{"id":1640,"date":"2018-09-18T16:19:16","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T16:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/?p=1640"},"modified":"2018-09-18T16:19:16","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T16:19:16","slug":"ken-and-robin-consume-media-a-golden-eyed-vampire-and-a-predator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/ken-and-robin-consume-media-a-golden-eyed-vampire-and-a-predator\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken and Robin Consume Media: A Golden-Eyed Vampire and a Predator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta content=\"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Consume-Portugal.png\" property=\"og:image\" \/>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Consume-Portugal.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p> <i>Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/kenandrobin\">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 a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.<\/i>      <\/p>\n<p>Robin\u2019s media consumption this week took place at the Toronto International Film Festival. <a href=\"http:\/\/robin-d-laws.blogspot.com\/2018\/09\/toronto-international-film-festival.html\">Check out his capsule reviews here<\/a>. Those reviews will reappear here when titles are released theatrically or on home video.<\/p>\n<h2>Recommended<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2xjOgiB\">Predator<\/a> (Film, US, John McTiernan, 1987) Tasked by CIA agent Dillon (Carl Weathers) to enter Nicaragua on an ostensible rescue mission, Special Forces major Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his squad also enter the killing ground of an alien trophy hunter. Somehow I never saw this second film of McTiernan\u2019s mind-bogglingly good first four. This one succeeds almost entirely on the back of McTiernan\u2019s assured direction, although both Arnold\u2019s control of his swaggering machismo and of its transformation into animal cunning are underrated. And man, nothing blows up like an 80s Commie base. &#8211;KH<\/p>\n<h2>Good<\/h2>\n<p>Lake of Dracula (Film, Japan, Michio Yamamoto, 1971) Years after suffering a nightmarish vision of a golden-eyed vampire (Mori Kishida), Akiko (Midori Fujita) tries to paint her trauma by the side of a peaceful lake. Combining a Hitchcock-style psychoanalytic thriller with would-be Hammer Films action on a Toho Studios budget, the result comes off slightly disjointed but never boring. Watching it on the splendid, crisp <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2xjtxvt\">Blu-Ray transfer<\/a> by Arrow Films is Recommended. &#8211;KH <\/p>\n<p>Operation Finale (Film, US, Chris Weitz, 2018) In 1960, Mossad agent Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac) suffers from survivor\u2019s guilt as he leads a team to kidnap Adolf Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) in Argentina for trial in Israel. The script, based on the memoirs of the real Israeli agents, wisely compresses historical time and offers some tasty dialogue, but doesn\u2019t manage to fully cohere around either a heroic spycraft story a la Argo or a psychological exploration a la Munich. The implicitly promised actors\u2019 duel between Isaac and Kingsley doesn\u2019t quite come off, either. &#8211;KH<\/p>\n<h2>Not Recommended<\/h2>\n<p> In the Quarter (Fiction, Robert W. Chambers, 1894) As his fellow art students roister in Paris, Reginald Gethryn falls for a grisette despite the warnings of his older friend Braith. Lively and true to life in parts, this novel\u2019s mild melodramatic joys do not make it past the two (two!!) stereotyped Jews who serve as the odious cardboard villains. At least Trilby has hypnotism to go with its anti-Semitism; Chambers just has local color, and it\u2019s not even yellow. Some characters from this novel appear in the later stories in The King in Yellow, however. &#8211;KH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiofree","tag-ken-and-robin-consume-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640","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=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}