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Archive for August, 2024

Episode 614: Elves Falling in Love with Guitarists

August 30th, 2024 | Robin

At the behest of beloved Patreon backer Ian Carlsen, the Gaming Hut looks at ways to prepare for a technothriller game.

The moment we learned of an increasingly ascendant Brazilian narco gang called the Bonde da Kabbalah, you know it was time to reach for the Crime Blotter.

A three-part Horror Hut mini-series on reality horror, requested by estimable backer Greg, starts off with a 101 of literary and filmic sources.

Finally Time Incorporated’s soft spot for libraries calls for Ken’s Time Machine to intervene in the case of key Mexican literary figure Juana Inés de la Cruz, who had to appease the Church by selling off her 4,000 volume collection.

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 prophecy has been fulfilled: Ars Magica Definitive, a revised and expanded deluxe version Ars Magica 5th Edition, launches this fall. With a host of new material published since the original rulebook’s release and heirloom production quality, this belongs in the library of every magus. Instruct your most trusted companion to sign up for launch alerts.

A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!

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.

Turn your digital dials to Gen Con TV, The Best Four Days in Gaming – All Year Long. Entirely free and streaming your way on Twitch, Gen Con TV offers actual plays, reviews, dramatized gaming shorts, minis painting and its flagship show, Table Talk, beaming to you Fridays at 2 pm with polyhedral news you’re dying to use.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Alien: Romulus, Strange Darling, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

August 27th, 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

House of Psychotic Women (Nonfiction, Kier-La Janisse, 2012) A thematic survey of horror, exploitation and extreme arthouse films revolving around female neurosis sheds light on the author’s chaotic upbringing. Juxtaposition of criticism and memoir does two things well that are tough to do separately, much less insightfully combine.—RDL

Legend of the Stardust Brothers (Film, Japan, Macoto Tezuka, 1985) A washed up pop duo recounts the bizarre events of their rise, fall, and battle with sinister opinion manipulators. Kooky spoof told in high 80s music video style.—RDL

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Film, US/UK, Guy Ritchie, 2024) Jaunty commando team led by insouciant rule-breaker (Henry Cavill) and augmented by Nordic death machine (Alan Ritchson) targets a U-boat logistics hub on the island of Fernando Po. The real life Operation Postmaster becomes an exuberant Nazi-killing romp propelled by a blatantly Morricone-pastiching score. Surely Ritchie and MGM/Amazon both see this as his pitch to take over the Bond franchise, and I say have at it old chap.—RDL

Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles (Film, US, Laura Gabbert, 2020) Cookbook kingpin and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi assembles an international team of pastry innovators to theatrically cater a Metropolitan Museum reception for its Versailles exhibit.  Just as French royalty once allowed everyday folk to gawp at their palace festivities, this serene, sensual comfort documentary affords a glimpse of sugary opulence.—RDL

Strange Darling (Film, US, JT Mollner, 2024) In this taut, nonlinear serial-killer suspense two-hander, Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner provide the layered acting that Mollner’s treatment demands. Giovanni Ribisi’s first time as cinematographer produces a strong 70s-color effect, enhanced by Craig deLeon’s unsubtle score. Ed Begley, Jr. and Barbara Hershey’s stunt casting as a hippie-prepper couple reinforces the “this is a really good late-70s/early-80s suspense movie” vibe.—KH

Okay

Clerks III (Film, US, Kevin Smith, 2022) A near-fatal heart attack inspires a sardonic convenience store co-owner (Jeff Anderson) to make a film about his experiences, dragging in his long-suffering, now widowed partner (Brian O’Halloran) as reluctant producer. Aging slackers confront mortality in a sincere but rhythmically lax recapitulation of Smith’s breakout film.—RDL

Not Recommended

Alien: Romulus (Film, US, Fede Álvarez, 2024) Problem youths on a crapsack colony planet pressure screwed-over orphan Rain (Cailee Spaeny) into bringing her defective synthetic (David Jonsson) along on their heist of cryotubes from a seemingly abandoned Weyland-Yutani research station. Hey remember that show Glee, and how it used to do those soulless, bathetic cover versions of pop standards? This is the Glee medley of the Alien franchise.—KH

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Episode 613: How Does the Treasure Make Me Feel?

August 23rd, 2024 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we toss our ideas into beloved Patreon backer Shon Richards’ Bookhounds of TimeWatch series concept.

One of our favorite industry stalwarts, Peter Adkison, joins us in Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else to talk Gen Con TV, his world of Chaldea project, and the state of Gen Con.

The Borellus Connection, the new mega-campaign for The Fall of DELTA GREEN gets the Among My Many Hats treatment from its story designer, our own Kenneth Hite.

Finally the Eliptony Hut peers into the story of astronomer George Ellery Hale and his relationship with an entity that has passed into lore as an elf adviser.

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 prophecy has been fulfilled: Ars Magica Definitive, a revised and expanded deluxe version Ars Magica 5th Edition, launches this fall. With a host of new material published since the original rulebook’s release and heirloom production quality, this belongs in the library of every magus. Instruct your most trusted companion to sign up for launch alerts.

A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!

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.

Turn your digital dials to Gen Con TV, The Best Four Days in Gaming – All Year Long. Entirely free and streaming your way on Twitch, Gen Con TV offers actual plays, reviews, dramatized gaming shorts, minis painting and its flagship show, Table Talk, beaming to you Fridays at 2 pm with polyhedral news you’re dying to use.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Under Paris, and Cynical French Espionage

August 20th, 2024 | Robin

Recommended

Forgotten (Film, South Korea, Jang Hang-jun, 2017) Weird dreams alert a mentally fragile student (Kang Ha-Neul) that something is amiss in his family’s new home and with the older brother (Kim Mu-yeol) he idolizes. Reality-shifting twist on the wrong man thriller offers up a bleak puzzle box for those willing to forget how hypnosis works.—RDL

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Film, US, Wes Ball, 2024) Son of a chimp chieftain (Owen Teague) must take on the mantle of leadership when the soldiers of an ambitious gorilla king (Kevin Durand) interrupt their search for a knowledgeable human (Freya Allan) to enslave his clan. Refreshingly solid story construction reigns in a CGI-dominated adventure that builds its set pieces from a clear but not belabored character throughline and never stops to wink at the audience.—RDL

Le Silencieux (Film, France/Italy/UK, Claude Pinoteau, 1973) MI5 kidnaps Soviet physicist Anton Haliakov (Lino Ventura), born Clement Tibere, to force him to identify Soviet spies in the British fusion program in exchange for repatriation to France—from whence the KGB had kidnapped him 18 years previously. This provides the cynical setup for an existential thriller, pitting one man against a KGB kill notice. Ventura husbands his tough interiority against every kind of stimulus; his performance combines paranoia and desperation with intelligence, the only human response possible. [Released as Escape to Nowhere in the US.]—KH

Spectre: Sanity, Madness and the Family (Film, France, Para One, 2021) After receiving audio recordings of sessions between his family members, several of them schizophrenia suffers, and the musician and spiritual leader who subjected them to years of damaging experiments in altered consciousness, the filmmaker, himself a composer, undertakes a musical journey to understand their mysteries. Mesmerizing first-person documentary set on the borderland between avant garde culture, visionary experience, and cult abuse.—RDL

Under Paris (Film, France, Xavier Gens, 2024) Traumatized marine biologist (Bérénice Bejo) and jut-jawed river cop (Nassim Lyes) team up to save a pre-Olympic swimming event from a giant shark and her parthenogenetic brood, who have taken up residence in a flooded section of the Paris catacombs. Seine-based Jaws homage plays its finny, victim-chomping thrills without a hint of irony.—RDL

Okay

OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok (Film, France/Italy, André Hunebelle, 1964) America sends its most French agent, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (Kerwin Matthews), to investigate chicanery with medical supplies in Bangkok orchestrated by fashionable psychiatrist Dr. Sinn (Robert Hossein). Lumbering second installment in the Bond-ripoff film series provides ample Bangkok location footage during the interminable interstitial scenes between anticlimactic faceoffs.—KH

Not Recommended

The Devil’s Bath (Film, Austria, Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz, 2024) Young peasant bride (Anja Plaschg) in 1750 rural Austria sinks into depression after failing to adjust to her new dreary life with her domineering mother-in-law (Maria Hofstätter) and ineffectual husband (David Scheid.) Historical realist folk horror takes much longer than needed to establish the conditions for its unforgettable final sequence.—RDL

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Episode 612: Into the Tundra to Dig Gypsum

August 16th, 2024 | Robin

Your intrepid gaming reporters return from Gen Con 2024 to talk awards, tabletop industry trends and scuttlebutt and maybe a restaurant recommendation or two.

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 prophecy has been fulfilled: Ars Magica Definitive, a revised and expanded deluxe version Ars Magica 5th Edition, launches this fall. With a host of new material published since the original rulebook’s release and heirloom production quality, this belongs in the library of every magus. Instruct your most trusted companion to sign up for launch alerts.

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.

Turn your digital dials to Gen Con TV, The Best Four Days in Gaming – All Year Long. Entirely free and streaming your way on Twitch, Gen Con TV offers actual plays, reviews, dramatized gaming shorts, minis painting and its flagship show, Table Talk, beaming to you Fridays at 2 pm with polyhedral news you’re dying to use.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Deadpool & Wolverine, Longlegs, and the Best Hong Kong Martial Arts Film in Years

August 13th, 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.

The Pinnacle

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Film, HK/China, Soi Cheang, 2024) Undocumented, hard-punching newcomer to 80s Hong Kong (Raymond Chan) washes up in Kowloon’s lawless Walled City tenement, where he gains a benefactor in a benevolent triad boss (Louis Koo) with dangerous peers (Sammo Hung, Aaron Kwok.) Gritty crime melodrama (with a touch of the supernatural thrown in, because hell yes) harks back to the 80s-90s classics to dish up the best Hong Kong martial arts movie in years.—RDL

Recommended

Deadpool & Wolverine (Film, US, Shawn Levy, 2024) To save his timeline from extermination by a rogue time agent (Matthew Macfadyen), Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) recruits the worst Wolverine variant (Hugh Jackman) and takes an unwanted journey to a void populated by heroes and villains from discarded continuities. Dials up the self-referential quips, comic ultraviolence, and veering tonal shifts worthy of 80s-90s Hong Kong cinema to prove that mocking fan service is the most powerful fan service of all.—RDL

Deadpool & Wolverine (Film, US, Shawn Levy, 2024) Rather than abandon his doomed timeline for the “sacred” Marvel timeline, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) finds “the worst Logan” (Hugh Jackman) to serve as its new anchor. MCU continuity is finally garbage enough to let the original* Deadpool concept (mocking Marvel Comics continuity) work, and Levy has a meta-story big enough (Disney’s trashing of the Fox-Marvel franchises) to support a big quest picture. Lots of in-jokes and buddy murder-comedy bits fill in the run-time more than acceptably. [*Original to Keith Giffen, when it was called Ambush Bug.] —KH

Longlegs (Film, US, Osgood Perkins, 2024) Fledgling FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) joins veteran fed Bill Carter (Blair Underwood) to hunt a mysterious serial killer (Nicolas Cage) who instigates murder-suicides in Oregon. Perkins spends two acts building a thoroughly unsettling experience, full of too-wide angles and Monroe’s hyper twitchiness against an expressionist Nineties Northwest background, before kind of wrecking it with an over-expository final act. The performances (especially including Cage’s) and Andres Arochi’s camera work keep it Recommended even if it doesn’t achieve the full nightmare takeoff it maybe should have. —KH

Streetwalker (Film, Mexico, Matilde Landeta, 1951) Mercenary industrialist’s wife (Miroslava) toys with a lover (Ernesto Alonso), unaware that he is the pimp of the sister (Elda Peralta) she scorns. Noirish melodrama with skillful big acting reverses sex trade tropes.—RDL

Good

My Blueberry Nights (Film, France/Hong Kong, Wong Kar Wai, 2007) A break-up sets a young woman (Norah Jones) adrift and into the lives of a dreamy New York cafe owner (Jude Law), a Memphis cop (David Strathairn) trying to drink away the hurt of his failed marriage to an emotionally careless ex (Rachel Weisz) and a Vegas-bound poker ace (Natalie Portman.) The US setting and Anglo-American acting style mesh unevenly with Wong’s evanescent, hyper-romantic style but, boy, none of these performers has ever been better lit.—RDL

Okay

Living on Velvet (Film, US, Frank Borzage, 1935) Romantic socialite (Kay Francis) tumbles into an impulsive marriage with a charming pilot (George Brent) whose survivor guilt has left him irresponsibly directionless. Gives the actors an interesting relationship to play but, like many 30s movies, tosses off its third act with a sudden and unconvincing external resolution.—RDL

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Episode 611: Terrible Ideas Deflation

August 9th, 2024 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Ludovic Chabant asks us what it means when a game mechanic is swingy.

The Word Hut isn’t having any of your cockamamie ackamarackus, because we’re talking 1930s slang.

The Food Hut extrapolates what the food scene in Yellow King: Aftermath looks like. Other than the well-established craze for Belgians, that is.

Finally the Consulting Occultist lays out everything you need to know to placate a Mesopotamian ghost.

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 prophecy has been fulfilled: Ars Magica Definitive, a revised and expanded deluxe version Ars Magica 5th Edition, launches this fall. With a host of new material published since the original rulebook’s release and heirloom production quality, this belongs in the library of every magus. Instruct your most trusted companion to sign up for launch alerts.

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.

Turn your digital dials to Gen Con TV, The Best Four Days in Gaming – All Year Long. Entirely free and streaming your way on Twitch, Gen Con TV offers actual plays, reviews, dramatized gaming shorts, minis painting and its flagship show, Table Talk, beaming to you Fridays at 2 pm with polyhedral news you’re dying to use.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: High-Strung Reality Horror, French New Wave Fantastic Realism, and the Dawn of Canadian Art Forgery

August 7th, 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

The Creatures (Film, France, Agnes Varda, 1966) Staying in a seaside town after his reckless driving cost his pregnant wife (Catherine Deneuve) the use of her voice, a bluff science fiction writer (Michel Piccoli) discovers that a mysterious mood-altering device is affecting its residents. Quietly compelling blend of the fantastic with social realism achieves a tone so idiosyncratic it can only be described as Vardasian.—RDL

L.627 (Film, France, Bertrand Tavernier, 1992) Frustrated narcotics cop (Didier Bezace) keeps pursuing significant drug busts in a Paris police force plagued by incompetence, brutality, chronic underfunding and bureaucratic paralysis. Not a mystery or thriller but a naturalistic slice of life portrait of a man mired in, and compromised by, a system that has identified the wrong problem and is only trying to look like it’s sort of trying to solve it.—RDL

Possession (Film, France/Germany, Andrzej Żuławski, 1981) The psychic backwash from the marriage breakdown of an uptight spy (Sam Neill) and his emotionally disintegrating wife (Isabelle Adjani) destroys those around them, spawns monsters, and threatens reality itself. The relationship at the heart of this hysterically pitched reality horror is so agonizing that the eventual appearance of a slime-coated pupal abomination provides a note of relief. Be sure you’re watching the 2020 restoration, which fixes audio problems with the ADR that marred the previous digital print.—RDL

Good

The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson Forgeries (Nonfiction, Jon S. Dellandrea, 2022) A stolen box of ephemera once belonging to a forgotten Scots-Canadian painter puts the art collector author on the trail of an early sixties trial for flogging works bearing the forged signatures of iconic Canadian masters. Brings out the naivete of a suddenly blossoming art market and the brazenness of the gallerist and auctioneer who flooded it with sloppily disguised fakes.—RDL

The Vanished Elephant (Film, Peru, Javier Fuentes-León, 2014) Ex-cop crime writer (Salvador del Solar) investigates a mysterious stranger (Lucho Cáceres) posing as his detective protagonist and trying to frame him for a series of murders. Reality-bending neo-noir creates a Borgesian puzzle.—RDL

Ken and Robin were off at Gen Con but Robin had some reviews stockpiled.

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Episode 610: She Probably Met a Nice God

August 2nd, 2024 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Lauberfen asks us to seek mythic inspiration for gaming scenarios.

Estimable backer Derek Upham beckons us to the Tradecraft Hut for our take on the theory that infamous pirate Henry Every might have had a second covert career as a spy.

The Mythology Hut investigates the shamir, the enigmatic device or rock-eating worm credited with carving Solomon’s temple.

Finally Ken’s Time Machine heads back into history to restore the original name of the dollar.

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 prophecy has been fulfilled: Ars Magica Definitive, a revised and expanded deluxe version Ars Magica 5th Edition, launches this fall. With a host of new material published since the original rulebook’s release and heirloom production quality, this belongs in the library of every magus. Instruct your most trusted companion to sign up for launch alerts.

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.

Turn your digital dials to Gen Con TV, The Best Four Days in Gaming – All Year Long. Entirely free and streaming your way on Twitch, Gen Con TV offers actual plays, reviews, dramatized gaming shorts, minis painting and its flagship show, Table Talk, beaming to you Fridays at 2 pm with polyhedral news you’re dying to use.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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