Today’s Qualifying results from the fantastic Suzuka Circuit below the fold…
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Gorgeous lady of the week — Rachel Weisz
The lovely Rachel Weisz is no mere pretty face… but what a face it is. A Cambridge graduate, Weisz has been a hard working theater professional as much as a glamorous Hollywood ingenue, earning critical praise for her acting on stage in major works by Noel Coward, Neil Labute and Tennessee Williams, including the hyper-demanding role of Blanche DuBois.
With her long dark brown hair and glittering hazel eyes, as well as readily apparent wit and intelligence, Weisz first came to wide popular attention with her role in 1999’s special effects blockbuster The Mummy alongside Brendan Fraser. But she soon moved on from such popcorn fare to more demanding roles in Beautiful Creatures and, most impressively, as the impassioned activist and wife of Ralph Fiennes’ diplomat facing danger from a rogue pharmaceutical company in the splendid le Carré adaptation, The Constant Gardener. Her complex and fiery portrayal of Tessa Quayle won her the 2005 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award and announced that a major talent had arrived.
After living with indie director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, The Wrestler) for about a decade the couple split and Ms. Weisz began dating Daniel Craig. The two were married in a quiet ceremony in 2011 and reside in New York City and London. So dream on, fellas–it’s going to be pretty hard to tempt this extraordinarily lovely and talented lady away from James Bond himself. But who doesn’t like a challenge?
RIP Maria de Villota
Pic from F1zone.net
On the eve of Qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix comes the very sad news that F1 reserve and test driver Maria de Villota has been found dead in her hotel room in Saville, Spain. The Spanish police say that “everything points to natural causes.”
De Villota was nearly killed in July 2012 when the Marussia she was driving in straight line tests accelerated into the lowered rear platform of a support truck. She lost an eye in that accident and it cost her her dream of becoming the first female F1 driver. Since the accident and what must have been a grueling rahab, de Villota had married and was about to debut a book about her ordeal entitled “Life is a Gift”. A very sad day for all motorsports fans, Maria de Villota was a much too young 33 years of age.
The Fascination of Vintage Rolex, Pt. II — Wearability
Perhaps the best part of collecting vintage watches is that you get to wear them. They can augment your look, make you feel like a million bucks and express your unique personal aesthetic. Whether you are a one watch kind of guy or a polygamous collector like yours truly, odds are you will find more personal expression in a vintage piece that you have had to learn about, hunt and capture than something you can just walk into a retail store and buy brand new. Not that there’s anything wrong with a new watch and for some the risks of a vintage piece may outweigh the rewards. But once you strap on an older watch that displays its subtle out-of-time qualities so attractively–its years of use, its patina, its wabi-sabi–I think you’ll see the attraction.
Gilt Explorer ref. 1016, ca. 1963
And, while I definitely wear all of my vintage watches, there is arguably no better vintage watch to wear on a daily basis than a Rolex Oyster. This may sound like snobbery but in fact what I’m talking about here is toughness and suitability to the demands of day-to-day activities and exertions. Continue reading
What we’re listening to today — Wild One by Thin Lizzy
Here’s a bitchin’ live TV version of the great Thin Lizzy song “Wild One” to start the week:
While these Irish rockers are best known for the arena rock staple, “The Boys Are Back in Town”, Thin Lizzy were far more than one hit wonders. Coming across a bit like a British Isles Bruce Springsteen, frontman and bassist Phil Lynott let his status as a black man in Dublin inform his stories of underdogs, outlaws and blue collar heroes sung in a wonderfully husky and nimble style. The harmonic twin guitar attack of Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham gave some Lizzy tunes the sweeter-than-metal appeal so evident on “Wild One” but more often a sharper edged, guitar hero power on tracks like “Boys”, “Do Anything You Want to Do” and “Jailbreak”. Brian Downey’s professional and powerful drumming holds down the beat with precision and provides the underpinnings for the band’s hard charging and hooky tunes.
With a great, distinctive singing voice and a brilliant understanding of how to compose killer rock songs, the death of Lynott in 1986 due to drug-related organ failure at the age of 36 was a major loss even if the band was never properly appreciated in their day amidst all the Punk and Disco. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that Thin Lizzy were one of the major hard rock bands of the 70s and their body of work is still a pleasure to crank up and air guitar to. With all those great hits and their tough-sweet sound, they’ve earned our lasting Dedication.
F1 Korean Grand Prix — Results & Aftermath
Join me below the fold for the results of what was a very exciting and incident-filled race in Korea…
Watch Collector’s Notebook: The Fascination of Vintage Rolex
Rolex is at once one of the most innovative companies and also one of the most deliberate. Because of Rolex’s conservative approach to changing their watches over the decades you can trace a straight line from the last of the plastic crystal Explorers in the 1980s, for example, back to the Oyster watches they produced in the 1940s. The designs are really quite similar even if some cosmetic things like the dimensions of the watches changed over time.
Speedking ref. 2280, ca. 1942
Explorer ref. 1016, ca. 1985
A Datejust from the 1950s looks relatively similar to a Datejust from the 60s, 70s or 80s.
Datejust re. 6605, ca. 1956
Datejust re. 1603, ca. 1971
And this creates a very comforting and satisfying continuity, the shared heritage of a Rolex Oyster’s ancestry always being present in the next iteration. But–and as a vintage collector this is what hooked me–despite the similarities, there are myriad very small differences. Learning about these subtle changes, sometimes as small as the font on a dial, is the fascinating part of Rolex collecting, as well as often being crucially important to the value and authenticity of a given example. Continue reading
What we’re listening to today — Baby Blue by Badfinger
The song that’s still ringing in everyone’s ears after the Breaking Bad finale by the first and best band ever signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03oVJ1WAO2U
The story of Badfinger is just about as sad and depressing as that of Walter White, albeit without the cathartic drug kingpin ego trip. Suffice to say that after an extremely promising start the group were run into the ground by the dishonesty of their manager who paid himself gobs of money from their massive escrow account and gave the artists a pittance in “allowance”; the band never really saw any profits from their amazing run of successful hit singles and lucrative record label contracts. The perception that they were merely Beatles doppelgangers also hurt them artistically as the 70s wore on and there were multiple legal imbroglios. All this bad luck and financial pressure led to the suicides of two of their key members, singer Pete Ham and guitarist Tom Evans, both of whom had also written the lion’s share of the classic hits. If ever there was a cautionary tale of how the seemingly glamorous world of Rock ‘n Roll can be a cesspool of exploitation and broken dreams, Badfinger are it. But Baby Blue and the other great hits survive the sadness and still soar–really great pop music that stands on its own merits, Beatles connections or no.
Motorsport Movies: Rush vs. Grand Prix
Ron Howard’s Formula One blockbuster Rush opened this past weekend across the country to generally very positive reviews from the critics and rather lackluster box office receipts. Most people, particularly Hollywood cognoscenti, will take that to mean that straight up racing films remain box office poison and that films about the Euro-centric world of F1 are particularly lethal. The thinking will be that unless you have Paul Walker and Vin Diesel blowing things up and destroying the bad guys in stolen hot rods while crashing them into jet liners, the general public is just not going to go to a straight racing movie no matter the high profile director or the technical virtuosity on display amongst all that vroom vroom.
That’s all fine and good but the real issue is: Is Rush any good as a racing film, period? One can make a cult classic that does not attract great popular success and yet still have made something special, exciting and valuable to the cult itself. To truly evaluate Rush one has to compare it with arguably the only other really good racing film Hollywood has ever made, John Frankenheimer’s 1966 Grand Prix. (Obviously, the documentary Senna is indisputably fantastic but we are talking dramatized portrayals). Unfortunately it has to be said that in comparison Rush falls short, not on narrative but on the basis of visceral excitement.
Looking at footage from the two films is instructive of the difference between them. The trailer for Rush: