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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 a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.<\/i><\/p>\n All You Need is Death<\/a> (Film, Ireland, Paul Duane, 2023) Ethnomusicologists on the make (Simone Collins, Charlie Maher) team with a more established rival (Catherine Siggins) to pry a sinister pre-Irish ballad from the last singer who knows it (Olwen Fou\u00e9r\u00e9.) With its motif of a work of art that warps minds and physical reality, this eerie, disjunctive folk horror may ring bells with devotees of Chambers\u2019 King in Yellow cycle.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n The Bishop’s Bedroom<\/a> (Fiction, Piero Chiara, 1976) In the Italian-Swiss Lake District after the war, a young idle yacht owner becomes a fixture in the villa of a grasping fellow veteran, his disapproving wife, and her stifled younger sister. Literary murder tale in the Highsmith vein, told with a wry forgiveness for human weakness.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n Grave Torture (Film, Indonesia, Joko Anwar, 2024) Determined nurse (Faradina Mufti) whose parents were killed by a bomber obsessed with the Islamic doctrine that the bodies of dead unbelievers are horrifically tortured goes to extreme lengths to debunk it. Patient theological slow burn followed by shocking spiral into terror.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n His Three Daughters (Film, US, Azazel Jacobs, 2024) Tensions come to a head for three sisters, confrontational Katie (Carrie Coon), mediating new mom Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) and self-medicating Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) as they keep watch over their dying father. Indie drama stylizes its dialogue and performance style as it explores family reconciliation through grief, a wish fulfillment fantasy as alluring as anything involving Jedi or superheroes.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n The Walter Ghost Mysteries<\/a> (Fiction, Vincent Starrett, 1929-1932) In three novels, dilettante Walter Ghost reluctantly investigates murders. Murder on \u201cB\u201d Deck features a more Holmesian arbitrary revelation; the other two attempt to play fair. Light and airy, but Chicago connection aside there\u2019s not much to distinguish them from the run of the Golden Age mill.\u2014KH<\/p>\n The Widening Stain<\/a> (Fiction, Morris Bishop, 1942) Library cataloguer Gilda Gorham investigates the mysterious death of a Romance Languages professor in the stacks, interspersed with limericks from her suitor, a Dramatic Arts professor. The witty and well-drawn academic background (Bishop was a professor at Cornell, who published under a pseudonym) rather upstage a somewhat misfired mystery.\u2014KH<\/p>\nRecommended<\/h2>\n
Good<\/h2>\n
Okay<\/h2>\n