Film, Indonesia, Joko Anwar, 2019) Thinking that the parents she never knew might have left her a house, a broke clothing stall owner (Tara Basro) and her skeptical friend (Marissa Anita) travel to a remote village, whose residents have a murderous solution to a terrible curse. Shadow puppets and gamelans localize the classic contours of folk horror.—RDL

It’s a Summer Film! (Film, Japan, Sôshi Masumoto, 2020) Unenthused by the sappy romance her high school film club has chosen to make, determined auteur Barefoot (Marika Itô) assembles a scrappy team to make a samurai film, little suspecting that her handsome lead (Daichi Kaneko) is a cineaste from the future who fears his participation will alter the timestream. Delightful comic paean to friendship and moviemaking.—RDL

Office Royale (Film, Japan, Kazuaki Seki, 2021) Demure office worker (Mei Nagano) becomes besties with a hard-punching colleague (Alice Hirose) on the rise in the underground world of inter-departmental combat. Spoof of teen gang manga scores laughs from the gulf between the outrageousness of Japan’s pop culture and the introversion of its daily life. Also known under the much worse title Hell’s Garden.—RDL

Satan Wants Me (Fiction, Robert Irwin, 1999) In psychedelic-era London, a callow sociology student pledges allegiance to a lodge of fussy, arch-conservative Thelemite sorcerers. Sly literary fiction cover version of The Devil Rides Out blurs the line between unreliable and unaware narrator.—RDL

True Detective: Night Country (Television, US, HBO, Issa Lopez) Abrasive Alaska police chief (Jodie Foster) reluctantly reteams with haunted state trooper (Kali Reis) to investigate the horrific deaths of a research station’s team of scientists and their ties to the unsolved slaying of an Iñupiat eco-activist. Police procedural with subjective supernatural elements (and a Hildred Castaigne namecheck) makes claustrophobic use of its icy Arctic environment.—RDL

Good

The Holdovers (Film, US, Alexander Payne, 2023) Surly prep-school teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) must babysit surly teen Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) over the 1970-71 holidays while bereaved cafeteria head Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) wisely observes. Trite, warmed-over 70s uplift story with virtually no surprises, genuine conflict, or real interest (all of which literally leave on a helicopter at the second-act turn) must perforce become an acting study, and indeed everyone involved acquits themselves well enough to carry this stale Christmas cookie over the line from Okay.—KH

Inside (Film, US/Belgium/Germany/Greece, Vasilis Katsoupis, 2023) After a failed alarm hack traps him inside an art-collecting oligarch’s soulless penthouse apartment, burglar Nemo (Willem Dafoe) must survive and try to escape. What could have been a brilliant combination castaway-heist film finishes doing that about halfway through its overlong run, but fortunately watching Willem Dafoe run the gamut of prisoner emotion remains fascinating.—KH

Okay

Skinamarink (Film, Canada, Kyle Edward Ball, 2023) Two kids wake up to find their dad missing, along with all the doors and windows of their house. This aggressively experimental horror film began as a 28-minute short, and works vastly better at that length. At 100 minutes long, the uncanny and eerie wear off as the movie continues with no shifting of stakes and (with no shots of the kids’ faces) little character to follow. Instead, Ball’s powerful evocation of a real childhood nightmare just dribbles out (at least if you watch it at home with no theater audience to recharge you), which is a crying shame.—KH

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Episode 587: Someone’s Gonna Wear the Skin

February 23rd, 2024 | Robin

Beloved Patreon backer Mark Kenney inspires us to wear our classiest outfits in the  Gaming Hut as we seek ways to bring the vocabulary of clothing and fashion to tabletop narration.

The Food Hut examines an old school staple dessert ingredient and the man who popularized it in North America, with the story of Walter Tennyson Swingle and the journey of the date.

We grab a long hook and protect draw a protective circle around the Mythology Hut for a look at stories where the devil comes to claim a dead person’s skin.

Finally we give a wide berth to all fava beans and contemplate the properties of the triangle as Consulting Occultist gives us a 101 on the Pythagoreans.

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.


Experience the world of Gloom in a new, immersive way with Unhappy Birthday at Castle Slogar. With an integrated hint and solution website, drenched in the beloved Gloom aesthetic by artist J. Scott Reeves, this puzzling gamebook kicks off Atlas’ new Enigma line. Sign up for the Kickstarter announcement!

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

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!

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, Saltburn

February 20th, 2024 | 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

Anatomy of a Fall (Film, France, Justine Triet, 2023) Novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) goes on trial for murder after her failed-novelist husband falls to his death from the attic (or balcony) of their isolated fixer-upper chalet while her sight-impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) is out walking his dog. Lapidary script by Triet and Arthur Harari layers revelations and character beats with watchmaker precision, while Hüller and Machado-Graner give those revelations and beats matter and meaning, all within the framework of a classic murder-trial film.—KH

Eight Hours of Terror (Film, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1957) Anxious to make a train connection, a group of people from disparate walks of life put aside fears of fugitive bank robbers in the area to board a rickety bus for an emergency trip along treacherous mountain roads. Ensemble suspense drama celebrates altruistic underdogs and sticks it to the selfish creeps.—RDL

Let Joy Reign Supreme (Film, France, Bertrand Tavernier, 1975) When a rustic Breton noble (Jean-Pierre Marielle) launches a conspiracy against the melancholy, libertinish Regent Philippe II d’Orleans (Philippe Noiret), his scheming minister (Jean Rochefort) spots an opportunity for advancement. Satirical period drama presents a jaundiced portrait of 18th aristocratic decadence.—RDL

Miss Shampoo (Film, Taiwan, Giddens Ko, 2023) After she hides him from assassins, a hunky gang boss (Daniel Hong) falls for an adorable hair stylist with a propensity for extreme cuts (Vivian Sung.) If you’ve been wondering where the anarchic tone- and genre-shifting spirit of 80s and 90s Hong Kong cinema went, it has moved to Taiwan, as this outré gangster rom com attests.—RDL

Silent Night (Film, US, John Woo, 2023) After a gang shooting spree leaves his son killed and his vocal cords shot out, Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) resolves to kill those responsible one year later, on Christmas Eve. Woo’s eye for action and perfect camera control pitilessly depict Godlock deliberately stripping out his humanity to become a feral killing machine: this is not 80s “killer cool” Woo but a darker, more desperate version. Without dialogue, Woo creates a pure expression of cinema as light, motion, music, and violence.—KH

A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War (Nonfiction, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, 2023) Iraqi journalist ruefully recounts his country’s catastrophic spirals into deadly and destabilizing conflict, from the Iran-Iraq war he witnessed as a child through the US invasion, civil war, the battle with ISIS and beyond. Fleshes out the complexities of events typically given shorthand treatment in the Western press, with a recurring theme being men with guns who are sure they’ve learned from the mistakes of the past and are not going to repeat them this time.—RDL

The Zone of Interest (Film, UK/Poland, Jonathan Glazer, 2023) Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) leads a contented family life in the well-appointed house on the other side of its walls. Aided by masterfully destabilizing sound design, this plotless cinematic study of the banality of evil drops the viewer into an all but unrelieved moral vacuum.—RDL

Good

The Meg (Film, US/China, Jon Turteltaub, 2018) Traumatized deep sea rescuer (Jason Statham) reluctantly returns for a mission to recover his ex-wife from an exploratory sub downed by an old nemesis no one else believes in—a 25 meter long Miocene-era shark. Starts surprisingly smart but doesn’t end up that way, falling prey to the inherent problem of animal-related disaster movies, finding enough different things for the creature to do.—RDL

Saltburn (Film, UK/US, Emerald Fennell, 2023) Scholarship boy Oliver (Barry Keoghan, risibly old for the part) falls for aristo Felix (Jacob Elordi, effortlessly fantastic) at Oxford and gets invited to the family estate for the summer. This Brideshead Revisited-Talented Mr. Ripley mashup never coheres, mostly because Oliver fluctuates between Iago and a kicked puppy throughout. However, I will watch a hundred films featuring Rosamund Pike as a ditzy lady of the manor. Further kudos to cinematographer Linus Sandgren, who shoots Saltburn manor with sunlit love.—KH

Okay

The Creator (Film, US, Gareth Edwards, 2023) In a future where America is at war with androids, a former double agent (John David Washington) agrees to seek their human inventor, hoping also to find his wife, presumed dead but apparently alive and working with the enemy. For all of its impressive visual worldbuilding and indelible cinematic imagery, this blend of Blade Runner and the Global War on Terror falters on viewpoint and sympathy. The audience can tell from the outset that the mission is a con job, and for much of the running time can’t tell where our hopes or fears should lie..—RDL

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Episode 586: The Velveteen Rabbit of Signage

February 16th, 2024 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Hector Trelane takes inspiration from Robin’s EZ One Shot system to ask if designers are finding a root language of roleplaying that points toward a less cluttered style of play.

At the behest of estimable backer Kristian Groenseth the Cartography Hut investigates the fake stop sign epidemic that struck Cranston, Rhode Island.

And finally Ken’s Bookshelf paws the spoils of our resident bibliomane’s recent raid on New York City.

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.


Experience the world of Gloom in a new, immersive way with Unhappy Birthday at Castle Slogar. With an integrated hint and solution website, drenched in the beloved Gloom aesthetic by artist J. Scott Reeves, this puzzling gamebook kicks off Atlas’ new Enigma line. Sign up for the Kickstarter announcement!

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Slow Horses, American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers

February 13th, 2024 | 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

Air (Film, US, Ben Affleck, 2023) Basketball guru Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) pursues Michael Jordan for third-ranked shoe company Nike. What could have been a leaden produpic soars thanks to Affleck’s willingness to invest in a multi-beat story (providing many of the comic beats by playing self-involved Nike CEO Phil Knight) and to wisely give Viola Davis her head in crafting the film’s moral center, Deloris Jordan. The result is more miracle play than produpic, with Vaccaro as John the Baptist and 80s needle drops as psalms.—KH

American Fiction (Film, US, Cord Jefferson, 2023) Literary novelist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) creates a fake “street” identity to sell a pandering novel as his mother’s (Leslie Uggams) Alzheimer’s puts stress on his family. Repeatedly blunted satire nestles uneasily in a gently sad family drama, but Wright pulls the film through on the strength of a brilliant, low-simmering performance. Cristina Dunlap’s effective cinematography deserves a nod as well.—KH

Anatomy of a Fall (Film, France, Justine Triet, 2023) Tightly wound writer (Sandra Hüller) faces a murder trial that strains her relationship with her sensitive, vision-impaired young son (Milo Machado Graner) when her resentful husband takes a fatal plunge from the top floor of their chalet-style home. Realist courtroom drama takes full advantage of the freewheeling structure of French criminal proceedings to flesh out its study of a marriage on the brink.—RDL

Fair Play (Film, US, Chloe Domont, 2023) Hedge fund analysts and surreptitious lovers Emily and Luke (Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich) hit the emotional rocks when one of them is promoted. Crackling character beats show their dog-eat-dog financial careers stripping the humanity from both; great acting from the duo prevents the melodrama from overweighting the careful verisimilitude of Domont’s Wall Street mise en scene.—KH

The Holdovers (Film, US, Alexander Payne, 2023) Bilious prep school history teacher (Paul Giamatti) bonds with a grieving cafeteria supervisor (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and a smart, rebellious student (Dominic Sessa) when ordered to supervise the few students staying over for Christmas break. Empathy rises from misanthropy in a dramedy revolving around a trio of winning performances and a love of the American New Wave.—RDL

Slow Horses Season 3 (Television, UK, Apple+, Will Smith, 2023) A former embassy guard’s quest for justice draws River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and the other Slough House exiles into a high body count MI5 internal struggle. This season pulls the lever on the thriller switch, bringing greased-rail pacing to the serialized TV format.—RDL

The Vietri Project (Fiction, Nicola DeRobertis-Theye, 2021) As she reaches the age when she might inherit her Italian mother’s schizophrenia, a Californian former bookseller’s travels take her to Rome and a search for a mysterious bibliophile. Echoes of Eco set the stage for a quest to reconcile the protagonist’s dual, dueling national identities.—RDL

Good

Everything Goes Wrong (Film, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1960) Young malcontent (Tamio Kawaji) melts down over his mother’s relationship with a thoughtful but married business executive. High-strung drama positions itself as a juvenile delinquent picture in order to question the genre’s anti-youth hysteria.—RDL

Fanfare of Love (Film, France, Richard Pottier, 1935) A pair of unemployed musicians pose as women to get hired by an all-female nightclub orchestra. A fun situation farce mostly notable as the ultimate source, by way of its 1951 German remake, for Some Like It Hot.—RDL

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Film Cannister
Cartoon Rocket
d8
Flying Clock
Robin
Film Cannister