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Archive for July, 2022

Episode 507: Awesomely Underfunded

July 29th, 2022 | Robin

 

In the Gaming Hut, Beloved Patreon backer Eric Jeppesen, or a clever facsimile thereof, kicks off an all-request episode, as he wonders how to run GUMSHOE One-2-One with a doppelganger protagonist.

Stealthy backer Erik R gains access to the Tradecraft Hut to ask how to set Night’s Black Agents in Asia.

Dimensionally resonant backer Nikolaj ducks into the Narrative Hut to find out what the sudden multiplicity of multiverses in movies and TV tells us about the present zeitgeist.

And finally formidable backer John Scheib revs up Ken’s Time Machine to learn about the timeline where Eugene of Savoy fights for France and not against it.

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.


Get ready to solve your Christmas present problems early as Atlas Games brings the kid-friendly social deduction game Weird Little Elf to Kickstarter, until August 11th.

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: Nope, Early Sun-Baked Noirs, and the Secret History of TSR

July 26th, 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

Barry Season 3 (Television, US, HBO, Bill Hader and Alec Berg, 2022) As avenging relatives of his past victims come out of the woodwork, Barry (Hader) tries to atone with Gene (Henry Winkler) by reviving his self-sabotaged acting career. In a finely calibrated tonal adjustment, the gloom of purgatory settles on the protagonists as they discover the price of redemption.—RDL

Desert Fury (Film, US, Lewis Allen, 1947) Resisting the control of her domineering casino operator mother (Mary Astor), a restless young woman (Lizabeth Scott) brushes off the interest of a handsome deputy (Burt Lancaster) for the worldly charms of a gambler (John Hodiak) newly returned to her desert town. Early example of sun-baked noir focuses on psychological drama and a not so subtextual gay subtext.—RDL

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (Television, US, Netflix, Rachel Dretzin & Grace McNally, 2022) Documentary series exposes the depredations of polygamous cult leader Warren Jeffs and lauds the courage of the young women who escaped their insular community and fought to expose him. In addition to putting the spotlight back on the heroes of the story and establishing the psychodynamics of cult control,  this documentary series paints the full spectrum of Jeffs’ stunning arch-criminality.—RDL

Nope (Film, US, Jordan Peele, 2022) A UFO haunts the failing Hollywood horse ranch run by siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em (Keke Palmer). Both the horror and the Western in this horror Western work, often magnificently but not quite in harness. Peele’s high concept – a Western where the gaze is the gun – could fuel a dozen films, it’s so strong. Kaluuya’s laconic performance as the slow-burning OJ channels Gary Cooper, also magnificently; Steven Yuen kills in a smaller part as a traumatized former child actor. –KH

Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons (Nonfiction, Ben Riggs, 2022) Working from original documents, sales figures, and interviews, Riggs assembles the first comprehensive history of TSR’s fall and rise and fall from 1983-ish to 1997, i.e., the Lorraine Williams Era. More sympathetic to Williams than most outsiders (and insiders), Riggs provides a needed corrective to the smog of fantasy surrounding the death of the great red dragon. –KH

Good

The River’s Edge (Film, US, Allan Dwan, 1957) When the cultured bunco man (Ray Milland) she loves shows up to claim the dissatisfied wife (Debra Paget) of a failing rancher (Anthony Quinn), he accepts the offer of a big fee to smuggle them across the border into Mexico. Sun-baked noir makes sweaty use of the murderous love triangle motif.—RDL

Okay

Black Widow (Film, US, Nunnally Johnson, 1954) When the ambitious young woman he unwisely allowed the run of his apartment in his wife’s absence is found hanged in his shower, a tough-minded Broadway producer (Van Heflin) goes on the lam to clear his name. Gene Tierney and Ginger Rogers fill out the cast in a Technicolor murder mystery briefly enlivened by sequences in which the Wrong Man protagonist flirts with a brutal psychotic break.—RDL

Episode 506: His Bonaparte Eyes

July 22nd, 2022 | Robin

The Gaming Hut floats further from land than it ever has as beloved Patreon backer Alden Strock seeks the tabletop uses of Point Nemo, the planet’s literal middle of nowhere.

In Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Ken talks to author Ben Riggs about his history of TSR, Slaying the Dragon, now orderable from MacMillan.

The Food Hut hops on a train to check out the oldest chain restaurant in America, along with the rest of the food and hospitality empire that was the Fred Harvey Company.

Finally estimable backer John Kingdon asks the Consulting Occultist to profile Gerald Gardner, fashioner of modern Wicca.

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.


Get ready to solve your Christmas present problems early as Atlas Games brings the kid-friendly social deduction game Weird Little Elf to Kickstarter, until August 11th.

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: Stranger Things, Ms. Marvel, Thor and Kingdom

July 19th, 2022 | Robin

Recommended

Kingdom Seasons 1 & 2 (Television, South Korea, Netflix, Kim Eun-hee, 2020-2021) Endangered, idealistic Crown Prince in a fictionalized 17th century discovers a link between the ambitious clan that controls the country and an outbreak of a plague that turns people into flesh-eating monsters. Smart blend of the horror and Joseon court intrigue genres cleverly writes its zombie rules to balance the two elements of its mash-up. The script is especially good at making us think we are one step ahead of it when actually we are right where it wants us.—RDL

Ms. Marvel Season 1 (Television, US, Disney+, Bisha K. Ali, 2022) Irrepressible, superhero-besotted New Jersey teen (Iman Vellani) discovers she has forcefield powers, granted her by a bangle connected to a family secret and the Partition of India. Vellani’s preternatural charm, and the focus on the family story over a worldshaking villain arc, make for the most consistent and satisfying MCU+ show to date.—RDL

Stranger Things Season 4 (Television, US, Netflix, The Duffer Brothers, 2022) As the gang back home in Hawkins encounters a murderous inhuman wizard they nickname Vecna, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) uneasily reunites with Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) to recover the powers she’ll need to stop him. Yes, the C-plot that sidelines the adults so they can’t solve the kids’ problem is almost purely dead weight, but the main action successfully recaptures the Carpenter-esque tone of the first two seasons, with plenty of GUMSHOE-esque horror investigation along the wayt.—RDL

Triple Agent (Film, France/Greece/Italy/Russia/Spain, Éric Rohmer, 2004) Exiled White Russian intelligence chief Fyodor Voronin (Serge Renko) keeps his artist wife Arsinoé (Katerina Didaskalou), and thus the audience, in the dark about his activities and allegiance in late-1930s Paris. Rohmer adapts the Miller-Skoblin case to his perennial theme of words not matching actions – and since the only thing we see Voronin do is talk, it becomes quite a gripping ride for something that barely leaves a domestic interior set. –KH

Good

The Gold Watch (Fiction, Paul Halter, 2019) Three mysterious killings (in 1901, 1911, and the 1960s) overlap with each other, and with a blocked French playwright in 1991, linked by a gold watch, a half-recalled film noir, an invisible color, and The King in Yellow. The 1911 case, solved by Halter’s series detective Owen Burns, is a classic (and terrific) Carr-style impossible crime; the others are more impressionistic or existential. I was hoping for a fully rational connection between the threads, but didn’t get it — if I reread this knowing it’s not there, I’ll probably like it better. –KH

Okay

Thor: Love and Thunder (Film, US, Taika Waititi, 2022) Drawn back to Earth by the depredations of the God Butcher (Christian Bale), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) catches up with Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who is also Thor. Decent bits (Bale and Portman, mostly) float in a sea of gags left way too long and crafted far too little. Even the jokes that work merely undercut any real stakes or meaning. The less said about the CGI the better, but it’s telling that Waititi’s mock-Snyder battle in the Shadow Realm is the only fight that doesn’t look like murky garbage. –KH

Episode 505: Move Them Back to the Fun

July 15th, 2022 | Robin

The next time you’re about to design a situation where the players can’t do what they want to do, you’ll recall this week’s Gaming Hut segment and think, “How do I let them do that without wrecking everything?”

The Crime Blotter investigates a string of rhino horn thefts attributed to the Dead Zoo Gang.

In Ripped from the Headlines, beloved Patreon backer Craig Maloney seeks the arcane secrets of Tik Tok tics.

In a previous installment of Ken’s Time Machine, while fixing the Greek War of Independence, our hero preserved the life of Lord Byron. Now he tells us about the horror novel that resulted from this previous intervention.

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.


Get ready to solve your Christmas present problems early as Atlas Games brings the kid-friendly social deduction game Weird Little Elf to Kickstarter, until August 11th.

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: Star Trek Strange New Worlds, Black Phone, and Barry

July 12th, 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

All the Old Knives (Film, US, Janus Metz, 2022) Intense CIA agent (Chris Pine) accepts an assignment to unmask the mole behind a disastrous past operation, leading him to his former colleague and lover (Thandiwe Newton.) Spy mystery framed as a two-hander between its smoldering leads, with a beguiling love of sleek surfaces reminiscent of Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair.—RDL

Barry Season 3 (Television, US, HBOMax, Alec Berg & Bill Hader, 2022) Consequences mount for the now cripplingly borderline hitman/actor Barry (Hader) and everyone else in his orbit, in a season that successfully switches the series tone from “black comedy” to “comic bleakness.” We pay the piper for our ironic distance in previous seasons: note how many sequences are filmed in long shots with few cuts, often through silent windows. Frankly, this is such a good place and tone to end the show that the news of Season 4 has me a trifle nervous. –KH

Beasts Clawing At Straws (Film, South Korea, 2020, Kim Yong-Hoon) A Louis Vuitton bag stuffed with cash brings a struggling bath attendant (Sung-Woo Bae), an abused bar hostess (Hyeon-bin Shin), and a weasel deep in debt to the mob (Jung Woo-Sung) into complicated and violent collision. Brutal ensemble crime drama withholds its structural trick until well into its twisty running time.—RDL

The Bridge (Film, Germany, Bernhard Wicki, 1959) As American forces push deep into German territory, teen pals excitedly embrace their draft into the army and are assigned, in an act of apparent mercy, to guard the inconsequential bridge outside their home town. Drama of war’s futility earns its connection to the characters by establishing them in their relatively normal world before activating their inevitable doom.—RDL

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 (Television, US, Paramount+, Akiva Goldsman & Henry Alonso Myers, 2022) Aided by Mr. Spock (Ethan Peck) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn), lantern -jawed captain of the USS Enterprise Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) solves space mysteries and brings the Starfleet ethos to the Alpha Quadrant. Proving that the secret to a prequel is not to add backstory to existing tales but to tell new ones within their framework, this astute homage to the original series balances Easter eggs and continuity callbacks with actual honest-to-goodness episodic problem-solving storytelling. As if begging Ken to pick up a Paramount+ subscription, its finale advances a most Hitean thesis about a certain other starship captain.—RDL

Good

The Black Phone (Film, US, Scott Derrickson, 2022) In north Denver in 1978, tween siblings Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) fear the Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a serial child killer in a weird devil mask. Closely based on the short story by Joe Hill, it serves up flashes of excellent acting and a rich 70s palette but doesn’t trust the audience enough, blotting the tween dread vibe with unnecessary jump scares. A solid child endangerment puzzle movie with a nice lick of the supernatural, it never quite achieves terror takeoff. –KH

Episode 504: Area Nihilists

July 8th, 2022 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we ask when the GM should apply a rules set’s cost system for actions, and when it is instead best to make it a freebie.

The Command Hut provides a dossier on the Russian mercenary company called the Wagner Group.

In the Horror Hut, beloved backers Derek Upham and Stuart Thomas (or lifelike computer simulations thereof) point us to the latest hit tulpa, a monstrous creation of AI image software called Crungus.

Finally, estimable backer Robert Dean seeks the aid of Ken’s Time Machine in having William Morris invent RPGs in the 1890s.

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: Elvis, Everything Everywhere and The Flash

July 5th, 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

Elvis (Film, Australia/US, Baz Luhrmann, 2022) On his deathbed, petty, venal promoter “Col.” Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) narrates a morphine-fueled melodrama of the life of musical demigod Elvis Presley (Austin Butler). Trademark Baz freneticism slows down a bit (as did the King) when it gets to Vegas, but always offers something to watch and listen to in between conventional biopic beats. Butler (game and open) and Hanks (a morality-play Satan) don’t so much play off each other as star in their own separate movies, which is after all the point of this one. –KH

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Film, US, Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, 2022) Harried laundromat proprietor (Michelle Yeoh) learns to draw abilities from her varied alternate selves to protect the multiverse from destruction at the hands of an ultra-powerful nemesis. Inventively nerdtroped, exuberantly kooky family reconciliation drama.—RDL

The Flash Season 8 (Television. US, The CW, 2021) Barry’s archnemesis Reverse Flash (Tom Cavanagh) returns to rewrite the timeline and awaken powerful cosmic forces. The show does what Supernatural did at a similar point in its run, settling into its core elements—speedsters, pseudoscience and affirmations and delivering reliable genre comfort viewing.—RDL

Rams (Film, Iceland, Grímur Hákonarson, 2015) A slaughter order stemming from an outbreak of livestock disease escalates tensions between sheep farming brothers who haven’t spoken a word to each other in 40 years. The grim drollery of Icelandic humor comes to the fore in this snowy ode to rural recalcitrance.—RDL

Good

The Mask of the Vampire (Fiction, Paul Halter, 2014) In 1901, a vampire panic grips the English village of Cleverley when the dead wives of Count Radovic are discovered in the tomb  with stakes in their chests. Two John Dickson Carr-style locked room murders plus a possible vampire should have delighted me beyond expression, but Halter’s style (perhaps hampered by his translator) remains too detached to truly achieve Gothic takeoff despite the promising set-up, and his detective, the Wildesque Owen Burns, is a not-entertaining-enough jerk. However, the ludicrously tangled plot resolves superbly, which is (I suspect) why most people read Halter in the first place. –KH

Time (Film, HK, Ricky Ko, 2021) Elderly members of a once-vaunted hit team (Patrick Tse, Bo Bo Fung, Lam Suet) reteam to confront the rigors of old age, finding a surprising new sideline and new friend along the way. Valedictory for three stalwarts of the Hong Kong movie acting repertory sweetly handles its occasionally harsh subject matter.—RDL

Episode 503: Distinctively Muppety

July 1st, 2022 | Robin

Ken kicks us off with a Travel Advisory on his journey to Poland’s Pyrkon, with ancillary adventures in Poznan.

Then the Gaming Hut subtly ratchets up the tension as we ask how long a horror scenario can go without anything overtly terrifying or supernatural happening.

But a worse fright awaits in The Business of Gaming, where we look at the global paper shortage and its impact on adventure gaming.

Then a slightly less bad fright creeps our way as, at the behest of beloved backer Scott Wachter, the Eliptony Hut beckons the armless entity known as the Fresno Nightcrawler.

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.

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