Ken and Robin Consume Media: New York Time Loops and Celery Destruction

March 5th, 2019 | 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

Russian Doll Season 1 (Television, Netflix, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler & Leslye Headland, 2019) Hard-living video game coder (Lyonne) gets caught in a timeloop that begins in a bathroom at her birthday party and ends in a variety of sudden demises. From its burnished look to the sublimity of its soundtrack needle drops to Lyonne’s revelatory performance, this is one of those first seasons so galvanizingly perfect that you fear they’ll make a second.—RDL

Recommended

Because of the Cats (Fiction, Nicolas Freeling, 1964) Inspector Van der Valk of the Amsterdam police investigates a gang of spoiled rich kids and finds something darker at work. Barely a mystery, more a study of motive than a policier, it offers the satisfactions of both in a slightly off-kilter way. –KH

High Flying Bird (Film, US, Steven Soderbergh, 2019) Wily agent (André Holland) squeezed by an NBA lockout uses a naive rookie (Melvin Gregg) as leverage in a bigger game. Fast-talking business procedural questions the power imbalances between young athletes and the big money structure that surrounds them. Looks surprisingly sleek and gorgeous for a flick shot on an iPhone.—RDL

Magnificent Obsession with Alicia Malone ,Episode 6: Alyson Dee Moore (Podcast, 2019) Malone, ex of Filmstruck and now of TCM, brings deep knowledge and love of all cinema eras to her new podcast. Here she interviews a longtime Foley artist, who shares surprising secrets of sound effects recording, from the field’s relatively young pedigree to the centrality of walking noises.—RDL

Startup (Fiction, Doree Shafrir, 2017) A wayward dick pic interweaves the lives of five denizens of NYC’s tech scene. Comic novel of douchebag men and the women who tolerate them treats the mores of its social layer with the precision of gaze Edith Wharton trained on the city’s gilded age.—RDL

Good

Mad Monkey Kung Fu (Film, HK, Lau Kar-leung, 1979) Impulsive petty thief (Hou Hsiao) convinces maimed ex-martial artist (Chia-Liang Liu) to train him, so he can take on town crooks. Athletic clowning and brutal plot turns meet up on the Shaw Brothers standing sets.—RDL

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (Fiction, Sam Greenlee, 1969) Hired as the token first black CIA officer, Dan Freeman uses his intelligence and insurgency training to mount a Black revolution in Chicago. Didactic and angry it may be (but no more so than any average Jerry Pournelle novel), but the bald narrative builds to an effective revolutionary thriller. –KH [Note: The Kindle version overwrites several pages with pages from another book entirely, as does at least one recent reprint.]