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Archive for May, 2022

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Kids in the Hall, Chip ‘n Dale, Norm Macdonald, and Every Henry Gamadge Novel

May 31st, 2022 | 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 Kids in the Hall Season 1 (Television, Canada, Prime; Dave Foley, Bruce McCullough, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney & Scott Thompson, 2022) Awareness of age’s ravages creeps into a new season of surreal and subversive sketches populated by bad doctors, drunk dads, and Kevin McDonald, whose voice goes up high as he waggles his finger in the air for no reason. My rating for this miraculously on-stride revival is that of a diehard who followed the Kids in their Toronto heyday. If you’re coming to it cold, probably Recommended.—RDL

Recommended

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (Film, US, Akiva Schaffer, 2022) Has-been chipmunk actors Chip (John Mulaney) and Dale (Andy Samberg) reluctantly reunite to rescue their kidnapped former co-star Monte (Eric Bana). Peter Pan as the villain in a Disney movie about IP rights aside, this delightfully overstuffed romp nails the Roger Rabbit formula of taking its ridiculous world seriously, with great comic results. –KH

Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks (Film, Canada, Reg Harkema, 2022) Documentary history of the brilliant underdog sketch troupe from their origins in Calgary and Toronto to the prep for their just-released revival season reveals the famously contentious dynamic between this band of adopted comedy brothers. Who knew the worst offender during the Brain Candy fiasco was Kevin?—RDL

MacGruber Season 1 (Television, US, Will Forte & Jorma Taccone, 2021-2022) Upon his release from prison, insecure throat-ripping special agent MacGruber (Forte) tackles an old foe’s deadly scheme, attempts a reunion with his now-married flame (Kristen Wiig) and learns the secret of his mother’s murder. Cult movie adaptation from a recurring SNL skit makes an unlikely return in television form, tripling down on its technique of taking outrageous bits and beating them into the ground until they sputter to life again, and then are again gleefully belabored.—RDL

Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special (Television, Netflix, Norm Macdonald, 2022) Before a procedure in 2020 to treat the cancer that killed him in 2021, Norm taped a 55-minute standup routine on a webcam “just in case things went south.” While (as David Letterman notes during a fascinating half-hour roundup finale of Norm’s peers dissecting the routine while recalling their friend) the absence of an audience means we’re only getting the raw Norm without the adjustments for crowd response every standup makes to the material, the special demonstrates just how very very strong raw Norm was. –KH

Good

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (Film, US, Akiva Schaffer, 2022) An old co-star’s disappearance draws washed up chipmunk actors, risk-averse Chip (John Mulaney) and irrepressible Dale (Andy Samberg) into an adventure resembling their once-loved 80s TV show. Jokes aimed at grown-up animation fans abound in a metafictional romp that doesn’t outright tell us it’s set in the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? universe.—RDL

Every Henry Gamadge Novel (Fiction, Elizabeth Daly, 1940-1951) Henry Gamadge, upper-class document authenticator and sometime bibliophile, solves mysteries embedded in family dynamics: an American version of the “country house” mystery genre. Daly was Agatha Christie’s favorite American writer, and her puzzles equal Dame Agatha’s while her characters remain human and three-dimensional. Gamadge’s real superpower is general genteel niceness: he knows everybody and gets along with most people, he’s the only Golden Age detective you’d actually want to hang with. Daly’s New York is the uptown version of Nero Wolfe’s, and her puzzles are better. Start with my most Recommended titles of the sixteen: Arrow Pointing Nowhere, The Book of the Dead, And Dangerous to Know; then hit the slightly out-of-mode Evidence of Things Seen. –KH

Okay

The Beast With Five Fingers (Film, US, Robert Florey, 1947) In a creepy old house in Italy, an obsessive astrologer (Peter Lorre) blames a venal lawyer’s death on the severed hand of a dead pianist.  Even the granddaddy of undead hand horror can’t fully commit to the premise, leaving the first act, in which Curt Siodmak’s script establishes its cast of gothic, Buñuelian characters, as the strong point.—RDL

Episode 498: Time Narcs

May 27th, 2022 | Robin

Beholders swoop around the futuristic spires of the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Ian Carlsen seeks tips on time travel in F20 games.

Estimable backer Jason Thompson beckons us into the Culture Hut to ask if self-taught Chicago artist Joseph E. Yoakum might have been peering into the Dreamlands.

Finally our hero returns from Austin laden with queso and books, and tells us about the later in another epic installment of Ken’s Bookshelf.

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.


Human problems are out of hand, so thank goodness, and Atlas Games, for Magical Kitties Save the Day, a fresh, fun roleplaying game for players of all ages, and for GMs from age 6 and up!

Score a blood-drenched special bonus from Pelgrane Press when you order the print edition Night’s Black Agents Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook or any of its associated bundles. A new 50-page Cuttings PDF of deleted scenes and horrors that didn’t fit is now available for a limited time with the voucher code VAMP2021.

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!

Delta Green Iconoclasts, a campaign of horrors modern and ancient, brings a team of Agents to a scene of horrors all too real: Mosul in 2016, held by the self-styled Islamic State in a reign of depraved brutality. From a small base at the Kirkuk airfield, the Agents must research the horrors to come and prepare for a harrowing infiltration. Terrors and new supplementary material await, now in PDF, hardback now in preorder.

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Dr. Strange, Men, and a Demon-Possessed Skull

May 24th, 2022 | 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

Feels Good Man (Film, US, Arthur Jones, 2020) Sweet-natured cartoonist Matt Furie reacts with confusion, dismay and finally resolve when his creation, Pepe the Frog, long a staple of Internet meme culture, metastasizes into a symbol of far-right hate. Documentary of our Esoterror times fills in the many intermediate stages of Pepe’s disjunctive semiotic journey.—RDL

Good Time (Film, US, Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie, 2017) After dragging his developmentally challenged brother (Benny Safdie) into a bank robbery that gets him locked up, a manipulative screw-up (Robert Pattinson) initiates a cascade of terrible decisions in his bid to free him. Crackling entry in the nightlong doom spiral sub-genre informed by Abel Ferrara and the Dardennes Brothers.—RDL

A Hero of Our Time (Fiction, Mikhail Lermontov, 1840) An observer’s reminiscences and the protagonist’s diary entries recount the romantic havoc wrought by a fickle young Russian officer stationed in the Caucasus. Ironic character study steadily chips away at the outward charms of its inwardly empty subject.—RDL

The Skull (Film, UK, Freddie Francis, 1965) Occult expert Maitland (Peter Cushing) obtains the demon-possessed skull of the Marquis de Sade from sweaty fixer Marco (Patrick Wymark) and badness happens. Acting tour de force by Cushing makes the most from the delicious high concept (originally a Robert Bloch story). A Modernist score by Elisabeth Luytens, fetish-laden set design, and a fine supporting turn by Christopher Lee as a rival occultist top off one of Hammer/Amicus stalwart Francis’ best films. –KH

Good

The Blue Panther (Film, France, Claude Chabrol, 1965) Rich young woman (Marie Laforêt) on vacation at a Swiss ski resort relies on her wits and her judo training when she becomes the caretaker of a jewel sought by assorted international assassins. Chabrol’s tribute to the espionage side of the Hitchcock filmography is pretty and charming but a touch too insouciant about fulfilling genre requirements.—RDL

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Film, US, Sam Raimi, 2022) Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) tries to protect universe-jumper America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) from the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Think of this as MCU vanilla swirled with Raimi ripple; while the story lurches along we at least get plenty of spooky stuff and wild camera flips to entertain us. Olsen is the real standout acting-wise, mostly thanks to a clunky script that offers little for Cumberbatch or Gomez to do except handwave CGI nonsense. –KH

Men (Film, UK, Alex Garland, 2022) Widowed Harper (Jessie Buckley) rents a manor in a remote English countryside from Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) to seek closure but gets toxic masculinity with a side of folk horror. A feast of sound and lushly filmed nature, a Green Man, and weird repeating Rory Kinnear only take you so far: a Cronenbergian spectacle at the end doesn’t stick the landing at all, although it certainly squicks it. Harper’s empty passivity wastes Buckley and vitiates what point remains.  –KH

Okay

Three Resurrected Drunkards (Film, Japan, Nagisa Oshima, 1968) A trio of students lose their IDs to Korean infiltrators and must resort to metafictional awareness to save their skins. Oshima’s answer to Help! plunks the pop group Folk Crusaders into an eccentric mix of formal experimentation, gross-out humor, and Vietnam War protest.—RDL

Episode 497: Edgelord Tarot

May 20th, 2022 | Robin

Beloved Patreon backer Ryan McClelland kicks of an all-request episode in the Gaming Hut, seeking advice on how to convincing players to treat former adversaries as questionable allies.

In the History Hut, estimable backer Derek Hiemforth has discovered that two doomed airships, the R101 and the Hindenburg, used the exact same Duralumin, and naturally asks us who cursed it.

Then it’s time for Ripped from the Headlines, as discerning backer Matthew Preston wants to know who’s in the lead-lined sarcophagus preventative archeologists just found buried under Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Finally, the Consulting Occultist tells curious backer Aaron Sapp, and by extension you, about his collection of Tarot card decks.

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.


Human problems are out of hand, so thank goodness, and Atlas Games, for Magical Kitties Save the Day, a fresh, fun roleplaying game for players of all ages, and for GMs from age 6 and up!

Score a blood-drenched special bonus from Pelgrane Press when you order the print edition Night’s Black Agents Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook or any of its associated bundles. A new 50-page Cuttings PDF of deleted scenes and horrors that didn’t fit is now available for a limited time with the voucher code VAMP2021.

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!

Delta Green Iconoclasts, a campaign of horrors modern and ancient, brings a team of Agents to a scene of horrors all too real: Mosul in 2016, held by the self-styled Islamic State in a reign of depraved brutality. From a small base at the Kirkuk airfield, the Agents must research the horrors to come and prepare for a harrowing infiltration. Terrors and new supplementary material await, now in PDF, hardback now in preorder.

Ken and Robin Consume Media: 60s LA, 80s Argentina, 30s Germany, and Classic SF Art

May 17th, 2022 | 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

Eve’s Hollywood (Nonfiction, Eve Babitz, 1972) Autobiographical essays of girlhood at late-50s Hollywood High and young adulthood in the heyday of the Sunset Strip assert an unsparing but wholehearted love for Los Angeles. Voice is everything in these sere, incisive gems of the memoirist’s art, never mind brushes with the Manson family or the time she introduced Dalí to Zappa.—RDL

Recommended

Azor (Film, Argentina/France/Switzerland, 2021) Uneasy Swiss banker (Fabrizio Rongione) travels to junta-era Argentina with his vigilant wife (Stephanie Cléau) to sort out business deals complicated by a colleague’s ambiguous disappearance. Handles the material of the political thriller with a hushed minimalism, wringing dread from anodyne surroundings.—RDL

Better Days (Film, China, Derek Tsang, 2019) Withdrawn girl (Zhou Dongyu)  targeted for vicious senior-year bullying seeks the aid of a street tough (Jackson Yee.) Intense performances from the young leads and the director’s urgent visual style lift this gritty crime drama above the po-faced declarations of Party propaganda inserted around its hard-hitting social critique.—RDL

Chroma: The Art of Alex Schomburg (Nonfiction, Jon Gustafson, 1986) Puerto Rican artist Schomburg began illustrating for Gernsback in 1925, drew covers for Golden Age superhero comics, and survived self-exile in Spokane to return as an SF art grand master. If there were another study of Schomburg, this one (which spends too many of its slim 108 pages describing potted history) might only be Good, but as the only survey of a near-forgotten master, it deserves Recommendation. –KH

Little Man, What Now? (Film, US, Frank Borzage, 1934) When his optimistic fiancée (Margaret Sullavan) gets pregnant, a young clerk’s (Douglass Montgomery) struggle to find a stable job in Depression-era Germany reaches a point of desperation. Borzage’s humanism overcomes Montgomery’s wooden ingenuism in this adaptation of Hans Fallada’s observational novel.—RDL

Okay

Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 (Film, Japan, Shimomura Yuji, 2021) Disgraced Yoshioka clan seeks revenge on sword master Musashi (Tak Sakaguchi) by ambushing him with 400 samurai and ronin, setting up a one-take, 77-minute fight scene. Sadly, the cheapout production undermines the “killing is pointless” message the dull choreography hopefully intends. More like watching a really good gardener pull 400 weeds than anything else. –KH

Episode 496: Tonsils Not Included

May 13th, 2022 | Robin

Beloved Patreon backer Urchin Prince beckons us to the shiniest throne of the Gaming Hut to ask about boons the PCs’ patrons might give them.

The Architecture Hut faces cost overruns for its fiendish traps as estimable backer Tim Vert asks which famous architects we’d commission were we to build dungeons.

An odd shrimp smell lures us to the forest, and the Monster Hut, to discuss the shapeshifting tunda of Colombia and Ecuador.

Then we take a patented Ken’s Time Machine look at the Popish plot conspiracy hoax.

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.


Human problems are out of hand, so thank goodness, and Atlas Games, for Magical Kitties Save the Day, a fresh, fun roleplaying game for players of all ages, and for GMs from age 6 and up!

Score a blood-drenched special bonus from Pelgrane Press when you order the print edition Night’s Black Agents Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook or any of its associated bundles. A new 50-page Cuttings PDF of deleted scenes and horrors that didn’t fit is now available for a limited time with the voucher code VAMP2021.

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!

Delta Green: Black Sites collects terrifying Delta Green operations previously published only in PDF or in standalone paperback modules.  They lock bystanders and Agents alike in unlit rooms with the cosmic terrors of the unnatural. A 208 page hardback by masters of top secret mythos horror Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy, Shane Ivey, and Caleb Stokes.

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Moon Knight, Picard, and a Javelin-Throwing Cary Grant

May 10th, 2022 | 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

Blondie Johnson (Film, US, Ray Enright, 1933) Desperate for a break, an unemployed gal (Joan Blondell) uses her smarts to rise in the ranks as a gangster consigliere, keeping the less bright accomplice she loves (Chester Morris) at arm’s length. Peppy crime drama lightly gender-flips the Warners gangster structure.—RDL

This is the Night (Film, US, Frank Tuttle, 1932) To defuse the jealousies of his lover’s javelin-throwing husband (Cary Grant), a put-upon sophisticate (Roland Young) hires a desperate young woman (Lila Damita) to pose as his wife for the duration of a trip to Venice, Droll farce given further oomph by a scene-stealing Charles Ruggles as our hero’s enabler and rival.—RDL

Good

The Bandit (Film, Italy, Alberto Lattuada, 1946) With his old life shattered, a POW returned from Austria (Amedeo Nazzari) becomes the lover of a hard-bitten criminal (Anna Magnani), assembling a robbery gang from the ranks of her hangers-on. Combines the arc of the gangster film, the stark, expressionist visuals of film noir, and, unfortunately, the shameless sentimentality of neo-Realism.—RDL

Okay

Moon Knight Season 1 (Television, US, Disney+, Jeremy Slater, 2022) Meek Londoner Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) discovers that he is also American mercenary Marc Spector, who is also the superhero Moon Knight and a servant of an Egyptian god, and that the god’s previous host (Ethan Hawke) has a plan to destroy the world’s potential sinners. Once again for MCU TV, a winning performance and characterization builds to a disappointing conclusion.—RDL

Picard Season 2 (Television, US, Paramount+, Terry Matalas, 2022) An encounter with strange new Borg prompts Q to send Jean-Luc (Patrick Stewart) and his newfound crew to 2024 to prevent the emergence of the darkest timeline. A freeway pile-up of colliding homages to iconic Trek episodes epitomizes the crisis of referentiality rippling across the geek franchise space—RDL

Ken has been consuming carnitas in Texas.

Episode 495: More of an Octagon

May 6th, 2022 | Robin

The Gaming Hut investigates the difference between problems that rules sets should set out to solve and mere conceptual issues that never come up in play.

The History Hut gets hairy as we reveal the secrets of the Chester Cat Hoax.

Umbrage is entertained in the Narrative Hut as beloved Patreon backer Benjamin Rawls seeks our support on the misuse of the term “allegory.”

And much mystery is found within three points as we enter the Eliptony Hut, at the urging of estimable backer Ed (Speaker in Digressions), for a look at the Bridgewater Triangle.

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.


Human problems are out of hand, so thank goodness, and Atlas Games, for Magical Kitties Save the Day, a fresh, fun roleplaying game for players of all ages, and for GMs from age 6 and up!

Score a blood-drenched special bonus from Pelgrane Press when you order the print edition Night’s Black Agents Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook or any of its associated bundles. A new 50-page Cuttings PDF of deleted scenes and horrors that didn’t fit is now available for a limited time with the voucher code VAMP2021.

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!

Delta Green: Black Sites collects terrifying Delta Green operations previously published only in PDF or in standalone paperback modules.  They lock bystanders and Agents alike in unlit rooms with the cosmic terrors of the unnatural. A 208 page hardback by masters of top secret mythos horror Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy, Shane Ivey, and Caleb Stokes.

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Tokyo Vice, Slow Horses, and the Making of Ghostbusters

May 3rd, 2022 | 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

Cleanin’ Up the Town: Remembering Ghostbusters (Film, UK, Anthony Bueno, 2019) Lots of talking heads – especially Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, and Ivan Reitman – tell the story of the No. 1 film of 1984. Lots of focus on Richard Edlund’s team of SFX makers, and the joy expressed by everyone involved, compensates for the absence of Murray and Moranis. Not a cutting edge “making of” doc, but a justifiably proud film about people justifiably proud to have made a Pinnacle. –KH

Slow Horses Season 1 (Television, UK/US, Apple+, Will Smith, 2022) Sidelined to Slough House, the place MI5 careers go to die, an ambitious young agent (Jack Lowden) ignores the elaborate vituperations of his brilliant, slovenly new boss (Gary Oldman) for an investigation that entraps the department in a false flag scheme. Adaptation of the first in a series of novels by Mick Herron fuses overt le Carré homage with contemporary spy thrills. The result gives Oldman an unforgettable character to make an exquisite meal of, and that he surely does.—RDL

Tokyo Vice Season 1 (Television, US, HBO Max, J.T. Rogers, 2022) Naive gaijin (Ansel Elgort) becomes an oversized bull in a journalistic dishware department when he joins a Tokyo newspaper as a crime reporter, forging contacts with a principled maverick cop (Ken Watanabe), an ambitious club hostess (Rachel Keller), and a neophyte Yakuza (Shô Kasamatsu.) The grounding authenticity of Jake Adelstein’s nonfiction memoir and the energy imparted by the Michael Mann-directed pilot elevates this ensemble crime drama. I would have liked the season closer better had I known to expect a cliffhanger, so I’m telling you that now.—RDL

Okay

Murder at the Vanities (Film, US, Mitchell Leisen, 1934) The fast-talking stage manager of a Broadway revue (Jack Oakie) stays one step ahead of a lunkish cop (Victor McLaglen) when a series of slayings threatens to disrupt an opening night performance already in progress. Very Pre-Code musical mystery is  notable for a Duke Ellington number, a musical ode to marihuana, and as a filmed record of the Vanities series of ultra-racy theatrical extravaganzas.—RDL

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