A Stream of Consciousness on Style & Art, Vol 2
Anora, James, the Tissot PRX, The Great American Works of Art & More
Part 2 of me rambling on about what’s on my mind. Sorry if it’s not coherent. The point is to write it and publish it with minimal editing.
I've been told that I'm hard to watch a movie with. Upon completion, I'll lean over to my better half and whisper in her ear that's the best movie I've ever seen in my life. It's the equivalent of playing a new album at 9 PM on a Thursday night and telling yourself this is a classic. I apologize for loving the cinema.
I've seen a handful of films in the theatre that came out this year. Dune: Part II, which is just incredible, Kinds of Kindness, Megalopolis, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Conclave & Anora. Kinds of Kindness & Megalolopis sucked. Bottom line. Just terrible movies. But after watching Dune, Conclave and Anora (in that order) I whispered the sweet nothings in my girlfriends ear this is the best movie that I've seen this year.
Anora is the latest from Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project) and follows a young sex worker through a twisted Cinderella odyssey as she meets the son of a Russian Oligarch, and they embark on a whirlwind romance. They marry, to the dismay of his family, who seek to annul the marriage. Mikey Madison gives a superstar-making performance as Anora. She is tough, compelling, vulnerable, tragic, etc... I need her to walk away with a status on Oscar night. Not only is she as hot as one can possibly be in a movie, she makes the character very believable. There's an interview where she talked about how much preparation she put into this role. I saw the film 4 days ago and I’m going to see it again tonight. I cannot get the ending out of my head.
Anora is the best movie I've seen all year, and unless The Brutalist blows me away, I don't anticipate that to change. It has everything that you can ever want in a movie. There's romance and heartbreak, tragedy, heart-pumping action and suspense..and tons of sex. It also turns out to be a very keen commentary on class in America.
Most of Sean Baker's films focus on sex workers and the underbelly of the American dream. There's a grittiness of his films; he doesn't want to shy away from the real America, not the fancified versions that we were promised. He's telling us that we need to wake up From the American Dream. Anora is a goddamn masterpiece. A 5-star on Letterboxd. Unless The Brutalist comes out of nowhere and captures my heart, I need my new queen Anora to win the big prize.
I bought a Tissot PRX on Sunday. It's a watch that's always peaked my curiosity, but the oversaturation of it kept me at arms length. I finally decided to bite the bullet and drop a miniature bag for it.
I headed to Bloomingdales in hopes of trying on the classic 40mm with a silvery-white dial and gold-toned bezel. It photographs well on celebrities and influencers, so I thought it would do the same for me. Luckily they had it in stock and it did indeed look good on my wrist, but the saleswoman, who I'm sure was hitting on me, told me that another color would look better on my wrist and look better with what I was wearing (which was a trucker jacket, so nothing special). She pulled out this beautiful blue gradient that takes you from a morning sky blue to a dusk navy that sparkles purple in the right lighting conditions. It's a new watch, having dropped in the last couple months, but it wasn't too high on my radar. I fell in love. Plain and simple.
The Tissot hasn't come off my wrist since I purchased it. In fact, without sizing the watch to fit my wrist, I threw it on and made the long trek from the outskirts of Union Square to deep in North Beach, wearing it as I reconnected with a friend of mine. Throughout the day, from City Lights bookstore, Washington Square Park to a bro-y dive bar to watch the Niners beat up on the Cowboys, as the conversation ebbed and flowed, I'd periodically glance down at my little Tissot peaking out from underneath the cuff of my jacket and I'd smile to myself.
Maybe I've expressed this sentiment before, but I feel weird wearing my Rolex or Omega to the office at times. Mostly because watches seem to be a lost artform and very few people wear watches in my company, which is surprising considering I work in corporate luxury fashion. The women at the top wear Rolexes, but my boss does not. Most of my teammates don't either. The only person who appears to be sincerely interested in watches is someone across the country who I bonded with over our mutual love for Tudor, but we'll never be in the same room, so I'm the only real watch enthusiast in the office and I feel self conscious wearing a Rolex around higher ups who make more than me. The PRX came in at $580 (it's usually $725, but it was on a secret sale. It's concurrently dressy and sporty, perfect for going to the office and at a respectable price point where it's considered a good watch but not a pretentious one. If I go to the gym, I feel much better about leaving my PRX in my locker. It's also a beautiful watch and it’s currently sitting on my wrist. I look at it and kick my feet like a school kid it makes me so happy.
I'm writing this while listening to Chromakopia, the latest Tyler, The Creator album. I've only really listened to it all the way through once, but I'm fucking with it so far. Unfortunately the song "Darling, I" has become my new favorite song in the world. It's this album's version of "EARFQUAKE" & "WusYaName" - a love song featuring a crooning performance from a rapper. This track is about how Tyler is grappling with the feelings of getting older and realizing that monogamy is not for him. It features a hook, bridge and adlibs from Teezo Touchdown, whos album I felt was underrated last year. This sons is touching my soul right now, oh my god. What did he put in this song? Crack wrapped in junk? The drums, the synths, holy shit. I cannot get enough of it. Wow!!! I actually think the rest of the album is very strong, but there is something in "Darling, I" that has shot it right past Mj Lenderman's "Wristwatch" and Charli XCX's "Talk Talk" as my favorite song of the year. I'd be shocked if it doesn't end up becoming my top listened to song on Apple Music. I feel like I'm 19 again when I listened to this song. There's something so innocent about it while also because relatable to the 30+ crowd. He's 33 now, so he's struggling with similar things that many people my age are, so while he is seen as an artists for the youth, he has incredible staying power for the milennials. I'm at my desk at right as I write this and I'm bobbing my head like I'm a show at Bill Graham.
This has been a big week - I discovered to my favorite song of the year, watched the best movie of the year and finished the best book of the year. James by Percival Everett is nothing short of a goddamn masterpiece. The modern day retelling of Huck Finn from the slave Jim's perspective made me feel everything that a human can feel. For a novel with slavery at the center, it's very funny. One second, Jim is teaching other slaves how to speak so that white people think they're stupid, and the next he's putting on blackface in a minstrel show. The novel is about a lot of things - agency, race in America, friendship, companionship, adventure, will and grit. There's nothing i love more that a book that vaguely feels like it's about America, and Huck Finn is as American as it gets, so of course James was going to feel similar.
That's something I've been vaguely interested in - art about America. In a way, all art by American artists is about America, no matter how microscopic. I'm forever going to be obsessed with the first line of DeLillo's Underworld, a wonderful novel that I finished earlier this year: “He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.” Underworld is famously a novel about the story of America in the second half of the twentieth century. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is probably a top 3-4 candidate for the Great American Novel because Twain was able to make the boy a symbol for a young country's hopes for itself. I've always thought Toni Morrison's Beloved or McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is The Great American novel because we are a sinful nation and the Great American Novel should be about this nations' sins. But then again, all books by an American are about America, or at least a part of it. I'm currently reading Junky by William S. Burroughs, his debut novel about descending into drug culture in post-WWII America. It's a novel about Burroughs himself, but how can you not tell me that a novel about addiction in NYC is not about America and drug crisis and the never-ending pursuit of pleasure and money. At no point in the novel has it mentioned the idea of the American Dream, but you best believe that it is just as much about the American Dream as Gatsby. And if we're keeping it a buck here, American Psycho has just as much claim to the throne as any other novel.
No one talks about the "Great American Film." The Wire is the Great American Show, and you will not convince me otherwise (followed by The Sopranos, Mad Men & Deadwood), but no one really talks about movies. There are movies that are quintessentially American - The Godfather I & II, Once Upon a Time in the West, Gangs of New York, Moonlight, and There Will Be Blood. Gone With the Wind is up there, but it's a little too "Confederate" for me. We should create a category: the sprawling American epic. Give me Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, a three and a half hour western about poor immigrants in a battle against wealthy cattle farmers. How about Apocalypse Now and Oppenheimer? Both very long, both very telling about who we are as Americans. My favorite film about America may be There Will Be Blood. PTA's '07 masterpiece may not be my favorite movie on this list, but the depiction of ambition, ruthless capitalism, greed on screen is unmatched. It's a better, modern Citizen Kane. The other film that should get a nod as one of my tried-and-true favorites is Heaven's Gate, a 1980 film that doesn't get a lot of love - probably because it tanked Cimino's reputation, bankrupted a studio and was critically panned, but I thought it was ahead of its time. Similar to Blood, it's a film about westward expansion in a boomtown and what happens when the wealthy attempt to screw over the little guy.
That's another reason why I love Anora. It's a microcosm, a slice of this here American life for people of a certain caste. It’s about the failure of the great experiment and what happens to those at the bottom of the totem pole. As Baker's films continue to get longer, we see him working towards his own sprawling American epic. I cannot wait. The Brutalist is supposed to be another title to add to the list. Maybe the election has me thinking a little extra about America, our sinful imperfect union, and the prospect of the sunsetting on our self-proclaimed empire. In a time where we feel like we're at a crossroads, art is the best way to cope with the anxiety and uncertainty. The best art about America usually revolves around its underbelly. That’s why Beloved, Blood Meridian, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Moonlight, The Florida Project, Altman's Nashville are all so poignant. It's all underbelly. Like when you drive through a city and see skyscrapers, you're filled with awe, but the second you step out of a city, it's stripmalls and highway for as long as the eye can see. It's not glamerous, but that's what the majority of America is..a stripmall with a highway. Then again, the dream lives on. The tiny voice in your head saying that there are possibilities of great fortunes in this country...but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.
So read James and watch There Will Be Blood..and don't forget to vote, as long as you're not voting for Tr*mp.
Peace and Love
