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Archive for February, 2023

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Aftersun, Crimes of the Future, and The Quiet Girl

February 28th, 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

Aftersun (Film, UK, Charlotte Wells, 2022) On a seemingly blissful vacation in Turkey with her doting 30-year-old dad Calum (Paul Mescal), 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) subconsciously feels darker currents at work that her adult self now recalls. Two wonderfully natural performances synchronize to build a film all about layered emotional truths and the impossibility of memory. A magical experience that deliberately avoids the traps of plot and omniscience. –KH

The Contractor (Film, US, Tarik Saleh, 2022) Abruptly cashiered for using performance enhancing drugs to stay in his Green Beret unit, a financially strapped vet (Chris Pine) joins his fellow family man army buddy (Ben Foster) in a mission run by a gruffly avuncular merc company proprietor (Kiefer Sutherland.) Gritty action spy thriller with touches of the Western takes pains to establish the reality of its protagonist and his world.—RDL

Crimes of the Future (Film, Canada/Greece, David Cronenberg, 2022) In a future world mostly without pain, tortured performance artist Tester (Viggo Mortensen) tests the line of new vice when he’s drawn into a police investigation of radical evolutionists. Cronenberg presents a basic procedural narrative in a wildly discordant fashion, down to huge variations in line readings: the result is literally bloody pulp and bloody good fun. –KH

Henri Dauman: Looking Up (Film, US, Peter Kenneth Jones, 2018) Profile of Henri Dauman, who in his 60s heyday shooting for Life brought a glamorous, cinematic eye to photojournalism. Shot with affection for the subject’s puckish perfectionism and empathy for the travails of a life informed by his boyhood escape from deportation to Auschwitz in wartime France.—RDL

The Quiet Girl (Film, Ireland, Colm Bairéad, 2022) In 1981, superfluous nine-year-old daughter Cáit (Catherine Clich) goes to live with her mother’s cousins in a rural idyll. A sad, beautifully shot movie about girlhood and (at a remove) motherhood, made extra gorgeous for Anglophones by having almost all the dialogue in Irish. Clinch’s excellent performance wisely stays very interiorized, as the title indicates. –KH

Wild Girl (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1932) A vivacious young woman (Joan Bennett) raised among California’s redwoods resists the attentions of men from the nearby town, until a handsome stranger (Charles Farrell) shows up to settle a score with the worst of them. Walsh’s roughneck sympathies energize a Western fable of good-hearted outsiders up against merciless, hypocritical authorities. —RDL

Okay

Django & Django (Film, Italy, Luca Rea, 2021) Documentary survey of the nihilistic spaghetti westerns of Sergio Corbucci could do with an extra talking head or two to balance the on-set anecdotes from Franco Nero and Ruggero Deodato and the enthusiastic flapdoodle of Quentin Tarantino.—RDL

Massacre at Grand Canyon (Film, Italy, Sergio Corbucci, 1964) Returning home after avenging his father’s death, an ex-sheriff (Jim Mitchum) tries to prevent a range war. Made just before Corbucci saw his friend Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and adopted a version of its hyper-accentuated spaghetti western style, this more traditional cowboy actioner contains flashes of the darkness that takes center frame in his subsequent films.—RDL

Triangle of Sadness (Film, Sweden, Ruben Östlund, 2022) Feckless models (Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean) in a romantic and/or business relationship take a free trip on a luxury cruise bound for disaster. Scores when directing its gleeful satirical cruelties at easy targets, but loses energy in its final act and cops out when it realizes where a true resolution of its tensions would take it.—RDL

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Episode 536: A Box Somewhere in Scotland

February 24th, 2023 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we ask ourselves what we would pitch to Disney if they asked us to design an F20 game using their characters.

Beloved Patreon backer Toonspew draws us to the Monster Hut to contemplate the prospect of evil unicorns.

We take our seats in the Cinema Hut for installment five of our Science Fiction Cinema Essentials and more classics of the early 50s.

Finally in the Eliptony Hut we peer into the Premonitions Bureau, a late 60s British project to record psychic predictions.

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!

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Woman King, Fleishman is in Trouble, and Inuk Kids on Bikes vs. Alien Monsters

February 21st, 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

A Curious Boy (Nonfiction, Richard Fortey, 2021) Memoir follows the author’s progression from science-obsessed youngster in post war Britain to the advent of his career as the Natural History Museum’s renowned trilobite expert. A skilled science writer makes the leap to more personal writing, with evocative results.—RDL

Fleishman is in Trouble (Television, US, Hulu/FX/Disney+, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, 2022) A former magazine writer mired in suburban despond (LIzzy Caplan) recounts the divorce story of her college friend, uptight hepatologist Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg), whose hard charging talent agent ex (Claire Danes) has inexplicably ghosted him and their kids. Brilliantly acted and directed satirical drama of money, class, marital expectation and shifting perspectives. Read the excellent source novel first to see how differences in medium can radically shift the impact of an extremely faithful adaptation.—RDL

Slash/Back (Film, Canada, Nyla Innuksuk, 2022) Teen Inuk girls defend the tiny Arctic settlement of Pangnirtung from a gruesome alien menace. Fun kids on bikes creature feature with side dishes of empowerment and local Indigenous culture.—RDL

The Woman King (Film, US, Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2022) In 1820s Dahomey, the tough-minded leader (Viola Davis) of the Agojie, the kingdom’s cadre of women warriors, prepares for a war of liberation against the superior forces of the Oyo Empire and discovers an unexpected connection to a cocky but determined recruit (Thuso Mbedu.) Historical epic of stoic empowerment recalls David Lean and event pictures of the 60s, with the addition of energetically staged modern mass fight choreography.—RDL

Good

In the Earth (Film, UK, Ben Wheatley, 2021) During a deadly plague, a feckless biologist (Joel Fry) and his sensible ranger guide (Ellora Torchia) find folk horror and a research product gone violently awry in the woodland depths. Wheatley revisits favorite themes in this reduced-scale forest freakout.—RDL

Thunder on the Hill (Film, US, Douglas Sirk, 1951) When a party transporting a distraught young woman (Ann Blyth) to the gallows takes refuge from a flood at a Norwich convent, a problem-solving nun (Claudette Colbert) sets out to prove her innocence. Sirk forgoes his characteristic florid irony, devoting his technique to hide the stage play origins of this atmospheric investigative thriller.—RDL

Ken was on the road this week.

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Episode 535: NASA is Not in the Neck Adjustment Business

February 17th, 2023 | Robin

The topic may be vagueness but the analysis remains sharp as the Gaming Hut looks at open questions and unsolved mysteries in RPG setting material.

In Fun With Science, we look for plot hooks in the ChatGPT AI text generator, including the inevitable query about its Mythos implications from beloved Patreon backer Tom Abella.

The Cinema Hut reaches part four of the Science Fiction Film Essentials series, as the genre finally hits full boil in the hopeful but paranoid early 50s.

Finally, at the behest of inquiring backer Sam Rutzick, the Consulting Occultist warily goes undercover for some questionable spinal adjustment, in search of the ghostly weirdness behind chiropractic treatment.

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!

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Bardo, Gritty Korean Supers, and Twisty Structures from the Classic Mystery Era

February 14th, 2023 | Robin

Recommended

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Film, Mexico, Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2022) Alternately arrogant and self-doubting documentarian (Daniel Giménez Cacho) experiences a surreal, scrambled version of his life as he prepares for a major awards ceremony. Nods to Buñuel and Fellini abound in this introspective spectacle of personal and national identity.—RDL

Haunters (Film, South Korea, Min-suk Kim, 2010) Goodhearted but luckless man (Gang Dong-won) discovers strange abilities of his own when a robber with mind control powers (Go Soo) murders his new boss. Cat and mouse thriller in the uncostumed gritty supers genre built on the reliable chassis of an underdog hero taking on a loathsome, frightening villain.—RDL

Hot Cash, Cold Clews: The Adventures of Lester Leith (Fiction, Erle Stanley Gardner, 2020) Before creating Perry Mason, Gardner wrote 65 stories (between 1929 and 1941) about con artist Lester Leith, who solves thefts before the cops could, then runs parallel cons (on the crooks and the cops) to hijack the loot. The seven tales collected here run this very fun, if intricate, formula in self-consciously brash pulp style. —KH

The Shining Hour (Film, US, Frank Borzage, 1938) Classy nightclub performer (Joan Crawford) marries a besotted sophisticate (Melvyn Douglas) from an old money Wisconsin family, only to discover a mutual attraction for his neurotic brother (Robert Young.) Family melodrama played without ironic excess, and with a sympathy for an antagonist (Fay Bainter, as the bitterly disapproving elder sister) who in a typical treatment of this material would be villainized.—RDL

Trial and Error (Fiction, Anthony Berkeley, 1937) Diagnosed with a terminal heart condition, Mr. Todhunter decides to murder a rotten person – but when Scotland Yard arrests someone else for the crime, he has to prove his guilt. Berkeley at his most arch, once more deconstructing the mystery novel right in the middle of its Golden Age. A trifle long, but it’s a good long. —KH

Good

Lost Bullet 2 (Film, France, Guillaume Pierret, 2022) Lino’s (Alban Lenoir) determination to bring down the drug smugglers who killed his brother threatens his unexpected transition from ex-con to cop. Continuations take more effort to set in motion than originals, so this engaging mix of hand-to-hand and automotive action lacks the precision wristwatch quality of the original.—RDL

Pathaan (Film, India, Siddharth Anand, 2023) Badass Indian secret agent Pathaan (Shah Rukh Khan) hunts terrorist mastermind Jim (John Abraham) with (or and?) Pakistani spy Rubina (Deepika Padukone). Ridiculously over-the-top action thriller hits every emotional beat on the map in between joyous fights and chases; imagine a Mission: Impossible flick that cared even less about grounded realism. Bump it up to Recommended if you’re already an admirer of SRK or Deepika. —KH

Okay

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Film, US, Ryan Coogler, 2022) Princess Shuri’s (Letitia Wright) mourning for her brother is interrupted by an argument by an invasion threat by Prince Namor (Tenoch Huerta) and his undersea kingdom. In addition to the usual MCU shoehorning in of extraneous characters, this struggles for momentum with a protagonist with an unconscious objective she is not pursuing, and an antagonist pursuing a fuzzy, strained objective.—RDL

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Episode 534: Manimal Utopia

February 10th, 2023 | Robin

Beloved Patreon backer Michael Gemar requests that The Business of Gaming tackle Wizards of the Coast’s latest adventures in managing the Dungeons and Dragons Open License.

We thought that would be one segment. Hear it, in real time, turn into three!

That leaves room for the Cinema Hut’s Science Fiction Film Essentials series to reach the sound era, and the 1930s, when the laboratory becomes a wellspring of gothic terror.

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!

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: A Talking Shell, a Monopolized Sky, and a High-Stakes Prosecution

February 7th, 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

Argentina, 1985 (Film, Argentina, Santiago Mitre, 2022) With a new civilian government holding tenuous power, a principled, irascible prosecutor (Ricardo Darin) takes the considerable risk of assembling a young team of lawyers to prosecute the generals of Argentina’s junta for their crimes against humanity. Political thriller legal procedural skillfully lays out the real world exposition while still leaving room for emotional punch.—RDL

The Black-Eyed Blonde (Fiction, John Banville writing as Benjamin Black, 2014) An alluring client hires wry Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe to investigate the reappearance of her supposedly dead ex-lover. References Chandler more than Chandler would, but otherwise accurately inhabits his style, which is drier and more measured than we tend to recall. The basis of the upcoming Neil Jordan Marlowe film.—RDL

Loving Highsmith (Film, Switzerland/Germany, Eva Vitija, 2022) Documentary uses Patricia Highsmith’s diaries, voiced by Gwendoline Christie, as a springboard to explore the life and short-lived intense loves behind such works as Carol, Strangers on a Train, and the Ripley series.—RDL

The Man in the White Suit (Film, UK, Alexander Mackendrick, 1951) Naive chemist Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) topples Britain’s textile industry into crisis when he invents an indestructible, never-dirty artificial fiber. Mackendrick underlines the “innocent everyman against a dirty system” satire literally, filming the white suit glowing against the grime and mean-ness of the rest of the world. In a stable of marvelous Ealing Studios performers, Ernest Thesiger steals the show as the literally consumptive spirit of aristocratic capital. –KH

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (Film, US, Dean Fleischer-Camp, 2022) Recently dumped documentarian (Dean Fleischer-Camp) shoots a film about the unexpected occupant of his AirBNB, a shy but talkative snail shell (Jenny Slate) and his fading grandmother (Isabella Rosselini). I was maybe prepared for this expansion of a viral video series to turn a rental house into a cavernous, melancholy realm, but not for the emotional wallop of its exploration of abandonment and grief.—RDL

Rich Man’s Sky (Fiction, Wil McCarthy, 2021) Four trillionaires control outer space thanks to governmental neglect, so the U.S. President sends an operative to infiltrate the solar shield project. Works both as refreshingly half-assed covert-ops narrative and as rich near-future worldbuilding, with letters from one of the monks on the lunar monastery providing an enjoyable Greek chorus. –KH

Good

Seven Sweethearts (Film, US, Frank Borzage, 1942) Brash reporter (Van Heflin) covering a tulip festival in a quaintly Dutch Michigan town led by its garrulous innkeeper (S. Z. Sakall) must fend off the attentions of his fame-seeking eldest daughter (Miriam Hunt) to woo his sweet-natured youngest (Kathryn Grayson.) Only Borzage could fill such fluffy nonsense with such genuine feeling, including glimmers of wartime gravity.—RDL

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Episode 533: Best Non-Answer of the 19th Century

February 3rd, 2023 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we look at what characters should do more often in horror: run!

At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Eric Saltwell, the Word Hut seeks the real truth behind Unicode ghost kanji.

In part two of our Cinema Hut Science Fiction Essentials series, we finally get to some actual movies, the precursors (and one classic) of the silent era.

Finally Ken’s Time Machine fuels itself on some high-octane introductory exposition as fiendishly clever backer Philip Masters asks our. chrononaut to come up with a fresh answer to the Schleswig-Holstein Question.

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!

Put on your flannels, grab your duffel bag of hardware and assemble your fake passports. Alert your retailer to the contents of their favorite unmarked warehouse. Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the revised, updated and declassified edition of the iconic 1990s sourcebook has escaped from Arc Dream Publishing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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