August « 2022 « Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Archive for August, 2022

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Cairo Noir, A Classic British Heist, and an Iconic Hong Kong Director

August 30th, 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 Nile Hilton Incident (Film, Denmark, Tarik Saleh, 2017) As protests begin to simmer against the Mubarak regime, a Cairo cop (Fares Fares) enmeshed in his department’s pervasive corruption investigates the murder of a singer in a posh hotel. Realist cop drama twists its way deeper into noir territory, placing classic motifs of the sub-genre in a bracing new social and political context.—RDL

In the Name of the Italian People (Film, Italy, Dino Risi, 1971) Incorruptible magistrate (Ugo Tognazzi) pursues a motormouthed right-wing industrialist (Vittorio Gassman) he suspects of involvement in a call girl’s death. Satirical investigative drama casts a despairing eye at a society built on the shaky foundations of endemic corruption.—RDL

Keep Rolling (Film, Hong Kong, Lim Chung Man, 2020) Documentary profiles Ann Hui, groundbreaking director of the Hong Kong new wave, revealing the much-awarded filmmaker as a person who has doggedly endured hand-to-mouth finances and a career of ups and downs to stick to her uncomfortable subject matter and bleak vision of life.—RDL

The League of Gentlemen (Film, UK, Basil Dearden, 1960) Retired Lt.-Col. Hyde (Jack Hawkins) recruits a team of ex-Army officers for a bank robbery. Slowly ratcheting plot tension provides throughline and direction to a film fundamentally about changing class, gender, and sexual mores in postwar Britain. Dearden shows his usual effortless command of space and quick sympathy to character throughout, while creating a foundational heist film. –KH

Love After Love (Film, China, Ann Hui, 2020) In prewar Hong Kong, a naive poor relation (Sichun Ma) moves into the splendid household of her worldly, seductive aunt (Feihong Yu) and falls for a handsome young cad (Eddie Peng.) Sumptuously abetted by the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto and photography of Christopher Doyle, this novel adaptation deals in the beguiling surfaces of melodrama while favoring emotional realism over contrived catharsis.—RDL

Good

Bodies Bodies Bodies (Film, US, Halina Reijn, 2022) Rich girl Sophie (Amandla Sternberg) brings her new girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova) to a hurricane party in an isolated mansion … and then the killings began. Reijn ambitiously wanted to make both a Gen-Z rich-kid comedy of manners and a slasher flick and winds up getting about 75% of the way to each goal. Pete Davidson heads a cast similarly balanced between “watchable and intriguing” and “I want them to get killed please.” –KH

Okay

Day Shift (Film, US, J.J. Perry, 2022) Vampire hunter Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx, relentless charisma muffled by dire byplay) needs to score 10 large in a week so he has to rejoin the, uh, Wobblies. Yes in this world the I.W.W. is the vampire hunters’ union, and pays much better money for kills. Sadly this tension between syndicalism and capitalism goes unexplored, along with everything else potentially interesting. Stunt work and fights are good, albeit ridiculously low-stakes (heh) in a world where nothing feels real except the well-observed location shots in the San Fernando Valley. –KH

Isabella (Film, Argentina, Matías Piñeiro, 2020) A challenging audition for a production of Measure for Measure causes an actor (Marįa Vilar) to reconsider her ambitions. Chronologically fragmented narrative appears to offer a puzzle and thus promise a resolution, but only elides its low dramatic stakes.-—RDL

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Episode 511: I Just Wanted to Say Astrosome

August 26th, 2022 | Robin

Foul sorcerers flee the Gaming Hut as beloved Patreon backer Jesse Lowe asks for the best Earth-based setting for swords and sorcery—the Hellenistic Era excepted, of course.

In Ken and/or Robin Talk To Someone Else, designer Gwen Marshall joins Ken to discuss the thinking behind such acclaimed projects as the ENnie-winning Ancestry & Culture and S5E: Superheroic Roleplaying.

The Monster Hut gets philosophical for a look at egregores in mythology and gaming.

Finally the Consulting Occultist lets love into his heart for a profile of songwriter, polemicist and free love priestess Edith Maida Lessing.

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!

Track down foul sorcerers in a corrupt city, clamber through underground ruins and investigate the intrigues of your decadent rivals in Swords of the Serpentine, the GUMSHOE game of swords, sorcery and mystery, now available from Pelgrane Press.

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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Tags: Consulting Occultist, Gaming hut, Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else, Monster Hut

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Schedule Announced for First Annual Robin and Valerie International Film Festival

August 24th, 2022 | Robin

Robin presents a Ken and Robin Consume Media Special Feature

Last year my wife Valerie and I concluded the second at-home edition of the long-running Toronto International Film Festival by deciding to break up with it entirely. Briefly, the cost in money, effort and frustration of doing the festival full-out, as we have since 1986, has steadily gone up over the years. With the growth of streaming bringing home access to titles that would previously have been inaccessible outside the festival circuit, we realized that we could program a personalized fest that would be less grueling, cheaper, and, above all, would include more bangers and fewer duds than the experience we’d be emulating. For us it’s never been about seeing things before anyone else does. A film we dig from 2019 or 2021 is no less rewarding than one that won’t hit theaters until 2023.

Plus, when my programming chops fail me, we can bail on a title and pick one of the many options on my backup list. It’s like the very old days of TIFF, when it was called the Festival of Festivals, where passholders could jump out of movies that weren’t working for them, riffle through their program books in search of something more promising, and beetle off to a different screening entirely.

In addition to the option of hitting the pause button whenever one of us starts to fall asleep, the RVIFF offers another advantage. Instead of telling you about movies you’ll probably have forgotten about by the time you can actually see them, I can point you to ones you can watch right now. Provided that the gods of territorial rights distribution smile upon you.

I’ve chosen 45 films in the spirit of the TIFFs of yore, reflecting their programming mix and what we would make of it in narrowing down their 250+ titles into our personal lists. Which would then be shifted about to accommodate the vagaries of venues, screening times, and the need to squeeze in food breaks. With a bias toward titles released in the last few years, that means works by favorite directors, international cinema, elevated genre, and the cult movies you’d see in TIFF’s vaunted Midnight Madness program. The fave directors program includes recent titles art house aficionados well may have seen already, including some of Ken’s recent recommendations. Since the RVIFF allows me to cheat and pick only acclaimed titles, I’ve made more Canadian selections that I would dare include at TIFF.

Our festival runs on the same dates as TIFF, from the evening of Thursday September 8^th to Sunday September 18^th. Having read this far, I’m sure you’ve decided to cancel all other plans to watch all of these films along with us, exactly when we watch them. Download the RVIFF 2022 schedule, timed to the minute.

Thanks to actual demand, you can take this even further by picking up festival merch!

I have chosen titles either on subscription platforms or available for regular priced rental here in Canada. My sources are Apple rental, Crave, Criterion, Google rental, Kanopy, MUBI, Netflix, Prime, and, to throw in a wrench, TVO. Availability in your territory will surely vary. Start your search for title availability and platform at JustWatch.com, which covers plenty of regions. (But does not list Kanopy titles, so you’ll have to search there if you’re using that library-based service.)

Because I was just joking about you actually wanting the full schedule, here’s a list of titles, in the order RVIFF will be screening them. I haven’t yet seen any of these films, so let’s hope I got the descriptions right without giving myself any spoilers. I’ll revise them when I discover that I’ve gotten t something completely wrong, as I did with Scarborough.

My Name Is Gulpilil (Australia, Molly Reynolds, 2021) Biographical documentary profiles iconic Australian actor David Gulpilil.

Scarborough (Canada, Shasha Nakhai & Rich Williamson, 2021) Social realist ensemble drama centering on the role a literacy drop-in center plays for struggling families.

Coppers (Canada, Alan Zweig, 2019) Documentary interviews reveal the lives of retired police officers.

Hive (Kosovo, Blerta Basholli, 2021) Kosovo war widows set up empowering pepper sauce collective.

Sheep Without a Shepherd (China, Sam Quah, 2019) Ordinary citizen is caught in the crosshairs when his daughter kills her abuser, the son of a corrupt police chief (Joan Chen.)

Crimes of the Future (Canada, David Cronenberg, 2022) Performance artists expand the limits of the flesh.

Nomad: in the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (UK, Werner Herzog, 2019) Herzog recalls his friendship with the Australian travel writer Bruce Chatwin via another of his distinctive documentary journeys.

Hey There! (Turkey, Reha Erdem, 2021) Pandemic forces scammers to work from home. Comedy.

Fagara (Hong Kong, Heiward Mak, 2019) Young woman (Sammi Cheng) reunites with estranged sisters to settle their father’s debts.

Night Raiders (Canada, Danis Goulet, 2021) Cree woman reluctantly unites with a resistance cell of fellow tribe members to rescue her daughter from a totalitarian military academy.

Benedetta (France/Belgium/Netherlands, Paul Verhoeven, 2021) 17^th century nun’s erotic visions wreak havoc.

Good Manners (Brazil, Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas, 2017) Lycanthropy complicates the bond between a lonely nurse and her wealthy, pregnant employer.

Holy Emy (Greece, Araceli Lemos, 2021) Filipino woman in Greece develops a strange condition that might be linked to her mother’s paranormal healing abilities.

Eyimofe (This is My Desire) (Nigeria, Arie Esiri & Chuko Esiri, 2020) Unknown to one another, two Nigerians seek new lives in Europe.

Bergman Island (France, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2021) Married filmmakers (Tim Roth, Vicky Krieps) seek inspiration at Ingmar Bergman’s isolated retreat.

Baby Assassins (Japan, Yugo Sakamoto, 2021) Teen killers who hate each other are ordered to room together.

Twilight’s Kiss (Hong Kong, Ray Yeung, 2019) Closeted gay men face the rigors of age in Hong Kong.

Zero Fucks Given (France, Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre, 2019) Despite her desires to lose herself in distractions, a young flight attendant for a budget airline is forced to seek promotion.

Red Rocket (US, Sean Baker, 2021) A shady porn actor descends on his old hometown.

Midnight (South Korea, Oh-Seung Kwon, 2021) Serial killer pursues deaf witness.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Romania, Radu Jude, 2021) A teacher defends herself when a sex tape is leaked to the Internet. Comedy.

A Family (Japan, Michihito Fujii, 2020) Young man turns to a yakuza boss as a father figure.

They Say Nothing Stays the Same (Japan, Joe Odagiri, 2019) Elderly ferryman in Meiji Japan faces the obsolescence of his trade. Photographed by Christopher Doyle.

The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (South Korea, Lee Won-tae, 2019) Gangster and cop team up to hunt serial killer.

The Other Side of Hope (Finland, Aki Kaurismaki, 2019) Syrian refugee meets man whose midlife crisis has driven him to purchase an unpopular restaurant.

Alone with Her Dreams (Italy, Paolo Licata, 2019) A child must stay with her stern grandmother in Sicily.

The Legend of Tomiris (Kazakhstan, Akan Satayev, 2019) Scythian queen rises to power.

The Worst Person in the World (Norway, Joachim Trier, 2021) A young woman’s tumultuous love life unfolds over a four year period.

Double Lover (France, Francois Ozon, 2017) Young woman falls in love with her analyst, who is not what he seems.

The Trouble with You (France, Pierre Salvadori, 2018) Comic chaos ensues when a cop tries to redeem the corrupt acts of her late police chief husband.

Gagarine (France, Fanny Liatard & Jérémy Trouilh, 2020) Kid fights for his housing project.

Heavy Trip (Finland, Juuso Laatio & Jukka Vidgren, 2018) Metalheads take a last shot at success. Comedy.

Drive My Car (Japan, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Actor hires twenty-something as his driver.

El Planeta (Spain, Amalia Ulman, 2021) Mother daughter team engages in a series of grifts.

The Spy Gone North (South Korea, Yoon Jong-bin, 2021) Secret agent infiltrates North Korean spy ring in Beijing.

Neither Heaven Nor Earth (France, Clément Cogitore, 2015) Soldiers stationed in Afghanistan encounter a supernatural foe.

Parallel Mothers (Spain, Pedro Almodovar, 2021) Two very different women bond after giving birth on the same day.

Plaza Catedral (Panama, Abner Benaim, 2021) Grieving mom protects street kid suffering from a gun shot.

Zombie for Sale (South Korea, Lee Min-jae, 2020) Family seeks to turn its possession of an undead corpse into a money-making opportunity.

Strawberry Mansion (US, Kentucker Audley & Albert Birney, 2021) Dream auditor moves through a woman’s dreamscape.

Petite Maman (France, Céline Sciamma, 2021) A young girl finds a playmate, to whom she has an unexpected tie.

Peace by Chocolate (Canada, Jonathan Keijser, 2021) Syrian refugees start new life, and chocolate business, in small town Nova Scotia.

Snowflake (Germany, Adolfo J. Kolmerer, 2017) Crooks discover that a screenplay is predicting their future actions.

The Paper Tigers (US, Quoc Bao Tran, 2020) Middle aged martial artists reunite to avenge their sifu. Comedy.

Official Competition (Spain, Mariano Cohn & Gastón Duprat, 2021) Rich man hires director to make a hit movie. With Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz.

As with TIFF, I’ll be sharing daily capsule reviews, wrapping up the festival with a round-up of those reviews, and discussing the more geek-forward titles with Ken in a Cinema Hut segment on the show.

Thanks to all the programmers who set the mold for TIFF throughout its long history and whose tastes live on RVIFF, and my work in general, in particular: Colin Geddes, Steve Gravestock, Giovanna Fulvi, Diana Sanchez, Cameron Bailey, Piers Handling, Peter Kuplowsky, and the late Ramiro Puerta and David Overbey.—RDL

If you enjoy this RVIFF series and don’t yet do so, consider supporting the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Or check out my book on action films and their roleplaying applications, Blowing Up the Movies. Or the roleplaying game inspired by the Hong Kong films I first encountered at TIFF, Feng Shui 2.

Tags: Ken and Robin Consume Media, RVIFF

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Prey, Backflipping Pigeons, and Coastline-Ravaging Giant Rodents

August 23rd, 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.

Clytaemnestra (Film, South Korea, 2021) Young actor (Haru Kim) in Athens to rehearse a production of the Oresteia becomes the scapegoat of its bullying director (Jongman Kim.) Intimate realist drama paints a pointillistic portrait of—classicists, you’re ahead of me on this one—simmering female rage.—RDL

Pigeon Kings (Film, US, Milena Pastreich, 2020) Duo of South Central L.A. residents vies for honors in the heartbreaking sport of Birmingham roller racing, in which a flock of pigeons is released and must stay airborne for twenty minutes while performing a maximum number of the backwards flips their inbred genetic defect predisposes them to. Documentary attentively captures small human moments as well as the existential questions raised by an activity that encourages obsessive efforts to exert control over a highly variable, entirely random event.—RDL

Prey (Film, US, Dan Trachtenberg, 2022) A young Comanche woman’s (Amber Midthunder) eagerness to prove herself as a hunter faces the ultimate test in the form of an alien equipped with a deadly array of super-technological devices. Brilliantly conceived, leanly executed Predator prequel anchored by what one hopes is a starmaking lead performance.—RDL

Puzzle for Players (Fiction, Patrick Quentin, 1938) Recovering alcoholic Broadway producer Peter Duluth finds himself with a haunted theater, burgeoning romance, neurotic actors, an odious photographer, and suspicious cops – plus murder – endangering his comeback production. Extraordinary combination of bitterness and creepiness sets the tone for this remarkable mystery, in which the actual detecting gets done by a psychiatrist and the success of the play grips the reader as much as the solution to the crime. –KH

Rodents of Unusual Size (Film, US, Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler & Jeff Springer, 2017) Documentary follows the campaign to control Louisiana’s population of nutria, coastline-ravaging, bridge-undermining imported giant rodents. With a affectionate eye toward people and their lives, the filmmakers look at the paradoxes of an environmental catastrophe stemming from a series of human decisions—the final straw being the victories of the anti-fur movement.—RDL

Good

Double Wedding (Film, US, Richard Thorpe, 1937) Uptight fashion tycoon (Myrna Loy) attempts to break her malleable sister’s infatuation with a free-spirited artist (William Powell), only to fall for him herself. Thoroughly Americanized adaptation of a Molnar play suffers from overegged direction but is redeemed by the classic chemistry of its leads.—RDL

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Episode 510: The Worst Chocolate, The Worst Cake

August 19th, 2022 | Robin

Normally a post-Gen Con debrief takes up an entire episode. But since only one of us was there, Ken gives Robin the lowdown in a double-header Travel Advisory segment.

In the Gaming Hut, beloved Patreon backer Mikey Hamm wants to emulate genres in which death is threatened but never actually happens.

We conclude with Ken’s Time Machine, as our hero considers which figure of the Old West he would most like to save from untimely death, and what changes to the timestream his intervention would wreak.

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!

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Tags: Gaming hut, Ken's Time Machine, Travel Advisory

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Sandman, Prey, and a Rock Journalism Icon

August 16th, 2022 | Robin

Prey (Film, US, Dan Trachtenberg, 2022) In 1719 Wyoming, young Comanche woman Naru (Amber Midthunder) attempts the ceremonial hunt of an unknown invisible monster. This installment of the Predator series (for indeed it is he) works so well and so naturally not just because of the great monster-hunting set-pieces but because the natural, vivid character building of Naru and her brother (Dakota Beavers) also build the reality of the frontier world the Predator irrupts into. Easily the second-best of the series. –KH

The Sandman Season 1 (Television, US, Netflix, Neil Gaiman, David S. Goyer & Allan Heinberg, 2022) Freed after more than a century of earthly captivity, the king of dreams (Tom Sturridge) repairs his neglected realm and hunts for its escaped inhabitants, most notably the serial killer called the Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook.) A cornerstone of Gen X geek culture receives a thoughtfully crafted prestige television treatment, wisely adapting two of the comics series arcs instead of interminably dragging out the first one. Sturridge embodies his role so well that I caught myself thinking, “Wow, his walk is exactly like in the comics.”—RDL

Good

Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres (Film, US, Suzanne Kai, 2021) Appropriately admiring documentary profiles the groundbreaking rock journalist and editor, depicting him as a talented, disciplined mensch and trailblazer for the Chinese-American community.—RDL

Penthouse (Film, US, W. S. van Dyke, 1933) Aided by a virtuous bad girl (Myrna Loy), a maverick defense attorney fights to clear his ex-fiancee’s new beau of a bogus murder charge. Investigative lawyer crime drama rises above its routine script through zippy direction and Loy’s screen magnetism.—RDL

Okay

Foreign Intrigue (Film, US, Sheldon Reynolds, 1956) Self-assured PR man (Robert Mitchum) investigates the source of his mysterious dead client’s mysterious wealth. Alternately compelling and awkward Hitchcockian spy flick. Make the client a vampire and you have a great premise for a Night’s Black Agents Solo Ops scenario.—RDL

Not Recommended

Historical Atlas of the World (Nonfiction, Ludwig Könemann (ed.), 2010) Constructed pedagogically, its 1,200 maps dropping from general overview to increasingly specific (especially in Europe, where almost every country gets mapped back to antiquity, but about a third of the maps cover non-European countries), anchored by timelines and brief encyclopedia entries, this should have been great. However somewhere between Slovakian mappers, German editors, and English translators, an enormous number of mistakes appear: its best pedagogical use would be to turn a class of bright high-schoolers loose on it to correct every error of fact or misprision of style. For extra credit they could suggest and draw useful maps omitted to make room for the third or fourth depiction of the Frankish successor kingdoms. –KH

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Episode 509: Charismatic Megafauna of Food

August 12th, 2022 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we demonstrate how to dovetail player-created character hooks into your scenario, as Ken proposes a Freaking Weird Moment for his This is Normal Now character and Robin weaves it into a trio of mystery premises.

The Culture Hut uncovers a Dreamhound of Chicago, 30s surrealist painter Gertrude Abercrombie.

Then we duck into the Food Hut to make a list of defunct food products we might just use Ken’s Time Machine to stock up on.

Our final stop takes us to the Eliptony Hut, as we review the contents of a ghost hunter’s kit, starting with the copious suggestions in Peter Underwood’s Ghost Hunters Guide.

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.

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Tags: Culture Hut, Eliptony Hut, Food Hut, Gaming hut

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Episode 508: KARTAS A-Z

August 5th, 2022 | Robin

On August 2, 2012, the first installment of Ken and Robin Talks About Stuff debuted to a waiting gaming world.

For our recent 500th episode celebration, we held the traditional Lightning Round. For this extra special anniversary, we take a look back at the show, its topics and its origins with an A to Z of KARTAS.

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.

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Tags: A to Z

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Princess, The Gray Man and Philo Vance

August 2nd, 2022 | Robin

Hollywood’s Eve (Nonfiction, Lili Anolik, 2019) Biography of L.A. writer, scenester and sexual adventuress Eve Babitz alludes to her unconventional approach to prose and structure without pastiching it, thank goodness. Dives deeper than the copious spicy anecdotes to find the pathos in a figure who did her best to elude it.—RDL

House (Film, Japan, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977) Seven schoolgirls impulsively decide to vacation in the remote house of an aunt (Yoko Minamida), unaware of the supernatural peril therein. The film careens wildly between cheesy-seeming set pieces of giddy child-fantasy and giallo-ish grand guignol. Not always successful even on its own terms but never boring or predictable, not least because Obayashi faithfully transcribes his pre-teen daughter’s fears onto film. –KH

The Moai Island Puzzle (Fiction, Alice Arisugawa, 1989) Three collegiate mystery fans come to a remote island to find a hidden treasure in diamonds – but find murder as well. After a slow-ish introductory act, this seminal shin honkaku mystery builds and braids its puzzles and relationships while maintaining a creepy neo-Gothic tone throughout. The bravura solution comes a bit out of the blue, but Christie would have happily used it. –KH

The Princess (Film, US, Lee Van-Kiet, 2022) Determined princess (Joey King) uses her secret fighting skills to battle her way out of captivity and marriage to a loathsome would-be usurper (Dominic Cooper.) The spirit of 80s Hong Kong lives, courtesy of Van-Kiet, who cut his teeth in the Vietnamese action flick scene and makes a credible, acrobatic action hero and ultra-violent Disney princess out of King.—RDL

Good

The Gray Man (Film, US, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2022) Deniable CIA killer Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling) must evade sociopathic “contractor” Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans), tasked by the CIA to kill him. Gosling’s charming channeling of Alain Delon, and three remarkable action set pieces (of five) excitingly filmed in part by drones, drag this extremely, aggressively stupid cliché charcuterie over the line into Good. Not the least of its stupidities: mostly wasting Ana de Armas, who already proved she could more than hold her own in spy action as by far the least-bad thing in the latest Bond. –KH

The Greene Murder Case (Fiction, S.S. Van Dine, 1928) Forced to cohabitate in their ancestral New York mansion by the patriarch’s will, the Greene family falls victim to a series of murders. After a good deal of persiflage and dramatics, Philo Vance solves the case. In 1945, John Dickson Carr ranked this as among the ten best mystery novels. Even in 1945 that was probably a stretch, but the solution (while not strictly fair-play) is tremendously ingenious. –KH

Okay

The Bishop Murder Case and The Scarab Murder Case (Fiction, S.S. Van Dine, 1929 and 1930) A nursery-rhyme-minded serial killer stalks a pair of households on Riverside Drive, and a statue of Sekhmet seemingly kills the millionaire patron of an Egyptologist’s museum. In both cases, Philo Vance solves the crimes after far too much arch fiddle-faddle and showing off: as Ogden Nash wrote, “Philo Vance / Needs a kick in the pance.” The Scarab Murder Case adds oblivious racism to its other failings, but both novels contain arresting scenes when Van Dine lets the action speak for itself without overheated narration. –KH

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Archive for August, 2022

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Cairo Noir, A Classic British Heist, and an Iconic Hong Kong Director

The Pinnacle

Recommended

Good

Okay

Episode 511: I Just Wanted to Say Astrosome

Schedule Announced for First Annual Robin and Valerie International Film Festival

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Prey, Backflipping Pigeons, and Coastline-Ravaging Giant Rodents

Recommended

Good

Episode 510: The Worst Chocolate, The Worst Cake

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Sandman, Prey, and a Rock Journalism Icon

Recommended

Good

Okay

Not Recommended

Episode 509: Charismatic Megafauna of Food

Episode 508: KARTAS A-Z

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Princess, The Gray Man and Philo Vance

Recommended

Good

Okay

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