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Archive for September, 2017

Episode 261: Them Doritos is Rigged!

September 29th, 2017 | Robin

Hold onto your wallet when you enter this Gaming Hut. It’s full of scamsters, as we look at clipjoint towns in F20 games.

Patreon backer Elias Helfer digs into the files for a declassified Tradecraft Hut as he asks for the 101 on espionage in WWI.

Then Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else, as Green Ronin’s Nicole Lindroos shows us the ropes of game company management.

Finally it’s time for some Fun With Science, as backer Allen Wilkins wants to know what’s really going on with NASA’s bacterial balloons.

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

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


In Unknown Armies, Atlas Games’ modern-day, occult roleplaying game, you play the heroically broken people who conspire to fix the world. That conspiracy just got easier, with the arrival of the game on store shelves near you! The book has been written. The book has been read. Now it rewrites you. Across time it spreads, creating dread new realities. And you’re in all of them. Robin’s epic new GUMSHOE project, The Yellow King Roleplaying Game has concluded its Kickstarter run, but is now available for pre-order at the Pelgrane Store for those who missed it. Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Sapient Dogs and a Vanishing Toyshop

September 26th, 2017 | Robin

The Pinnacle

Master of None Season 2 (Television, US, Netflix, Aziz Ansari & Alan Yang, 2017) Dev falls for an engaged friend and moves up in the food television world. The show leans even further into its innovative format, telling a story arc through episodes structured as individual short films. Its focus on representation has been widely praised already, so let’s note its phenomenal cinemascope-ratio cinematography, which gives it a visual weight rarely attempted in the comedy-drama genre.—RDL

Recommended

Fifteen Dogs (Fiction, Andre Alexis, 2015) Apollo and Hermes make a wager, granting human intelligence to a group of dogs at a downtown Toronto veterinary hospital. Works both as a fable about the relationship between awareness and happiness, and a compelling extrapolation of what the world might look like to sapient canines.–RDL

Jerry Before Seinfeld (Stand-up, Jerry Seinfeld, Netflix, 2017) Jerry Seinfeld performs his pre-1981 material in the West Side comedy dive he started out in, the Comic Strip, punctuated with (thankfully brief) reminiscences. As with virtually everything he’s done this millennium, this special shows Seinfeld’s work ethic and deep sense of his art form’s traditions while still being playful and, yes, funny. –KH

A Light Affliction: A History of Film Preservation and Restoration (Nonfiction, Michael Binder, 2014) Informed and accessible look at the field from the Lumieres to DCPs focuses as much on the quirky founding personalities of the preservation movement as on the technical challenges of keeping films alive. Fun fact: Hollywood resisted the switch from nitrate because its ultra-dangerous nature required highly trained operators, thus discouraging pirate screenings.—RDL

The Moving Toyshop (Fiction, Edmund Crispin, 1946) Poet Richard Cadogan stumbles onto a murder upstairs from a toyshop — which vanishes the next morning. Good thing he’s in Oxford, and friends with the detective don Gervase Fen. This assured mystery shifts between grim crime, classic detection, and giddy nigh-Wodehousian humor between breaths, while remaining tightly plotted and consistently characterized. P.D. James considered it a Pinnacle, which should tell you something. –KH

Queenpin (Fiction, Megan Abbott, 2007) Young woman groomed by a classy older mentor as a mob courier puts the mentorship in peril when she succumbs to the brutal charms of a degenerate gambler. Unlike most modern shots at period noir, Abbott gets the voice right, avoiding the competing shoals of parody and anachronism.—RDL

The Woman on the Beach (Film, US, Jean Renoir, 1947) Soon-to-retire, PTSD-haunted Coast Guard officer (Robert Ryan) falls for the restless wife (Joan Bennett) of a tormented, blind ex-painter (Charles Bickford.) Reskinned gothic in which the great French director absorbs a touch of Val Lewton strangeness from next door on the RKO backlot.—RDL

Good

The Greatest Show on Earth (Film, US, Cecil B. DeMille, 1952) Circus manager Brad (Charlton Heston) has to deal with lovestruck trapeze artist Holly (Betty Hutton), her rival (and his) The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde), and the criminal element (Lawrence Tierney) while keeping the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus in the black. Betty Hutton is the weak link here, but you also get the wonderful Gloria Grahame as an elephant trainer, and Jimmy Stewart as an enigmatic clown. Unfairly lambasted for beating High Noon for the Best Picture Oscar — it’s no High Noon, but it’s no Crash, either — this final DeMille spectacle movie provides ample circus spectacle, a magnificent train crash, and even some intermittently excellent tension on and off the high wire. If you’re pro-circus I’d call it Recommended. For extra fun play “spot the Spielberg engrams,” as this was the first movie Spielberg remembers seeing. –KH

mother! (Film, US, Darren Aronofsky, 2017) Dutiful wife (Jennifer Lawrence) to a blocked poet (Javier Bardem) spirals into hallucinatory nightmare when he invites oddball strangers (Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer) into the home she’s painstakingly renovating. Becomes less interesting as the allegory fully clunks into view, but still worth seeing for its disorienting use of sound design and handheld extreme close-ups.—RDL

Episode 260: Live from Gen Con 2017

September 22nd, 2017 | Robin

 

When Ken and Robin go live, as they do here in this episode recorded in August at Gen Con, the audience, aided by a mythic pack of index cards, tells us what the topics are. And in this case they jointly demanded Crimean War mecha, Bannonesque intrigue, Ken’s beef with the Gnostics, time machine interference in the Siege of Malta, mediating disputes between Captain America and Wolverine, and the proverbial so much more.

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

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


In Unknown Armies, Atlas Games’ modern-day, occult roleplaying game, you play the heroically broken people who conspire to fix the world. That conspiracy just got easier, with the arrival of the game on store shelves near you! The book has been written. The book has been read. Now it rewrites you. Across time it spreads, creating dread new realities. And you’re in all of them. Robin’s epic new GUMSHOE project, The Yellow King Roleplaying Game has concluded its Kickstarter run, but is now available for pre-order at the Pelgrane Store for those who missed it. Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Maternal Madness and Puzzle Mysteries

September 19th, 2017 | 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 our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

Robin has been off at the Toronto Film Festival. Check out his compendium of capsule reviews. Those capsules will reappear here when films get theatrical or home video releases over the next 18 months or so.

Recommended

Logan Lucky (Film, US, Steven Soderbergh, 2017) In its essentials a country & western Ocean’s 11, like every great cover version this film shows the core strengths of the original while reveling in the joy of a new riff. Channing Tatum and Adam Driver head a low-key superb ensemble cast, outshone only by David Holmes’ incongruous yet satisfying score and Soderbergh’s butter-smooth direction. A less confident director could have turned the comedy into condescension; it’s to Soderbergh’s great credit that instead the West Virginia milieu plays the hero. –KH

Mother! (Film, US, Darren Aronofsky, 2017) A poet (Javier Bardem) seeking a creative spark and his young wife and muse (Jennifer Lawrence) dwell in Edenic isolation until … Beginning as Polanski-esque psychological thriller and veering into full-blown Gnostic Buñuel in the third act, this is an almost paradigmatically Aronofsky film: shot with power and control, about a disintegrating character and the nature of inspiration, and likely to piss off at least half its audience. –KH

Night in Alachua County (Play, Jennifer Rumberger, 2017) Southern Gothic meets necromancy in this tale of three generations of Florida women (there are no male speaking parts) abandoned, abused, and trying to survive on their own terms. The cicada-toned dread builds strong through dark revelations, not all of them magical. — KH (Runs through October 7 in an intimate, eerie production by Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre.)

Good

The Spy and the Thief (Fiction, Edward D. Hoch, 1971) Fourteen Silver-Age mystery stories by the king of the puzzle-story, seven starring British crytpanalyst Jeffery Rand, seven starring smooth “thief of the worthless” Nick Velvet. The Velvet stories are always good, since they usually have a heist to go with the puzzle, and Hoch’s invention gets freer play. The Rand stories remain a mixed bag, although some of them show nice period detail. –KH

Okay

The Spy Who Read Latin (Fiction, Edward D. Hoch, 1990) This collection of seven Hoch puzzle mystery stories about British cryptanalyst Jeffery Rand doesn’t show Hoch at his best. The puzzles, which should be naturals for a cryptographer detective, are by and large too simple, and the spy atmosphere is less than convincing. –KH

Episode 259: All the Cute Girls are Capulets

September 15th, 2017 | Robin

 

In That Thing I Always Say, we examine Ken’s maxim that death spirals make for good gaming.

With Labor Day in the rear view mirror, the Cinema Hut looks back at blockbuster season for a round up of the summer movies that were.

Finally the Consulting Occultist serves up a reply to Patreon backer David Shaw, who seeks the secret truth on occult Kashmir.

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

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


In Unknown Armies, Atlas Games’ modern-day, occult roleplaying game, you play the heroically broken people who conspire to fix the world. That conspiracy just got easier, with the arrival of the game on store shelves near you! The book has been written. The book has been read. Now it rewrites you. Across time it spreads, creating dread new realities. And you’re in all of them. Robin’s epic new GUMSHOE project, The Yellow King Roleplaying Game has concluded its Kickstarter run, but is now available for pre-order at the Pelgrane Store for those who missed it. Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish. John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Golden Age Mysteries and The Sewer Clown

September 12th, 2017 | 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 our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

Robin is off at the Toronto International Film Festival and posting capsule reviews over at his blog. When titles covered there are released in cinemas or on home video, he’ll rerun the reviews in future installments of this here hut.

Recommended

Love Lies Bleeding (Fiction, Edmund Crispin, 1948) Detective don Gervase Fen is conveniently on the scene when a public school reels under (at least) two murders. Calm and confident in tone, Crispin’s smooth wit, convincing characters, and nicely knotted mystery do ample justice to the setting he creates here. Among the best exemplars of the Golden Age of Mystery. –KH

Monster Island Tales (Fiction, James L. Cambias, 2017) Collects two good short stories: “Return to Skull Island” is a shaggy dog (Waldroppy dog?) zine review of a somewhat alternate King Kong; “The Dinosaur Train” is a deceptively light, touchingly Bradburyesque tale of a family with a traveling dinosaur show fallen on hard times in the 1980s. –KH

Good

The Case of the Gilded Fly (Fiction, Edmund Crispin, 1944) Crispin’s first mystery featuring his detective don Gervase Fen combines Oxford, the theater, and a locked room for a frothy mixture that reads like the lowest common denominator of Dorothy Sayers and John Dickson Carr, which is to say, still pretty good. Two amazingly effective M.R. Jamesian incidents don’t deepen the story so much as cast it in a watery light by comparison. –KH

Toni Erdmann (Film, Germany, Maren Ade, 2016) Slovenly, prank-loving teacher poses as an eccentric business figure in an effort to get closer to and/or severely annoy his workaholic daughter when she’s trying to close a difficult consulting deal. Dogme-esque comedy has some memorable scenes at its core, but is suffocated by a two hour forty minute run time full of dead moments crying out for a ruthless edit.—RDL

Okay

It (Film, US, Andy Muschietti, 2017) Focusing on only the childhood half of Stephen King’s masterpiece, even at 2 and a quarter hours the film feels both cramped and shallow, relying almost entirely on jump scares and theme music. Strong casting can only do so much; the script and director know they need to bring the town of Derry and the kids’ nightmares into the lived foreground, but have no real idea how to do it. Like the miniseries, It punts when replacing King’s ending; unlike the miniseries, It doesn’t have Tim Curry. –KH

Legends and Romances of Brittany (Nonfiction, Lewis Spence, 1917) Grab bag of Breton faerie, hero, saint and dolmen lore, with the prose voice and scholarship you’d expect from a hundred year old compendium. Useful source material for the Yellow King Roleplaying Game’s Brittany stretch goal, though scarcely a cracking casual read.—RDL

Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye (Fiction, Arthur Gray, 1919) Seven supernatural tales of Jesus College Cambridge, none set after 1766. Gray deep dives into M.R. James-style antiquarianism without the grue and with only a very few droplets of dread, like a church-architecture-obsessed Ripley’s Believe it or Not! –KH

Episode 258: Mom! He’s in Cisalpine Gaul!

September 8th, 2017 | Robin

 

A couple of episodes ago we put a pin in the idea of Magic Blackwater and now in the Gaming Hut we unpin it for further consideration.

In yet more business arising from the previous minutes, the Mythology Hut looks at the kinship between the vampire and the serial killer.

Then Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, specifcally Stacy Dellorfano of Contessa fame.

Then it’s off to the whirring proximity of Ken’s Time Machine to see what it did and didn’t have to do with the Roman Emperor Caracalla’s murder of his brother Geta. Question courtesy of Patreon backer Ash Jackson Is the Scrollbard.

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

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


In Unknown Armies, Atlas Games’ modern-day, occult roleplaying game, you play the heroically broken people who conspire to fix the world. That conspiracy just got easier, with the arrival of the game on store shelves near you!

The book has been written. The book has been read. Now it rewrites you. Across time it spreads, creating dread new realities. And you’re in all of them. Robin’s epic new GUMSHOE project, The Yellow King Roleplaying Game has concluded its Kickstarter run, but is now available for pre-order at the Pelgrane Store for those who missed it.

Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish.

John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

Ken and Robin Consume Media: A Damn Fine Cup of [REDACTED]

September 5th, 2017 | 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 our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

The Pinnacle

Twin Peaks: The Return (Television, US, David Lynch, 2018) Grotesque, otherworldly servitors of good engineer earthly events to awaken FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) from a false existence his evil doppelganger has spun him into to prevent his full emergence from a generation-long stint in the pocket universe known as the Black Lodge. Gobsmacking phantasmagoria of narrative, genre, dream, nostalgia, aging, America dualism, and the myth of [REDACTED.]—RDL

Recommended

The Brink’s Job (Film, US, William Friedkin, 1978) Played by a posse of magnificent character actors led by Peter Falk, a gang of two-bit lugs stumbles into a perfect crime in 1950 Boston: heisting $2 million from the Brink’s headquarters office. Friedkin manages not just the tightrope of comedy and heist thriller, but also of making working-class dingbats his main characters without condescension. Special mention must be made of Warren Oates’ manic turn as an unstable ordnance expert. –KH

Charlie Varrick (Film, US, Don Siegel, 1973) Small-time bank robber Varrick (Walter Matthau) accidentally steals $750,000 in mob money from a small-time bank in New Mexico, and has to stay two steps ahead of the cops, the Mafia, and his wild-eyed partner (Andy Robinson). A prime example of the surprisingly sparse “actually intelligent protagonist” genre. I’ve already seen this film, which I just watched again on the big screen, but I’m breaking the implied KARCM rules and posting here because it’s one of the best crime films ever made and you, our beloved backers, deserve to know that. –KH

Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic (Nonfiction, Maurice Lévy, 1972 (trans. 1988)) In this short work, Lévy prefigures almost every major critical view of Lovecraft that would follow, from the psychoanalytic to the mythopoetic to the antimodernist. Lévy is especially good on the symbol-concept of the Lovecraftian abyss, which encompasses both the underground and outer space. –KH

Personal Shopper (Film, France, Olivier Assayas, 2017) Young woman with mediumistic powers (Kristen Stewart) works as stylist to a temperamental celebrity while waiting for her dead twin brother to send her a message from beyond. Stewart pushes her mannerisms to the limit in this enigmatic supernatural drama about temptation and loss.—RDL

Six Bridges to Cross (Film, US, Joseph Pevney, 1955) When thief and racketeer Jerry Florea (Tony Curtis) uses Boston cop Ed Gallagher (George Nader) as his alibi for an armored car company robbery, their lifelong friendship gets put to the test. Based on the 1950 Brink’s job but more concerned with emotion than criminology, Pevney’s film wins with Curtis’ strong, many-hued performance. –KH

Good

The Steel Trap (Film, US, Andrew L. Stone, 1952) Devoted family man (Joseph Cotten) decides to rob the bank where he works and escape to extradition-free Brazil with his unknowing wife (Teresa Wright) before his employers discover the theft. Part of a cycle of 50s noirs about squarejohn citizens spiraling into criminality, this is at its best when cranking suspense from a succession of tiny logistical hang-ups.—RDL

Okay

A Royal Affair (Film, Denmark, Nikolaj Arcel, 2012) English princess (Alicia Vikander) marries the Danish king Christian VII, an unstable twit whose charms dim compared to to their intense, Voltaire-loving court physician (Mads Mikkelsen.) Lushly appointed, often obvious historical drama kept alive by Mikkelsen’s star charisma.—RDL

Not Recommended

The Defenders (Television, Netflix, Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez, 2017) Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage team up to keep Iron Fist out of the clutches of an ancient international conspiracy. Coasts for a while on the winning characterizations and performances established in Netflix’s first three Marvel shows before it becomes evident that the script needs every writing crutch in the book to fit two hours of story into an eight hour bag.—RDL

Episode 257: Gen Con 2017

September 1st, 2017 | Robin

 

Annual traditions happen only once a year, and since Gen Con has now happened fifty times, we must bring you an extra special convention review Gaming Hut.

With a Travel Advisory on something that won’t happen for a long time or possibly ever–Ken’s journey into  eclipse totality!

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

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.


In Unknown Armies, Atlas Games’ modern-day, occult roleplaying game, you play the heroically broken people who conspire to fix the world. That conspiracy just got easier, with the arrival of the game on store shelves near you!

The book has been written. The book has been read. Now it rewrites you. Across time it spreads, creating dread new realities. And you’re in all of them. Robin’s epic new GUMSHOE project, The Yellow King Roleplaying Game has concluded its Kickstarter run, but is now available for pre-order at the Pelgrane Store for those who missed it.

Do intervals between episodes plunge you into Hite withdrawal? Never fear! his brilliant pieces on parasitic gaming, alternate Newtons, Dacian werewolves and more now lurk among the sparkling bounty of The Best of FENIX Volumes 1-3, from returning sponsors Askfageln. Yes, it’s Sweden’s favorite RPG magazine, now beautifully collected. Warning: not in Swedish.

John Scott Tynes’ Puppetland is ready to knock the stuffing out of a game store near you in its gorgeous new full-color hardcover edition. Join the good folks at Arc Dream in battling the horrific forces of Punch the Maker-Killer!

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Robin
Film Cannister