The Last Tycoon

I've been watching Amazon's "The Last Tycoon." It's not perfect, but it holds the attention. It's Old Hollywood, and lots of drama, and it's very easy on the eyes. Two standout performances from Kelsey Grammer in the role of Executive Blowhard and Jennifer Beals as A Woman with a Secret. The series is based on F. Scott's Fitzgerald's last and unfinished novel of the same name. Beals is the show's shining star, and her storyline, which is based in truth, is really interesting, and, I think, deftly handled. Lily Collins has really impressive eyebrows that tend to be scene-stealers. What the series does best is paint Hollywood as a complicated, rough, siren-esque place where dreams can be made and dashed all in the course of a day on a movie lot. 

That Ghost Story

"A Ghost Story." Annoying hipster horror-ish movie or intriguing meditation of the meaninglessness of life? You've got to see it if you want the answer. The Other Affleck plays a dead guy under a finely draped sheet. That Girl With Those Cheekbones plays his widow. Neither of their faces are on camera for long. Shooting location: Austin, Texas. How very Malick of you, dude. The guy dies, the girl is sad, and time whizzes past us. There's a note, but in the end, you'll never know what it says. (I guess that's a spoiler.) I admire the intellectual reaching, but I feel like this movie ghosted me. That said, I enjoyed much of it. So, see it ... maybe?

The Bird

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things." -- Mary Oliver

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Atomic Blonde Bombshell

I liked "Atomic Blonde," but there's just something missing. What is it? Hm. Maybe ... backstory! Which, apparently, Charlize did. not. want. And maybe if it's a Charlize movie, Charlize gets what Charlize wants. I don't really get the Bond/Bourne comparisons, in a way, because this chick is a true cypher. Why so inscrutable, Lorraine? Maybe because a dude wrote her. Perhaps the sequel will be written by a woman! Here's hoping the box office returns dictate a "Lady John Wick 2." Read my review and thoughts on Forbes.

No Filter Life

No filter life 💙

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It's right there, as long as you: leave the house, park the car, walk through the sand, move past the guys throwing fishing nets, turn your head, mentally pause while your feet keep moving, walk up the stairs, make your way down the path, and keep checking, yep, it's still there, and later, yes, it's still there, and, still again, it's all right there, hovering on the edge of the world, changing shape, until you realize, you are, too. 

What I'm Reading

📚👮🏻‍♀️🚓💉🏙 #whatimreadingnow #whatimreading #summerreading #summerread #summerreads #donwinslow #theforce #daforce

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Typically, I wouldn't read a book like Don Winslow's The Force, yet here I am. I read someone writing about it somewhere, and they described it as in some way Joycean, so there you go. It's about a dirty cop, and a city in disorder, and the blurry line between the supposed good guys and the purported bad guys. It's long and engrossing and a suitable summer read. 

Here's a snippet:

"A strong wind finds its way through every crack, into the project stairwells, the tenement heroin mills, the social club back rooms, the new-money condos, the old-money penthouses. From Columbus Circle to the Henry Hudson Bridge, Riverside Park to the Harlem River, up Broadway and Amsterdam, down Lenox and St. Nicholas, on the numbered streets that spanned the Upper West Side, Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood, if there was a secret Da Force didn't know about, it was because it hadn't been whispered about or even thought of yet." 

Your Monday Quote

🌅 "You are the sky. Everything else -- it's just the weather." -- Pema Chodron

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You can follow me on Instagram here. 

Meet Mr. Porn

Earlier this week, I interviewed Greg Lansky. You can read about our conversation here. One question that didn't make it into the final version: "What's artistic about a girl with a dick up her ass?" I can't remember the answer. I suppose, as ever, the art is in the eye of the beholder. Or, in this case, the eye of the pornographer. 

"It is art because you make someone feel something," he says. "When you create performance art, people feel something about it. You going to tell me people don't feel something when they watch my art? They feel something."

Vegetarians Need Not Apply

Meaty. Buying my copy of @recoilmagazine's new #carnivore at #walmart 🔪🐗💀🔥🍽 #meat #magazine #magazinecover #hunting #huntinglife #fieldtotable #blood #elk #ammo

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The editor of this magazine and I talked about me writing something for the magazine, and while that didn't work out, I was excited to see it on the newsstand. I love the title -- CARNIVORE -- and I love the cover: the chef's coat, the rifle in hand, the slab of raw meat. It's all very visceral. This magazine is for you if you enjoy hunting, you enjoy eating what you hunt, and you want to join the call to arms of the FIELD TO TABLE REVOLUTION. Also: you can learn how to make a wild boar patty melt, and who hasn't been pining for a boar melt lately? 

The Thing

More movie posters like this. pic.twitter.com/fpBxneCV2l

— Orcusbrand (@Orcusbrand) July 18, 2017

The Ice House

Here's a great story about -- well, whatever you want to call it: intuition, luck, the brilliance of stupidity. Found via my friend Sarah's Twitter feed, read CJR's "Writers Dish on Scoops That Slipped Away." Make sure you read the last one. It's a doozy and a genius life lesson. 

I was pretty new. I had been there maybe a month, and I was doing weekend cop shop. There was a story in which three 14-year-old boys went out and attempted to rape, and ultimately murdered, a classmate’s mom. A huge story. A capital crime. I just got beaten like a drum the whole weekend. Every step of the way, the News reporter, Bill Hendricks—the longtime cop reporter with all the sources—was just getting everything that I wasn’t getting. It was so bad that my bosses couldn’t even be mad at me. They treated me as if I were developmentally disabled.

Let's Ride

The other day, I paid a visit to a nearly $5M LaFerrari. I got to sit in it, but not drive it. Read all about it in the latest post on my Forbes blog: "For $4.35 Million, This Gently Used 2015 Ferrari LaFerrari Can Be Yours." 

Song to Song to Wait, What?

In the last few years, I've seen several Terrence Malick movies: "The Tree of Life," "To the Wonder," "Knight of Cups." In order to enjoy them, one must be open-minded or at least in a Terrence Malick kind of mood. What are Malick's movies about? Everything and nothing. What is the plot? Good luck. How is the dialogue? Um. These movies are collagist, impressionistic, dreamscapes in which love/pain/desire/rejection/rebirth/death/ecstasy all coexist, interweave, and pulse with a curious kind of life that makes, well, the act of living seem more alive on the screen than in reality. His latest, "Song to Song," could be said to be about the Austin music scene, or a study of several men and several women whose love lives intersect, or a fucking mess. It all depends on you. Manohla Dargis has it right: Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman deliver the standout performances while Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara sometimes appear to be engaging in acting exercises. What does that mean? It's hard to say. Malick likes to linger on Mara's hip bones, pour over vignettes in which lovers' bodies intertwine in unmet longing, open wide to bear witness to grand landscapes in which the awesome beauty of the universe consumes the smallness of us attempting to find one another in it. There's a brief and tragically lovely appearance by Cate Blanchett. The homes in which these beautiful people wander are striking glass boxes that attempt to contain the fragility of their occupants. There's some hot lesbian groping. What does it all mean? I have no idea. The alternative is one more phony plot with stilted dialogue that's supposed to capture the human experience but does little more than package it into something that feels like Spam. 

Got $5M?

Got $5M? 🚘💰🏁 #laferrari #ferrari #ferrarifans #ferrarifanatics #red #naples #naplesflorida

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That Wonder Woman Thing

I remain perplexed as to why "Wonder Woman" draws such intense reactions. Case in point, my latest on Forbes: "I Thought I Was the Only Person Who Didn't Like 'Wonder Woman.' I Was Wrong.'" Commenters are having strong feelings over there. Who knew, Lady Lasso?

Don't get my wrong. I liked Gadot's show of strength. I enjoyed vicariously visiting an island populated by Amazon warriors. I had a good time learning how a chick can skillfully hide her sword in her evening gown. But despite "Wonder Woman"'s show of female strength, in spite of its being (finally!) a big budget movie with a leading lady superhero, I didn't, well, love it. It didn't move me to tears. It moved me to nothing. 

I Am Not Beguiled

"The Beguiled." I am not a fan. Admission: I loved "Somewhere." I have watched it many times and will watch it many times again. I liked "The Virgin Suicides" when it came out, but I suppose it was a bit too twee for me. "Marie Antoinette" was interesting and ravishing but a bit cringey and awkward. "Lost in Translation" I like a lot. So, I suppose you could say I like Sofia Coppola's "floaters" -- the movies where nothing's happening, nothing's supposed to happen, nothing's going to happen. Sofia: Stay away from plot. Perhaps that is the problem she encountered with "The Beguiled," a remake. She got preoccupied with diaphanous dresses, moody shots under Spanish moss-hung trees, the brooding despair of the South. She forgot that if you start with something happening, people are going to think something else is going to happen, and you can't just expect us to stare at a group of women staring at Colin Farrell for 94 minutes and leave feeling satisfied. I wanted a lot because I had Nicole Kidman, and Elle Fanning, and Kirsten Dunst. Instead, I got a shrug-off of slavery, a couple gruesome scenes, and a third act that was entirely MIA. At the end, when the final shot was happening, I was like, this isn't the end, is it? I mean, the conclusion landed like a queef in yoga class. Anyway, watch it if you want. I can't stop you. I might have to go watch "Somewhere" again to get the taste of this misfire out of my mouth. 

Please Enjoy This Thread

When you are looking for good writing on porn (aesthetics, social and history), where do you look?

— Justine A. Smith (@redroomrantings) July 7, 2017

Illicit Objects

I'm excited to report that I've got a short piece coming up as part of the Illicit Objects project. 

Keep an eye on that page for my forthcoming work.

PROJECT:OBJECT is a sequel to the much-discussed quasi-anthropological SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS experiment conducted in 2009–2010 by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker, culminating in a book lavishly published by Fantagraphics in 2012. PROJECT:OBJECT will publish 100 original nonfiction stories about objects in 2017 — right here on HILOBROW — in quarterly “volumes” inspired by distinct themes. This new endeavor further extends Rob and Josh’s pioneering exploration of narrative, objects, and meaning into the realm of (often unexpected) personal significance.

Upside Down

🙃 #tallythetallbarbie #tallbarbie #tallgirlsrock #barbiefashionista #barbie #barbiefashionistas #stars #dollsofinstagram

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Watch It

"Okja" is: terrific, insane, captivating, uplifting, horrifying, demented, funny, tragic, and surreal. It's about a giant pig, a girl, and what makes America awful. It's quite unlike anything you've ever seen, unless you've seen "Snowpiercer," and this is 100 times more curious than that. I highly recommend it.