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Archive for February, 2025

Episode 638: Subtlety is Its Enemy

February 28th, 2025 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Walter Manbeck asks us to tell him more about the 2023 Irish weird folk music film All You Need Is Death, and how to use it as inspiration for a modern horror campaign.

Ripped from the Headlines finds ghosts in a VR game for kids where you play tag as legless gorillas.

Finally, in our usual nod to the Oscars, the Cinema Hut finally unveil our top ten movie lists for 2024.

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.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.

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.

The sorrowful solo gamebook Unhappy Birthday at Castle Slogar now dolefully awaits you from the frightening folks of Atlas Games. Packed with maps, riddles and dire dilemmas, it is sure to lure you to a delightfully solitary spiral of gloom!

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!

Brace for more Delta Green Mythos horror with Dead Drops, Arc Dream’s latest bone-chilling anthology of black bag scenarios. From a secret Missouri church to a frozen Alabama town, the top secret terrors keep on unfolding. Acquire the 288 page full color hardback from the Arc Dream store, or purchase, download, rate and review the PDF at DriveThru.

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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Tags: Cinema hut, Gaming hut, Ripped from the Headlines

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Anora, Conclave, and the Fine Art of Financial Fraud

February 25th, 2025 | 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.

Anora (Film, US, Sean Baker, 2024) Stripper Ani (Mikey Madison) hits the jackpot when she connects with oligarch spawn Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) thanks to her familial Russian language skills. Cinderella story turns to dark farce when his parents send the Armenians (Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Yuri Borisov) after the happy couple. Baker’s sympathetic eye for character drives both the comic and moral elements of a story both personal and archetypal, while his editing and direction keep the movie popping.—KH

Conclave (Film, UK/US, Edward Berger, 2024) Self-effacing cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) discovers ecclesiastical intrigue as he steers his colleagues through the election of a new pope. A pellucid interior performance from Fiennes anchors a crackling drama of ambition versus principle.—RDL

The Last Stop in Yuma County (Film, US, Francis Galluppi, 2024) Agitated salesman (Jim Cummings) looks on helplessly as bank robbers take the patrons of a roadside diner hostage. Sun-baked noir spirals into disaster like the Coens with half a cup less of cosmic joke.—RDL

Lying for Money (Nonfiction, Dan Davies, 2018) Witty, lucid survey of large scale financial frauds recent and historical breaks them into categories and finds the elements that unite them. Portrays big frauds as colorful, destructive but rare events exploiting points of vulnerability in a system that can’t monitor everything without hampering legit commerce.—RDL

Sugarcane (Film, US, Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie, 2024) Documentarian depicts the impact on generations of people in his British Columbia indigenous community of the abuse and unreported deaths at a government-mandated, Catholic-run residential school designed to deculturate its students. Tells a story that in news coverage can read as an impersonal atrocity through shattering individual experience.—RDL

Wolves, Pigs and Men (Film, Japan, Kinji Fukasaku, 1964) Freshly released convict (Ken Takakura) enlists his angry younger brother in a scheme to rob the yakuza clan their weaselly older brother works for. Betrayal and cruelty reign in a tight, confrontational crime thriller from the director of Battle Royale.—RDL

Good

La Chimera (Film, Italy/France/Switzerland, Alice Rohrwacher, 2023) British archaeologist/dowser Arthur (Josh O’Connor) returns to rural Tuscany and his crew of tomb robbers. Isabella Rosselini as a local matriarch is a delight, but her story and Arthur’s seem arbitrary together. The “magic realist tomb raider heist movie” vibes should work better than they play out, possibly because Rohrwacher cannot ideologically cut extraneity, leading to a somewhat leaden story weighing down the fairy tale proceedings.—KH

Okay

Heroes Shed No Tears (Film, Hong Kong, John Woo, 1984) With his young son and sister-in-law unwisely nearby, an intrepid Chinese mercenary seeking a new life in America (Eddy Ko) leads a ragtag strike team to capture a Thai general/drug lord. On the threshold of Woo’s mature operatic style, this gonzo festival of mayhem draws cruel inspiration from the grindhouse jungle warfare cycle of the 70s and early 80s.—RDL

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Episode 637: Sausage Apologist

February 21st, 2025 | Robin

The Gaming Hut gets a round table as beloved Patreon backer James Kiley seeks tips on mashing up Pendragon with Call of Cthulhu.

At the behest of estimable backer Chad Ward, the Food Hut looks at the role a humble cured meat played in schism and war, in the Affair of the Sausages.

Doughty backer Dylan Gault convenes the Architecture Hut for the real story behind the Newmarket Ghost Canal.

Finally our chrononaut reveals which Song Dynasty social club he had to edit from history using Ken’s Time Machine.

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.

Gaming Hut

2nd segment

3rd segment

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.

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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Tags: Architecture Hut, Food Hut, Gaming hut, Ken's Time Machine

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Power Fantasy, Sci-Fi Tarot and the Count of Monte Cristo

February 18th, 2025 | Robin

The Count of Monte Cristo (Film, France, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, 2024) On the verge of marriage above his station to Mercedes de Moncerf (Anaïs Demoustier), sailor Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) is betrayed by her jealous cousin and imprisoned in the Chateau d’If black site. Lushly filmed and produced swashbuckler strips down Dumas’ Pinnacle ur-revenge thriller to a mere three hours, staying mostly true to the original while softening some blows for modern audiences.—KH

Crime of Passion (Film, US, Gerd Oswald, 1956) After giving up her career to marry a homicide detective (Sterling Hayden), an erstwhile star reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) succumbs to Machiavellian mania to advance his career. Proto-feminist mix of cop and domestic noir follows the spiral of its flawed protagonist with acerbic abandon.—RDL

Kim’s Video (Film, US, David Redmon & Ashley Sabin, 2023) Documentarian examining the legacy of legendary, defunct NYC video store stumbles across the strange destination of its legality-skirting archive. Tongue-in-cheek celebration of cinephilia moves from investigation to active intervention in its storyline.—RDL

Power Fantasy Vol. 1: The Superpowers (Comics, Image, Kieron Gillen & Caspar Wijngaard, 2025) Beginning with the Trinity detonation, people started getting powers. Six of them have the power to destroy the planet. None of those six really get along. Gillen’s ongoing wrangling with what Watchmen did to the art form has produced a compelling comic that takes some big swings in terms of narrative consequences and risks to audience sympathy; Wijngaard’s art provides clarity of narrative with valuable emotional color contrast.—KH

Sci-Fi Tarot (Tarot, Todd Alcott, 2024) Not the slam dunk of his Pulp Tarot, but closer to that in its homage-collage tendencies than to his Horror Tarot, this tarot casts the traditional suits as glowing rods, ray guns, capsules, and very saucer-like pentacles. Inspirations come from all over SF art, with the strongest DNA from the 1930s to the 1970s. Visually thrilling and in one case (Death) literally breathtaking.—KH

So You Think You Can Be Prime Minister (Nonfiction, Ian Martin, 2024) Jaundiced satire of recent UK politics couched as a how-to manual for the shallow and ambitious, with quizzes and flow charts. Perfect Father’s Day or birthday reading for sarcastic dads who follow the news, from a key writer for The Thick of It and Veep.—RDL

Timecrimes (Film, Spain, Nacho Vigalondo, 2007) Fleeing an attack from a mysterious bandaged figure, an obdurate everyman (Karra Elejalde) jumps into a time machine, which takes him just far enough into the past to unleash a cascade of twisting consequences. Black comic twist on time travel tropes driven by the protagonist’s headlong insistence on the wrongest available decisions.—RDL

Good

Baba Yaga (Film, Italy, Corrado Farina, 1973) Milan fashion photographer resists the advances of a witchy rich lady. Style-obsessed adaptation of Guido Crepax’s erotica comic Valentina with reality horror theme plays like a giallo where the black-gloved killer never shows up. CW: incidental 70s leftist Euro-racism.—RDL

Heartbreak Motel (Film, Indonesia, Angga Dwimas Sasongko, 2024) Traumatized movie star (Laura Basuki) married to insecure, undermining husband (Reza Rahadian) is somehow connected to mousy hotel maid pursued by hunky financier (Chicco Jerikho.) Showbiz melodrama with noirish undertones and fragmented puzzle structure shifts back to convention for its resolution.—RDL

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Episode 636: I Don’t Know the Asparagus

February 14th, 2025 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut we look at the optional scene paradox in adventure writing.

The Weapon Hut gives us a rare chance to un-fun ruin, as we debunk claims that debunk the flail.

In the Word Hut Robin tests Ken’s knowledge of the often cheeky nicknames given to historical figures.

Finally we step into the Eliptony Hut for a look at the recent New Jersey drone flap.

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.

Gaming Hut

2nd segment

3rd segment

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: Eliptony Hut, Gaming hut, Weapon Hut, Word Hut

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: I Saw the TV Glow, September 5th, The Brutalist

February 11th, 2025 | Robin

Becky (Film, US, Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion, 2020) Sullen, grief-numbed teen (Lulu Wilson) awakens a talent for vengeance when a neo-Nazi prison escapee (Kevin James) and his confederates invade the family cottage. James makes a convincing heel turn in an economically drawn piece of elevated neo-exploitation.—RDL

Chasing Chasing Amy (Film, US, Sav Rodgers, 2023) Young queer filmmaker who credits the 1997 Kevin Smith film Chasing Amy as a literal life-saver from the effects of high school bullying examines its creation and the complicated position it holds as a work of LGBT+ representation. What could be simply a critical essay documentary with interviews and a personal perspective takes a couple of surprising, deeply emotional turns.—RDL

I Saw the TV Glow (Film, US, Jane Schoenbrun, 2024) In 1996, socially isolated teen Owen (Justice Smith) bonds with slightly older Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) over YA supernatural show The Pink Opaque. Absolutely crippling emotional realism grounds creeping reality horror; special shout-outs to Eric Yue’s cinematography, which looks far better than the budget allows, and the soundtrack of 2020s artists recording imaginary 90s songs.—KH

Mischief (Fiction, Charlotte Armstrong, 1950) Out of town hotel guests readying themselves for a prestigious banquet leave their 9 year old daughter with the wrong last-minute babysitter. Tense psychological thriller makes masterful use of incisively drawn multiple perspectives.—RDL

Red Rooms (Film, Canada, Pascal Plante, 2023) Techie fashion model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) becomes obsessed with the trial of a man accused of livestreaming the torture-murder of three girls to dark web “red rooms.” Plante shows us neither the gruesome murders nor Kelly-Anne’s motivation, depicting both by inference. The result is a film about obsession as obsession; Gariépy’s chilly control gives nothing away to the viewer but something to obsess about.—KH

September 5 (Film, Germany/US, Tim Fehlbaum, 2024) Greenhorn producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) takes over the ABC Sports control room on a slow day during the Munich Olympics of 1972, only to be the man on the button when terrorists kidnap the Israeli Olympic team. This news-process thriller revels in period analog technology, going so far as to rough up its own digital footage to look like 16mm film. Magaro anchors the movie with his harried performance, backed up by a superb Peter Sarsgaard as Roone Arledge and Leonie Benesch as a German office assistant pressed into increasingly critical roles.—KH

Sleep (Film, South Korea, Jason Yu, 2023) Expectant mother (Jung Yu-mi) seeks an extreme explanation when medical treatment fails to fix her actor husband’s (Lee Sun-kyun) dangerous, sudden onset sleepwalking. The pursuit of marital perfection becomes a nightmare of released repression in this claustrophobic ghost horror.—RDL

Terra Formars (Film, Japan, Takashi Miike, 2016) Crew of convicts and outsiders lands on a terraformed Mars to battle its population of giant humanoid cockroaches with their own bizarre bioengineered insect powers. In what might be blurbed as “body horror Power Rangers,” Miike maintains his commitment to heightening the absurdity of his manga adaptations.—RDL

Good

The Policeman’s Lineage (Film, South Korea, Lee Kyu-maan) Young officer (Choi Woo-sik), whose cop father warned him to avoid the family business, accepts an Internal Affairs undercover assignment to investigate the apparently corrupt head of an organized crime squad (Cho Jin-woong.) Well executed treatment of familiar material.—RDL

Ire-Inspiring

The Brutalist (Film, US, Brady Corbet, 2024) Arriving in America after surviving Europe’s horrors, a Bauhaus-trained Hungarian architect (Adrien Brody) accepts a commission from an overbearing, mercurial shipping magnate (Guy Pearce) to build a monumental community center in small town Pennsylvania. Miserabilist Vistavision drama of a tormented artist battling the Man to realize his vision continually asserts its importance, features a third act turn that literalizes its theme in the most trite and puerile manner possible, and finally uses the Holocaust to aggrandize its suffering Mary Sue protagonist.—RDL

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Episode 635: His Cousin Latte Dick

February 7th, 2025 | Robin

In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Tom Abella seeks tips on compiling historical reading lists to players.

We don elaborate ruffs in the Tradecraft Hut to profile Jacobean spymaster Robert Cecil.

Today we look at them as soulful giants of the sea, but to the medieval mind whales were terrifying, diabolical beasts worthy of treatment in the Monster Hut.

Finally the Consulting Occultist looks at collector and art historian Aby Warburg.

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.

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.

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Tags: Consulting Occultist, Gaming hut, Monster Hut, Tradecraft Hut

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nosferatu, Presence, MadS, Land of Bad

February 4th, 2025 | Robin

Dahomey (Film, France, Mati Dion, 2024) Documentary follows the repatriation of 26 key royal court artifacts captured during the conquest of Dahomey to what is now Benin. With the notable exception of searching narration in the booming supernatural voice of a kingly statue, takes a distanced, observational stance, relying on a student symposium to articulate the layers of ambivalence surrounding the items’ return.—RDL

Land of Bad (Film, US, William Eubank, 2024) When an anti-terrorist extraction mission in the Philippines goes south, an inexperienced signal operator (Liam Hemsworth) must fend for himself, with only the far-off voice of a maverick drone pilot (Russell Crowe) to guide him. Cleverly weaves contemporary drone warfare into the charging beats of a military action thriller, with affectionate characterizations that sharpen the stakes.—RDL

MadS (Film, France, David Moreau, 2024) Party boy Romain (Milton Riche) scores some indeterminate drugs and almost immediately enters an increasingly nightmarish horror that I shall forbear from describing further. So much of the delight and frisson of this film comes from discovering things partway through that I can only gesture at Moreau’s bravura direction, the startling camera work by Philip Lozano, and the riveting performance by Lucille Guillaume as Romain’s hard-done-by girlfriend Julie.—KH

The Man I Love (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1946) Live-for-the-moment singer (Ida Lupino) fends off the advances of a slick club owner (Robert Alda) to pursue a tormented ex-pianist (Bruce Bartlett.) Walsh, not a name one associates with the woman’s picture, adds noirish atmosphere and an empathy for the lead characters’ self-imposed outsiderness.—RDL

Nosferatu (Film, US, Robert Eggers, 2024) Intent on possessing his cosmically fated love (Lily-Rose Depp) the vampire Orlock (Bill Sarsgaard) lures her advancement-minded husband (Nicholas Hoult) to Romania to assist his relocation to their German home city. Lushly horrifying upsizing of the 1923 Murnau version is extremely faithful to its structure and motifs while also fixing its few key flaws.—RDL

Presence (Film, US, Stephen Soderbergh, 2024) Grieving teen (Callina Liang) at odds with her singleminded mom (Lucy Liu) and insensitive brother (Eddie Maday) heightens tensions when she describes eerie encounters in their new home. Naturalistic weird thriller observes family drama from the ghost’s POV.—RDL

Signs Preceding the End of the World (Fiction, Yuri Herrera, 2009) Self-possessed telephone operator travels from her remote Mexican village to the US in search of her brother. Spare, evocative portrayal of the migrant experience as mythic death and rebirth.—RDL

Good

Mr. Right (Film, US, Paco Cabezas, 2015) Intense but charming woman (Anna Kendrick) forms a rebound attachment to a quirky stranger (Sam Rockwell), incorrectly assuming that he’s doing a bit when he describes his activities as a rogue assassin. The leads’ action rom com star chemistry compensates for a choppy first act bearing the marks of editing demands from a panicked back office.—RDL

The Saint in London (Film, US/UK, John Paddy Carstairs, 1939) Visiting London, adventurer Simon Templar (George Sanders) meets plucky socialite Penny Parker (Sally Gray) and takes on criminal mastermind Bruno Lang (Henry Oscar). Although the script doesn’t really play up the Saint’s unique set of skills, Sanders lounges delightfully through the part and Gray and Oscar play well off him. Filmed in London, but indistinguishable from the RKO backlot. If you enjoy slightly lazy “thrillers” of the era, you’ll enjoy this one.—KH

Okay

Angel With the Iron Fists (Film, Hong Kong, Lo Wei, 1967) Agent 009 (Lily Ho) cozies up to criminal jeweler Tieh Hu (Ching Tang) to uncover and infiltrate the Dark Angels, a kind of Temu SPECTRE led by a mysterious Chief (Tina Chin-Fei). A Shaw Brothers post-Bond outing that launched a franchise despite a lackadaisical story randomly punctuated by fights, but I said Shaw Brothers already. Slow but fun if you’re in the mood for it, with one or two gonzo moments in its over two-hour runtime.—KH

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Archive for February, 2025

Episode 638: Subtlety is Its Enemy

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Anora, Conclave, and the Fine Art of Financial Fraud

Recommended

Good

Okay

Episode 637: Sausage Apologist

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Power Fantasy, Sci-Fi Tarot and the Count of Monte Cristo

Recommended

Good

Episode 636: I Don’t Know the Asparagus

Ken and Robin Consume Media: I Saw the TV Glow, September 5th, The Brutalist

Recommended

Good

Ire-Inspiring

Episode 635: His Cousin Latte Dick

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nosferatu, Presence, MadS, Land of Bad

Recommended

Good

Okay

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