{"id":1416,"date":"2017-10-03T15:13:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T15:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2017-10-03T15:21:26","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T15:21:26","slug":"ken-and-robin-consume-media-now-kens-in-the-black-lodge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/ken-and-robin-consume-media-now-kens-in-the-black-lodge\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken and Robin Consume Media: Now Ken’s in the Black Lodge"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>. 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\u2019ll talk about in greater depth on our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.<\/i> <\/p>\n

The Pinnacle<\/h2>\n

Twin Peaks: The Return (TV, Showtime, David Lynch, 2017) Picking up 25 years after Lynch\u2019s seminal oneiric soap opera murder mystery ended, it is more of some of those things, most especially \u201cLynch\u2019s.\u201d I love that I could never see ahead down Lynch\u2019s road, and also: Robert Forster. Penderecki\u2019s \u201cThrenody.\u201d Magic and romance just out of frame. Bzzzkkkzztt (and all the rest of Lynch\u2019s amazing sound design) That shot of NYC. Trees. Coffee! Charred men. \u201cThe Nine Inch Nails.\u201d \/\/erusolC\/\/ –KH<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/h2>\n

Call Me Lucky<\/a> (Film, US, Bobcat Goldthwait, 2015) Documentary profile of radical comedian\u2019s comedian Barry Crimmins explores the origins of his righteous rage as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Loving portrait of a many-faceted man, made by a longtime friend.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

I Will Find You: A Reporter Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her<\/a> (Nonfiction, Joanna Connors, 2016) A generation after her brutal rape by a stranger, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter seeks context by researching the life of the now-deceased perpetrator. Unsparing work of personal journalism finds answers to the literal questions if not the teleological ones, but mostly a deep well of unspeakable, cyclic suffering.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Good<\/h2>\n

The Curse of the Bronze Lamp <\/a>(Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1946) A relatively enjoyable \u201cimpossible crime\u201d outing for Carr\u2019s second-tier detective Sir Henry Merrivale, who is more annoying than Gideon Fell. Remarkable for solving the locked room (actually a locked castle) two different ways, because Carr is a showoff; the Egyptian color ticks it up from Okay. –KH<\/p>\n

Giant Days, Vols. 1-3<\/a> (Comics, John Allison, 2015-6) Compilations of Allison\u2019s comic about three girls and their travails in university, mostly involving idiotic romantic partners. As warm and sweetly human as Allison\u2019s work elsewhere (one character, Esther de Groot, carries over from his Bad Machinery\/Bobbinsverse) but without the overt weirdness (here calmed into eccentricity) and frenetic storytelling. –KH<\/p>\n

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (Film, UK\/US, Matthew Vaughn, 2017) Proletarian gentleman superspy Eggsy (Taron Egerton) returns to battle a drug lord (Julianne Moore) with the help of the American superspy group Statesman (Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, Jeff Bridges, Pedro Pascal). Too much bad, unnecessary CGI (and some over-obvious direction) obscures a surprisingly not-terrible script; still, worth seeing for those seeking the thrills James Bond once provided. –KH<\/p>\n

Night\u2019s Master<\/a> (Fiction, Tanith Lee, 1978) Linked short stories of innocence corrupted or maintained lay out an eon in the existence of a seductive demon lord. Lapidary prose and 70s sex abound in this neo-Symbolist outing in the Dunsany tradition.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

A Report on the Party and the Guests<\/a> (Film, Czechoslovakia, Jan N\u011bmec, 1966) Cosmopolitan guests at an influential figure\u2019s country banquet are subjected to subtly menacing power games. Absurdist drama looks at how quickly the comfortable rationalize their own oppression. But even in this relatively free period of cinema in the Soviet satellite nations, it has to rely on the viewer to infer the dark conclusion it\u2019s so clearly setting up.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

The Transfiguration<\/a> (Film, US, Michael O\u2019Shea, 2016) Affectless, vampire-obsessed, neglected, and bullied African-American teen Milo (Eric Ruffin) eventually befriends his abused, self-destructive white neighbor Sophie (Chloe Levine). Essentially a loose remake of Romero\u2019s Martin<\/a> set in the Brooklyn projects, it suffers by comparison (its slow burn goes down to embers more than once) but on its own merits adds a few liters of AB+ to the vampire genre. –KH<\/p>\n

Okay <\/h2>\n

Chasing the Dragon (Film, HK, Wong Jing & Jason Kwan, 2017) Loyal gangster Crippled Ho (Donnie Yen) and honorable corrupt cop Lee Rock (Andy Lau) rise together in the British-managed Hong Kong crime world of the late 60s and early 70s. Mythologized crime biopic maintains an unusually consistent tone for a Wong Jing effort, but is overloaded with plot points\u2014because, weirdly, this is a remake of two previously unrelated films: the caustic, greatly superior To Be Number One and Lee Rock, featuring Andy Lau in the same role he plays here. Scored a big mainland release usually denied to violent HK gang pictures by dialing up the anti-colonial angle.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Preacher Season 2 (Television, US, AMC, Sam Catlin, 2017) With the Saint of Killers on his heels, Jesse drags Tulip and Cassidy to New Orleans in search of God, who has gone AWOL from heaven. Bursts of bravura weirdness can\u2019t conceal the momentum stall of a season in which the protagonist makes zero progress toward his goal.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019ll talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast","tag-ken-and-robin-consume-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}