Grimoire
Cthulhu
Dracula
Abraham Lincoln
Ken
Grimoire

Archive for January, 2023

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Banshees of Inisherin, The Maestro Nostradamus Trilogy, and a Hollywood Double Agent

January 31st, 2023 | 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.

Recommended

The Banshees of Inisherin (Film, Ireland, Martin McDonagh, 2022) On an isolated Irish Ireland during the Civil War, a brooding would-be songwriter (Brendan Gleeson) goes to extremes to end all interaction with his sweet natured bore of an erstwhile drinking buddy (Colin Farrell.) A substrate of Beckett underlies the pictorial naturalism of this bleak existential political parable.—RDL

Hollywood Double Agent (Nonfiction, Jonathan Gill, 2020) While working for Paramount as music director in the 1930s, clownish charmer and peripatetic striver Boris Morros signs on to spy for Stalin, later turning on his handlers as an FBI mole. Acutely reported account of a true story full of lies shows that any realistic account of the espionage world resembles the works of Armando Iannucci and the Coens more than it does John le Carré.—RDL

The Maestro Nostradamus Trilogy (Fiction, Dave Duncan, 2007-2009) Three mystery novels featuring the alchemist, astrologer, seer, etc. Nostradamus (the nephew) and his apprentice Alfeo in a 1590s Venice where magic works. Engaging pastiche of Nero Wolfe offers moderately compelling mysteries and rich setting and occult detail. Definitely inspirational for Swords of the Serpentine players. –KH

Reservation Dogs Season 1 (Television, US, FX/Hulu/Disney+, Sterlin Harjo, 2021) Four teens on an Oklahoma reservation plot their escape from rural despond to an imagined bright future in Los Angeles. Funny, moving, real, and occasionally magically real, this half-hour dramedy sets out a throughline and then structures each episode as its own evanescent short story.—RDL

Good

The Crazy Ray (Film, France, René Clair, 1923) Eiffel Tower attendant discovers a time-stopped Paris, meets a few other still-awake folks, and eventually discovers the mad scientist responsible. The first ever “awake in an empty city” movie deftly shifts emotional tone while depicting a fantasy of Paris, but its last act drags out to little purpose. Still, several individual scenes and shots retain surprising power even leaving aside their inspiration on later films.  –KH

Woman in the Moon (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1929) Even though his project has been hijacked by an evil gold cartel, and the woman he loves (Gerda Maurus) has agreed to marry his second-in-command, a determined astrophysicist (Willy Fritsch) persists with his rocket flight to the moon. Because this is Lang, the first film to depict the romance of space exploration technology is also fundamentally about being trapped—physically, and, more importantly, with other people. A modern remake would radically collapse the ninety minutes of pre-blastoff setup.—RDL

Okay

Aelita, Queen of Mars (Film, USSR, Yakov Protazanov, 1924) As a corrupt supply official turns the head of his new bride, an astrophysicist daydreams of class revolution on Mars. Relegates the science fiction of its source novel to a dream sequence in favor of a satirical melodrama about people struggling to live up to revolutionary ideals in post-revolutionary hard times, and thus more of greater interest as a piece of early Soviet cinema than as a genre precursor.—RDL

The Crazy Ray (Film, France, René Clair, 1923) A handful of unaffected individuals enjoy a brief idyll when a scientific experiment plunges Paris into a time-stopped state. An exercise in futurist whimsy serves as a footnote in science fiction cinema and the career of its director.—RDL

Not Recommended

TÁR (Film, US, Todd Field, 2022) The supreme self-assurance that carried a superstar conductor (Cate Blanchett) to the directorship of the Berlin Philharmonic prevents her from adjusting to the reality of a looming scandal. Character study, written from a position of moral superiority over the protagonist it devotes two and half hours to, slowly descends from ambiguity to obviousness.—RDL

Tags:
Posted in Audio Free | No Comments »

Episode 532: In Which Ken Is Shot

January 27th, 2023 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we remember our friend and colleague Darren Watts, prolific Champions designer and former head of Hero Games.

The Crime Blotter comes a little too close to home for comfort as Ken tells the story of his recent shooting.

We kick off a new series in the Cinema Hut, Science Fiction Cinema Essentials. Due to the porousness of the genre we train our radium oscilloscopes on some definitions and ground rules before getting started with earliest examples.

Finally another undead bloodsucker sneaks into the Eliptony Hut, this time of the relatively recent urban legend variety, as we profile the Richmond Vampire.

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.

Rejoice, fans of Atlas Games and Ken and Robin. Atlas Games is running its most Ken and Robiny promotion ever. Atlas publishes books from both of us and for a limited time only you can get 20% off those books with the promo code KENANDROBIN23 at the Atlas Games store: https://atlas-games.com/product_tables/.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Podcast | 3 Comments »

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Gritty Hong Kong Crime Drama, John Waters Fiction, and Dark Body Horror Supers from Takashi Miike

January 24th, 2023 | 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.

Recommended

Connect Season 1 (Television, South Korea, Disney+/Hulu, Takashi Miike, 2022) Young junkyard employee with grotesque regenerative powers (Jung Hae-in) loses an eye to organ traffickers, gaining unwanted insight into the activities of the serial killer (Go Kyung-Pyo) it has been transplanted into. Gritty body horror dark superhero thriller anchored by Miike’s mastery of the outré.—RDL

Hand Rolled Cigarette (Film, HK, Kin Long Chan, 2022) Veteran of the UK forces in Hong Kong who has been reduced to petty gangsterism (Ka-Tung Lam) reluctantly shelters a young South Asian man (Bipin Karma) secretly in possession of cocaine bricks stolen from his boss. Gritty, character-driven crime drama in crusty guy comes out of his shell mode escalates to an extended, crunching fight sequence.—RDL

Liarmouth (Fiction, John Waters, 2019) When her airport luggage theft business comes a-cropper, a contemptuous pathological liar provokes pursuit from her horny, dimwitted accomplice and wronged trampoline cultist daughter. Satirical, breakneck chase thriller, unfettered by the limits of the filmable, meets the new respectability and finds it the same as the old respectability, thus ripe for gleeful roasting.—RDL

The Mortal Storm (Film, US, Frank Borzage, 1940) When Hitler comes to power in 1933, Freya (Margaret Sullavan), daughter of a prominent Jewish medical professor (Frank Morgan), sees the difference between the two men who love her, a pushy Nazi (Robert Young) and an assuming pacifist (James Stewart.) Borzage devotes his poignant, mystical humanism to Hollywood’s effort to prepare American popular opinion for its entry into WWII. This is your great-grandfather’s antifascism, and pretty darn effective.—RDL

The Northman (Film, US, Robert Eggers, 2022) Viking prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) poses as a thrall and allies with a heroic Slavic witch (Anya Taylor-Joy) to avenge the murder of his royal father by the cruel uncle (Claes Bang), who has married his mother (Nicole Kidman.) Brutal spectacle fills the screen in this pre-Christian inversion of Hamlet from a story of action vs contemplation to one of choice vs fate.—RDL

Okay

The Mystery of the Blue Train (Fiction, Agatha Christie, 1928) On the verge of a divorce, American heiress Ruth Kettering is killed on the Blue Train from Paris to Nice; her father hires Poirot to find the killer. Flashes of mature character drown under lurid, sensationalized plot, generating no real atmosphere while the puzzle seems forgotten or almost arbitrary at times. Christie herself “downgraded” anyone who enjoyed this novel, so I guess we agree. –KH

Not Recommended

The Big Four (Fiction, Agatha Christie, 1927) Captain Hastings returns to Poirot’s London flat just as a mysterious courier delivers a post-hypnotic dying message revealing the Big Four – an international crime syndicate headed by a mysterious Chinaman of all things. Christie’s serialized attempt at Sax Rohmer fails as a fixup novel and as a surreal thriller and almost entirely as a mystery. If there’s a worse Poirot book, I hope I never read it. –KH

Tags:
Posted in Audio Free | No Comments »

Episode 531: The Copts Still Have His Head

January 20th, 2023 | Robin

In response to this Caity Weaver New York Times Magazine article, beloved Patreon backer Scott Wachter makes the Gaming Hut a very quiet place indeed by asking us for the scenario possibilities of anechoic chambers.

Estimable backer Ray Slakinski beckons us to the Northern Ontario location of the Horror Hut to discuss the Wilno vampire.

Speaking of horror, Ken and Robin Recycle Audio completes its highlights of the Horror Roleplaying Masterclass from Dragonmeet.

Finally the Consulting Occultist meets erudite backer Jamie Twine in a gondola for a survey of the weird and magical in Venice.

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.

Rejoice, fans of Atlas Games and Ken and Robin. Atlas Games is running its most Ken and Robiny promotion ever. Atlas publishes books from both of us and for a limited time only you can get 20% off those books with the promo code KENANDROBIN23 at the Atlas Games store: https://atlas-games.com/product_tables/.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Podcast | No Comments »

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Senegalese Magic Cops, Sumerian Ghosts, an Indonesian Heist, and a Classic POW Escape

January 17th, 2023 | 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

A Man Escaped (Film, France, Robert Bresson, 1956) Imprisoned by the Nazis, Resistance fighter Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) resolves to escape. Bresson strips everything out of his film except the pure gaze of the camera (with an assist from Mozart) and the pitiless tension of story to create a timeless and universal paean to liberty that doubles as a crackling suspense picture. –KH

Recommended

Confess, Fletch (Film, US, Greg Mottola, 2022) Framed for murder in relation to an art theft he’s looking into for his glamorous new Italian girlfriend,  a sardonic former investigative reporter (Jon Hamm) confounds Boston cops and navigates a maze of kooky suspects. A refreshing revival of the loose, shaggy spirit of late 70s and early 80s screen comedy, where the main special effect is Hamm’s array of bemused reaction shots.—RDL

The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies (Nonfiction, Irving Finkel, 2021) Survey of ancient Mesopotamian ghost beliefs and necromantic summoning techniques takes a slight diversion in the middle to review underworld descent myths. Presents a world of ubiquitous revenants, hitting the sweet spot between scholarship and accessibility. Finkel might, based on the assumption that myths contain practical, external or internal logic, assert an overly certain conclusion or three along the way. But what am I, a cuneiformist?—RDL

Nope (Film, US, Jordan Peele, 2022) Laconic movie horse wrangler (Daniel Kaluuya) and his extroverted sister (Keke Palmer) seek a payday by trying to record conclusive evidence of the strange force hiding in the clouds above the failing family ranch. Cryptic imagery and visual treats both spectacular and subliminal put a fresh spin on a beloved horror sub-genre.—RDL

Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation (Nonfiction, Ronald Hutton, 2022) Hutton explores four intermediate beings (Mother Nature, the Fairy Queen, the Queen of the Night, and the Cailleach) from their pagan roots to their modern mythopoesis and deepens our knowledge of all four while dismantling any “Great Goddess” hangovers. An epilogue on the (entirely modern) Green Man makes a superb counterpoint. –KH

Sakho & Mangane Season 1 (Television, Senegal, Canal+ Afrique, Jean Luc Herbulot, 2019) On the mean streets of Dakar, a by-the-book police commander (Issaka Sawadogo) and his maverick new partner (Yann Gael) investigate a series of cases with increasingly overt supernatural elements. This would merit attention simply as a port of police procedural tropes to a West African setting. And then the zombies show up. Now on Netflix in many territories.—RDL

Good

Stealing Raden Saleh (Film, Indonesia, Angga Dwimas Sasongko, 2023) Hoping to spring his father from jail, an earnest college-age art forger (Iqbaal Dhiafakhri Ramadhan) and his fixer buddy (Angga Yunanda) agree to assemble a team of novice heisters to steal Indonesia’s most iconic painting. Ingratiating tribute to the heist tradition, with a bit of martial arts thrown in, is less than economical in setting up its characters and situation.—RDL

Okay

The Pale Blue Eye (Film, US, Scott Cooper, 2022) Summoned to investigate a case of murder and mutilation at West Point in 1830, former cop Augustus Landor (a lugubrious Christian Bale) recruits as his inside man the cadet Edgar Allan Poe (a squeaky super-camp Henry Melling). Squelches the pleasures of both detection and gothic horror in favor of bad lighting, plodding story, and stultifying self-seriousness, wasting a packed supporting cast (Gillian Anderson, Toby Jones, Robert Duvall, Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the process. –KH

The Pale Blue Eye (Film, US, Scott Cooper, 2022) Traumatized ex-cop (Christian Bale) investigates a hanging at West Point with the aid of one of its cadets, a young Edgar Allan Poe (Henry Melling.) Treats lurid material with a whispery solemnity, when it could use a dash of camp and some rhythmic variation.—RDL

Tags:
Posted in Audio Free | No Comments »

Episode 530: More Than One Adida

January 13th, 2023 | Robin

Fire up your automated die rollers as the Gaming Hut goes digital to answer beloved Patreon backer Marc Kevin Hall’s request for guidance on running tabletop RPGs online.

In the History Hut, unswerving backer Jeromy French unwittingly illuminates the number one rule of Canadian history by seeking the secrets behind the assassination of Ontario newspaperman and politician George Brown.

Then Ken and Robin Recycle Audio with more answers from the Dragonmeet Horror Roleplaying Masterclass, also starring our boon compadre Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan.

Finally pitch-traversing backer Neil Barnes revs up Ken’s Time Machine to impel our hero to root the corruption out of FIFA.

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.

Rejoice, fans of Atlas Games and Ken and Robin. Atlas Games is running its most Ken and Robiny promotion ever. Atlas publishes books from both of us and for a limited time only you can get 20% off those books with the promo code KENANDROBIN23 at the Atlas Games store: https://atlas-games.com/product_tables/.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Podcast | 1 Comment »

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Menu, Slow Horses, and The Big Four

January 10th, 2023 | 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.

Recommended

The Automat (Film, US, Lisa Hurwitz, 2021) Documentary profiles the rise and fall of the Horn & Hardart restaurant chain, which served cheap quality food to New Yorkers and Philadelphians through automated windows that opened when you put a nickel in. Talking head Mel Brooks adds comic energy to a fascinating commercial and social history.—RDL

A Bride for Rip van Winkle (Film, Japan, Shunji Iwai, 2016) Ashamed to have no one to invite to her wedding, a painfully withdrawn bride-to-be (Haru Kuroki) enlists a supplier of paid guests (Gô Ayano), who has a complex scheme of his own in mind. Quietly commanding chamber epic sets up and then confounds neo-gothic expectations. —RDL

Death on the Nile (Film, UK, John Guillermin, 1978) When millionaire heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) is murdered on her honeymoon cruise on the Nile, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) must untangle the mystery. A best-of-breed 1970s star-studded mystery extravaganza featuring Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, and Maggie Smith in a three-way camp-off and a weirdly simpering Poirot that Ustinov somehow makes appealing. Anthony Shaffer’s script handles the clockwork Christie story with aplomb, and Guillermin lets the actors breathe. –KH

Going Highbrow (Film, US, Robert Florey, 1935) With the cheerful acquiescence of her newly rich down-to-earth husband (Guy Kibbee), a heartlander yearning for New York social status (Zasu Pitts) enlists the aid of a high-status, low-net worth family’s scheme-happy financial advisor (Edward Everett Horton.) Unusual screwball comedy puts the comic character actors upfront, with the romantic plot driving the action without taking the spotlight.—RDL

The Menu (Film, US, Mark Mylod, 2022) Obsessed foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his less-so date Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) arrive at an island restaurant for chef Slowik’s (Ralph Fiennes) masterpiece. Squid-ink-black satire might have been too broad without Fiennes and Hoult’s laserlike timing; Taylor-Joy ably blends her audience stand-in role with her own plot in slow reveals. The resulting horror: deconstructed Buñuel, with a Colin Stetson score featuring notes of mineral and threat. –KH

Slow Horses Season 2 (Television, UK, Will Smith, 2022) Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) stubbornly probes the murder of a long-discarded agent, exposing a sleeper agent plot. Unable to repeat the first season’s underdogs versus real MI6 conflict, the series settles into a satisfying case-of-the-week (or -series if you insist on getting technical about it) thriller rhythm.—RDL

Three Thousand Years of Longing (Film, US, George Miller, 2022) Contentedly lonely narratologist (Tilda Swinton) deploys her understanding of myth to avoid becoming a cautionary tale when she frees a handsome djinn (Idris Elba) in her academic conference hotel room. Miller looses his mastery of visual plasticity on a romantic tale both intimate and wondrous.—RDL

Good

The Big Four (Film, Timo Tjahjanto, 2022) A quartet of assassins in hiding after the assassination of their master face pursuit from a dogged cop and a psychotic rival. Brilliantly executed grand guignol fight sequences without enough of a storyline to sustain momentum between them.—RDL

Death on the Nile (Film, US, Kenneth Branagh, 2022) When millionaire heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) is murdered on her honeymoon cruise on the Nile, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) must untangle the mystery. Branagh restrains his worst tics as actor and director while trusting the inherent (albeit CGI-enhanced) spectacle of the piece, so rather better than his previous Poirot. Neither Branagh nor writer Michael Green know what to do with half the cast; Branagh really only wants juice and energy out of Gadot and Sophie Okonedo (playing a blues singer in lieu of the original’s romance novelist). Emma Mackey and Annette Bening force our attention nonetheless. –KH

Okay

The Angel’s Game (Fiction, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, 2008) In interwar Barcelona a young pulp writer loses his grip on reality after accepting a commission to write a new religious mythology from a Luciferian client. In the second of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, Zafon permits himself a multitude of sins by fully embracing pulp structure, in the end raising the question of how much the reader can attach to events described by a completely unreliable narrator.—RDL

Tags:
Posted in Audio Free | No Comments »

Episode 529: More Cryptids Than It Can Consume Domestically

January 6th, 2023 | Robin

We start by whittling some polyhedrals in the Gaming Hut, as beloved Patreon backer Derrick Yates asks us to sketch out an Appalachian cryptid campaign.

In The Business of Gaming we discuss another reason the books you’re waiting for are late, the great freelancer / creator crash-out of 2022.

Then another long dormant segment returns, as Ken and Robin Recycle Audio from the Dragonmeet Horror Roleplaying Masterclass.

Finally alien ears perk up in the Eliptony Hut as we profile UFO gadfly Gray Barker.

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.

Rejoice, fans of Atlas Games and Ken and Robin. Atlas Games is running its most Ken and Robiny promotion ever. Atlas publishes books from both of us and for a limited time only you can get 20% off those books with the promo code KENANDROBIN23 at the Atlas Games store: https://atlas-games.com/product_tables/.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Podcast | 2 Comments »

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Kingdom Exodus, Babylon and Singin’ in the Rain

January 3rd, 2023 | 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

Singin’ in the Rain (Film, US, Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, 1952) In 1927, romantic leading man Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) falls for chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) as his film studio tries to make a newfangled talking picture. Like almost everyone, I’ve seen chunks of this movie in excerpts and dance numbers, but my first time (!!) watching it all the way through reveals it as one of the most astonishing feats of bricolage the old studio system ever produced. Ordered to churn out a jukebox musical to make use of songs MGM already owned, the writers and directors and actors literally choreographed a magnificent, multivalent love story of a caliber now only seen in Bollywood. More cynical than you remember, and more beautiful too. –KH

Recommended

Kingdom Exodus (Television, Denmark, Lars von Trier, 2022) After watching season two of Lars von Trier’s supernatural medical soap opera, a kindly sleepwalker (Bodil Jørgensen), vexed by its inconclusive ending, checks herself into Kingdom hospital to investigate the truth behind the events it depicted. 24 years ago, von Trier, seemingly dismayed to have created something entertaining that people liked, dropped his show in midstream. In a meta-sequel that amps up the absurd comedy and overt dark fantasy elements, he finds a way to wrap it up without abandoning his core self-loathing.—RDL

The Last of Sheila (Film, US, Herbert Ross, 1973) A year after his wife’s unsolved hit and run death, a grandly manipulative movie producer (James Coburn) invites his friends (James Mason, Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch, Ian McShane, Joan Hackett) aboard his yacht to play a social deduction scavenger hunt on various Mediterranean islands. Puzzle-loving whodunnit wreathed in laidback 70s glamor and icy cynicism. Written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins and cited by Rian Johnson as an influence on Glass Onion.—RDL

The Last of Sheila (Film, US, Herbert Ross, 1973) Big-shot movie producer Clinton Greene (James Coburn) invites the six littler-shot Hollywood suspects in his wife’s unsolved murder (James Mason, Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch, Ian McShane, Joan Hackett) to play a murder mystery (and social dominance)  game on his yacht off the south of France. All three of the interlocking whodunits work thanks to a tight script by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins; Coburn, Mason, and especially Cannon breathe life into their deliberately stagy characters. –KH

Margin Call (Film, US, J.C. Chandor, 2011) In 2008, immediately after a Wall Street brokerage fires its risk management officer (Stanley Tucci), a wunderkind analyst (Zachary Quinto) discovers the firm – and by extension all of Wall Street – is horrendously over-leveraged. Beautifully geometrical thriller tosses the apocalyptic hot potato up the corporate ladder (Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker) to the very top (Jeremy Irons) where no good options remain. Superbly acted, shot, paced, edited, and scored, only occasional touches of artificiality keep it from Pinnacle status. –KH

Good

<'>As Luck Would Have It (Nonfiction, Derek Jacobi, 2013) English acting autobiography bestows the requisite theatrical anecdotes and a self-depiction of a thoroughly reticent man brought up as a beloved only child by equally retiring parents.—RDL

Okay

See How They Run (Film, UK, Tom George, 2022) Checked-out, alcoholic police inspector (Sam Rockwell) and eager constable (Saoirse Ronan) investigate a murder backstage at the 100th performance of The Mousetrap. Ironically for a film in which crass directorial rewrites appear as a major plot point, a script that shows vestigial signs of having something to say about the murder mystery genre and literary travesty winds up immured in a broad, cutesy style.—RDL

Not Recommended

Babylon (Film, US, Damien Chazelle, 2022) In 1926, starry-eyed gofer Manny Torres (Diego Calva) falls for wild child starlet-to-be Nellie LeRoy (Margot Robbie) as his film studio tries to make a newfangled talking picture. In three-plus hours, Chazelle can’t help but shoot a few arresting images, and although Justin Hurwitz’ driving jazz score and Robbie’s self-destructive it girl do nothing original, they do it very well. But bereft of both antagonist and structure, the film’s a mess: a shitting elephant. (That’s literally the first scene of the film.) As silent star Jack Conrad (a checked-out Brad Pitt) shouts at us about two hours in: “Movies don’t need subtext!” If you say so, Damien. –KH

Tags:
Posted in Audio Free | 1 Comment »
Film Cannister
Cartoon Rocket
d8
Flying Clock
Robin
Film Cannister