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Archive for March, 2024

Episode 592: A Rhode Island Level of Excitement

March 29th, 2024 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we find ways to bring players back into the action when they make sensible decisions that sideline their characters.

2Beloved Patreon backer Paul S. Enns beckons us into the Tradecraft Hut to cover the May 23rd Lake Maggiore boating accident.

In the Monster Hut we look at the blemmyae, the hungry headless folk of classical and medieval lore.

Finally Ken’s Time Machine responds to the request of estimable backer Eric Parks, who wants to know what the timeline would look like had Rhode Island’s Dorr Rebellion succeeded.

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.

The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

Don your pallid mask and get all the Ken, Carcosa, and footnotes you require now that Arc Dream’s The King in Yellow: Annotated Edition is now available in paperback and ebook formats. With stunning art by Samuel Araya, this lavish tome of terror earns a space on any shelf.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Perfect Days, a Cuban Cinema Classic, and Chilean Martial Arts

March 26th, 2024 | 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

Memories of Underdevelopment (Film, Cuba, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968) Dispossessed sophisticate (Sergio Corrieri) muses on the ex-wife who left him to emigrate and the deflated state of the nation as he pursues a naive would-be actress (Daisy Granados.) Indispensable snapshot of post-revolutionary malaise deftly transposes the discursive, interior structure of the literary novel into cinema.—RDL

Perfect Days (Film, Japan/Germany, Wim Wenders, 2023) Uncommunicative Shibuya public toilet cleaner (Kôji Yakusho) fends off periodic interruptions to the stripped-down purity of his daily routine. The ultimate expression of a directorial career spent chasing the moments of moving transcendence from the works of Ozu, made possible by the supreme craft and presence of Japan’s greatest active actor.—RDL

Spoiled Children (Film, France, Bertrand Tavernier, 1977) Seeking isolation to crack his latest screenplay, a distinguished film director (Michel Piccoli) rents an apartment, only to become involved in a tenant’s committee against an exploitative landlord and an affair with a conflicted young job-hunter (Christine Pascal.) Slice-of-life drama is unusual for an autobiographical work in presenting its protagonist as essentially distant and opaque.

Good

The Wandering Princess (Film, Japan, Kinuyo Tanaka, 1960) Out of duty to when aristocratic family is pressured by the fascist military, a demure young woman (Machiko Kyô) sets aside her artistic ambitions to marry the brother of Japanese-occupied Manchuria’s puppet emperor Puyi. Biographical melodrama depicts tumultuous events with a stately authority, but races through a key development in the protagonist’s later life that cries out for the full treatment.—RDL

Okay

The Fist of the Condor (Film, Chile, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, 2023) After an overlong retreat from the warrior path, a photophobic martial artist (Marko Zaror) battles the minions of his evil twin. Despite an over reliance on training sequences and mentor aphorisms, the cross-cultural vibe and acrobatic fight style are fresh enough to make me root for the team behind this scrappy effort to discover suspense beats and narrative momentum.—RDL

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Episode 591: Good Fun That Barbarians Have

March 22nd, 2024 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut, Robin pitches Ken on a concept for a roleplaying game called Renfields.

The Mythology Hut looks at the enigmatic Dacian god and/or person named Zalmoxis, who might have been a sky deity. Or an earth deity. Or a physician.

In Ask Ken and Robin, beloved Patreon backer Walter Manbeck asks Robin to expand on his capsule review of the 1956 Carol Reed circus movie Trapeze as a model for efficiently executed DramaSystem scenes.

The Consulting Occultist wraps up the episode with the rundown on the 17th century English physician and mystic Robert Fludd.

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.

The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

Don your pallid mask and get all the Ken, Carcosa, and footnotes you require now that Arc Dream’s The King in Yellow: Annotated Edition is now available in paperback and ebook formats. With stunning art by Samuel Araya, this lavish tome of terror earns a space on any shelf.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Dune, Monarch, Monsieur Spade

March 19th, 2024 | 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

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Television, US, Apple+, Chris Black, 2023) Kaiju-traumatized teacher (Anna Sawai) and failed artist (Ren Watabe) discover that they are half-siblings and that their supposedly dead father had yet another secret life as a monster hunter, which leads them to the cashiered co-founder of his former organization (Kurt Russell), whose backstory is told in flashback, with Wyatt Russell taking on his role. Though the latter-day sequences over-rely on changes in allegiance to keep the plot gyrating, the flashback half satisfyingly backfills the Monsterverse continuity. Wyatt Russell embraces the stunt casting with a dead-on version of his dad’s mannerisms and then transcends it, bringing human pathos and longing to all the monstering. Godzilla occasionally pops by, like the Cigarette Smoking Man or Newman, to inject a jolt of energy.—RDL

Good

Along with Ghosts (Film, Japan, Kimiyoshi Yasuda & Yoshiyuki Kuroda, 1969) In samurai-era Japan, supernatural beings come to the aid of a little girl on the run from curse-flouting yakuza. According to the essential metric of how many cool yokai are onscreen doing cool yokai things, the last film in the Yokai Monsters trilogy receives the lowest marks.—RDL

Badland Hunters (Film, South Korea, Heo Myeong Haeng, 2024) In post-catastrophic Seoul, an ex-boxer (Ma Dong-Seok) sets out to rescue a young neighbor (No Jeong-ee) from the clutches of a bioengineering cult leader. In this first film from a fight choreographer, the action direction outshines everything else, giving Ma plenty of people to punch but nothing to play.—RDL

Ballerina (Film, South Korea, Chung-Hyun Lee, 2023) Ex-bodyguard (Jeon Jong-seo) arms up for revenge against the traffickers who killed her best friend. Applies a gloss of Ridley Scott style to a straightforward vigilante actioner with an exploitation movie ethos.—RDL

Incomplete

Dune: Part Two (Film, US, Denis Villeneuve, 2024) Genetic messiah Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) goes native on Arrakis, worried that embracing his destiny means galactic war. Like most second halves of movies, this coasts on the intrigue and buy-in created in the first half; only the Harkonnen home planet gives us anything new or interesting. Unlike Rebecca Ferguson, Chalamet isn’t a strong enough actor to hold his half together even against a deliberately nerfed Emperor (Christopher Walken). The inevitable (and invited) comparison to Lean’s Pinnacle Lawrence of Arabia does Villeneuve no favors either; I presume if I watched both halves of Dune together in IMAX it would come out a high Good.—KH

Not Recommended

Monsieur Spade (Television, US/France, Scott Frank & Tom Fontana, 2024) Former private detective Sam Spade (Clive Owen), now retired to a small French town on his late wife’s estate, must pick up the gun again when he is drawn into a case involving a missing Algerian boy, murdered nuns, and the daughter (Cara Bossom) of former flame Brigid O’Shaunessy. The first five episodes establish Owen as a convincing Spade who references Bogart without imitating him and places the character in a refreshing new context. Then the finale sidelines him, parachutes in a deus ex machina who does nothing and solves nothing, and otherwise places the series in the all-time Terrible Endings Hall of Fame right next to Lost and Game of Thrones.—RDL

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Episode 590: Rolled a Critical and Saved a Clown

March 15th, 2024 | Robin

We hope you can make it to the Gaming Hut for a discussion of quorum and attendance vagaries.

In the History Hut we answer the request of beloved Patreon backer Jeromy French to flesh out a topic we have previously only alluded to—the Toronto clown-fireman riot.

Finally Ken’s Bookshelf features a mere half of our resident bibliomane’s book raid on the Potomac region.

4th segment

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.

The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

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: Hatfields vs McCoys, Taylor Tomlinson vs Expectations, and Annette Bening vs Box Jellyfish

March 12th, 2024 | 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

Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance (Nonfiction, Lisa Alther, 2012) With a novelist’s eye for structure, Alther unravels the post-Civil War string of reprisal killings between two sprawling families on the Kentucky-West Virginia border that left sixty dead and bequeathed a curiously corny, heavily sanitized legend to later pop culture. Impressively chronicles a story in which every significant incident occurs in a minimum of two contradictory versions, then circles back for context and analysis.—RDL

Gary Gulman: Born on Third Base (Stand-up, HBO Max, James Webb, 2023) Gulman continues to evolve his particular blend of the shaggy-dog joke and the autobiographical monologue (or as he calls it, “mommy look at me”) with ever-increasing precision, tightness, and skilled delivery. Any stand-up who does both a Pop-Tart joke and a Seinfeld takedown had better bring their A game, and Gulman does just that.—KH

Sopyonje (Film, South Korea, Im-kwon Taek, 1993) Misanthropic itinerant singer of the dying pansori tradition (Kim Myung-gon) goes to appalling lengths to mold his adopted daughter (Jung-hae Oh) into his artistic successor. Gorgeously mounted drama of suffering for art.—RDL

The Murder Man (Film, US, Tim Whelan, 1935) Binge-drinking crime reporter (Spencer Tracy) scoops the competition on the slaying of a crooked investment broker. Fast-talking crime drama takes its hero in an atypical direction.—RDL

Taylor Tomlinson: Have it All (Stand-up, Netflix, Kristian Mercado, 2023) It’s tough to brag and be funny, but Tomlinson’s wild swagger carries her through a set centering on how far she’s come since her last specials. Once more, her mastery of vocal code switching and physical acting take already great material and make it excellent.—KH

Good

Knife + Heart (Film, France, Yann Gonzales, 2018) Heartbroken gay porn auteur (Kate Moran) becomes an unlikely investigator when police show little interest in the masked killer stalking her actors. Like many latter-day giallo homages, this references the subgenre’s style and motifs but sets aside the horror-thrilling pacing, in this case for a surreal indie drama of 70s queer life that owes more to Cocteau than to Argento or Bava.—RDL

Nyad (Film, US, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin, 2023) At age 62, long distance swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) appoints best pal Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster) as her coach in a bid to complete the Cuba-Florida marathon that beat her when she was 28. Acting-driven sports film convincingly portrays marathon swimming as the grotesque self-mortification of a trauma-forged achiever, bringing more than a little ambivalence to its inspirational triumph beats. —RDL

Schmigadoon Season 2 (Television, Apple+, Cinco Paul, 2023)  Disenchanted with life in the real world, Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) attempt to revisit the magic of Schmigadoon, only to find themselves in the nihilistic Schmicago, where the tropes of 60s and 70s musicals hold sway. Though the Broadway song parodies are even sharper this time around, the second season struggles to keep the protagonists at the heart of the narrative, which makes more of a difference than you might think.—RDL

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Episode 589: Ordo Veritatis Chicago

March 8th, 2024 | Robin

Players say they hate linear scenarios. Seasoned convention GMs extoll the efficacy of the greased rail session. In the Gaming Hut we ask what’s up with that.

Beloved Patreon backer Monster Talk requests a Ripped from the Headlines on the now world-famous Chicago rat hole.

Finally, in keeping with our pre-Oscars tradition, we sneak into the Cinema Hut to finally reveal our respective movie top tens for 2023.

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.

The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

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: May December, French UFOs, Yokai, and Modern Yoga’s Eliptony Layer

March 5th, 2024 | 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

100 Monsters (Film, Japan, Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1968) Murderous landlord scoffs at the need to perform a protective rite after a night of spooky storytelling, inviting the righteous vengeance of yokai spirits. A straight-laced start to the Yokai Monsters trilogy mostly focused on human wrongdoing. The kid in you may complain that it takes too long for the creatures to show up.—RDL

May December (Film, US, Todd Haynes, 2023) TV actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives in Savannah to research her upcoming role as Gracie (Julianne Moore), who at 36 seduced a 13-year-old and remains married to him (Charles Melton) 20 years later. If Haynes’ influences were Ridley Scott and John McTiernan instead of Douglas Sirk and Joe Losey, he could have called this movie Alien vs Predator, and watching Portman as a soulless chameleon work on (and against) Moore’s damaged sociopath is voyeuristic delight. Haynes shoots the film alternatingly flat and fuzzy, like a somewhat jazzed-up true-crime drama, while playing with a wildly melodramatic score almost from the first beat.—KH

UFOs Season 1 (Television, France, Clémence Dargent & Martin Douaire, 2021) After his rocket project goes explosively awry, an uptight engineer for France’s aerospace agency is ordered to take over and shut down the woebegone department that logs UFO sightings. Students of eliptony will knowingly nod at this investigative dramedy’s familiarity with deep saucer-hunting lore.—RDL

Good

An Accidental Studio (Film, UK, Bill Jones & Kim Leggatt & Ben Timlett, 2019) Documentary traces the trajectory of independent studio Handmade Films, started by George Harrison to rescue Monty Python’s Life of Brian and later responsible for The Long Good Friday, Withnail and I, and Nuns on the Run. Tells the cyclically repeating story of a business started by artists to avoid creative meddling from the suits, only to fall prey to it, here in the form of Harrison’s money man Denis O’Brien.—RDL

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat (Nonfiction, Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker, 2023) Apostate veterans of the wellness movement examine the predispositions, including a full smorgasbord of full-bore eliptonic and occult beliefs, that left the yoga scene ripe for colonization by anti-vaxxers and QAnon. Based on the eponymous podcast and written in an unabashedly polemical mode.—RDL

Past Lives (Film, US, Celine Song, 2023) Married playwright (Greta Lee) reunites with the middle school crush (Teo Yoo) she left behind when her parents emigrated from Korea. Muted drama of nice people being sensible could use a sharp note or two to bring contrast to all the wistful beauty.—RDL

Three Miles Down (Fiction, Harry Turtledove, 2022) In 1974, a young oceanologist/budding sf writer gets recruited to the secret project behind the secret Project AZORIAN—an alien spacecraft on the Pacific ocean floor actually sank the Soviet sub K-129, and the CIA is bringing it up. Contrary to the subtitle, this isn’t a “novel of first contact” but a novel of the precursor to first contact. Turtledove keeps it short and single-viewpoint, but doesn’t actually follow through on the great idea at the core.—KH

Okay

The Marvels (Film, US, Nia Dacosta, 2023) Bound by an entanglement that causes them to body switch, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) battle a Kree leader (Zawe Ashton) whose scheme to revive her homeworld endangers the fabric of the universe. The first acts of sequels are harder to set up than originals. It’s therefore unsurprising that, for all of the likeability of its actors and characters and tentacle cats, a sequel to not one but three different previous works wobbles in establishing a clear, basic question to carry us through the narrative.—RDL

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Episode 588: Full Stop Anti-Marooning

March 1st, 2024 | Robin

Keep your ancient documents well-hidden in the Gaming Hut, as beloved Patreon backer Brian Thomas asks us how to construct a Bookhounds of London one-shot around explorer Aurel Stein, the Great Game, and the Diamond Sutras.

When architects go wrong they wind up not in their own hut, but on the Crime Blotter, as is the case, as requested by estimable backer Derek Upham, 19th century heist mastermind George Leonidas Leslie.

In the Narrative Hut we ask ourselves if procedural crime dramas are, in the older literary meaning of the word, romances.

Finally in the Eliptony Hut we answer the call of legendary backer Jake Maas for a look at Newfoundland’s Isle of Demons.

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.

The official CatStronauts board game is launching on Kickstarter, from Atlas Games! Designed and illustrated by Drew Brockington, this cooperative game brings 30-45 minutes of fast feline fun to 1-4 players aged 10 and up.

Reality horror just got realer with three new support products for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa: The Yellow King Bestiary, and Robin’s latest novel, Fifth Imperative.

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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