Sepp Blatter’s dance with the devil and much more!Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ 
James Pillion
 

MY FAVOURITE THINGS | Let’s Talk About Sex

"It [Qatar] is too small of a country. Football and the World Cup are too big for it."

β€” SEPP BLATTER
 

I told myself it was only temporary, a way to save some dough while I closed out my PhD. Yet as the months rolled by the new realities of living with my folks left me longing for my solitude and a sense of space. A fact that left me climbing the walls at the best of times and led Ma and Pa to stage an intervention on my behaviour. While such family moments are the worst kind of uncomfortable, the conquered friction extinguished my inner turmoil and wiped the slate clean (for now). The humbling episode serves as a useful reminder that love is honesty.
 

The Ugly Game πŸ“š

Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert pull the rug out on the house of cards that built this year’s FIFA World Cup. It’s not just the lengths to which former FIFA head Sepp Blatter went in awarding the oil-rich state the show but the very real costs of the Sisyphean vision. How a nation of 300,000 invested over 300 billion to host 1.5 million fans boggles the mind. Erecting seven air-conditioned football stadiums in the desert at the cost of 6500 migrant workers has just about spoiled my appetite for the whole thing. The debacle, meticulously dressed up in Netflix’s FIFA Uncovered, offers a devastating takedown of the billion-dollar non-profit. It would also make a helluva sequel for Taika Waititi, fresh from his new film Next Goal Wins.

 

All Quiet On the Western Front πŸŽ₯

Edward Berger’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s landmark novel packs a vicious punch and leaves you with the unsettling realization that no one really came back from the Great War. Much like the refreshing revisionist takes of Sam Mendes’ 1917 and Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders, Berger levels the burden of such horror not with the dead but those who lived to tell the tale. The timely release offers a new lens in thinking of the young duty-bound Russian men in Ukraine sacrificing their innocence for all the wrong reasons. As an ominous mood sweeps across Europe, this Netflix original sounds a note of caution. Be sure to watch in its native language.

β€œIt will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” β€” Erich Maria Remarque
 

How to Pay for Climate Justice πŸ—ž

If you want the low down on climate action in the wake of Egypt’s COP27 last month then look no further than Bill McKibben. The New Yorker staff writer has been fighting the good fight ever since he published The End of Nature in 1989. The good news is that a tipping point has given way in the pursuit of β€˜climate justice’ with the creation of a Global North β€˜loss and damage fund’ to benefit the Global South. The bad news is that emissions targets remain up for debate while restorative efforts are coming up short. Never before has the power of the individual become as crucial in shifting the weather vane of the collective conversation. The unlikely return of Brazil’s Luiz InΓ‘cio Lula da Silva is just one case in point.
 

How to Marry A Millionaire πŸŽ₯

A passage in Sam Wasson’s latest book on Woodland, Robert Evans’ storied Beverly Hills home (recently purchased by new WB head David Zaslav) sent me down a rabbit hole on Jean Negulesco. I’d never heard of the Romanian-American filmmaker or his renowned nudes. A portraitist by trade, Negulesco would transplant to the silver screen in middle age. This 1953 comedy marks a career high for the filmmaker, a treacly mess of female empowerment disguised as blatant self-interest. All the same the film vividly examines the lengths women will go to gain a semblance of independence over their lives. Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable hold their own but it’s Marilyn Monroe that hogs the key light. The perfect template to gleefully subvert 1980’s 9 to 5.
 

The NTS Breakfast Show with Flo πŸ“»

Kelly Geddes, my sister from another mister, sent me an episode of the NTS Breakfast show, an incredible weekly broadcast featuring a rather adorable host who not only serves an eclectic mix of genres but follows it up with considered advice to her lovelorn community. After sampling a few episodes, I got hooked on this recent crossover episode with Zakia which nourished me with some new classics from this Grace Jones dub track, a Jermaine Jackson banger and some disco by The Peech Boys. The show’s opening also switched me onto the compelling sounds of Duval Timothy, a South-London based artist in residence and his brand new album Meeting With The Judas Tree, released early last month.

 

Armageddon Time πŸŽ₯

James Gray’s autobiographical drama serves up a fascinating look at the emotional cracks and crevices of suburban family life in 1980s America. Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway are a shoo-in for Gray’s screen parents yet it’s Banks Repeta that carries this heartfelt coming-of-ager across the line. The New York native has made a living out of telling affecting stories tinged with deep feeling. For those that enjoyed 2019’s Ad Astra, be sure to check out Little Odessa. Ever since coming across his chilling 1994 debut, Gray has been known as the East Coast version of Paul Thomas Anderson. This DGA podcast of Gray in conversation with Matt Reeves is a gift.

β€œI realized that everyone, save for my brother, is dead and all those incredibly important meals, the bagels and lox on Sunday. All gone. And now these people are memories dancing around in my head like fireflies at night and it’s getting a little dimmer. It’s melancholy but it’s also what makes our lives very beautiful. That ephemerality is what gives our lives beauty.” β€” James Gray
 

The Big Goodbye πŸ“š

Sam Wasson’s new book has helped me acknowledge that my love of Tinseltown extends far beyond the studio gates. The harsh light of day demanding a pair of sunglasses from sun-up to sunset. The true gift of Chinatown, and The Big Goodbye, is that it allowed Roman Polanski a fertile canvas to confront the full breadth of trauma lingering from the Manson murders through Robert Towne’s spec script. I love the way Sam Wasson digresses on the allure of Los Angeles as a branded destination from the get go. I’m excited to rewatch The Kid Stays In The Picture and am curious to know whether Ben Affleck’s feature adaptation of this book is still in the pipeline.

 

Ways of Seeing πŸ“Ί

This 1972 BBC four-part series is great fodder for an idle mind, its immaculate sound design inspiring the alternative title β€˜Ways of Hearing’. From the opening frame, John Berger takes a retractable blade to a Renaissance painting and the stilted mores of history. His exploration of the male gaze and the objectification of the female figure in classical art offering a refreshing take down of the establishment. The thought provoking series has all the best qualities of F for Fake, Orson Welles’ stunning documentary on high art in the age of forgery. It’s also left me musing over where the value of art stands in the age of the internet.

β€œIt seems to me that what women envy in men a lot of the time is that they have a sense of their own identity. That there is something in them that’s important to them other than simply what other people think of them. β€” Anonymous Respondent
 

Hiroshima Mon Amour πŸŽ₯

I don’t know if it was Issey Miyake’s obituary or the passing of the elusive Jean-Luc Godard that inspired my rewatch of Alain Resnais’s tragic love story. For all the pretentious gloss of this 1959 classic, it delivers one of the most affecting examinations of trauma. Not only was the chemistry between Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okoda electrifying but its premise is so daring and modern. Maybe it’s just me but with every classic re-watch, I’m left feeling that modern cinema has lost its appetite for discomfort. The film’s ending also left me mulling this hard-hitting Ezra Klein conversation with Noam Chomsky whose coda debates the possibility of another nuclear fallout.
 

The Nineties πŸ“š

Homesapiens have reached yet another landmark, tipping into the eight billion club last month. Which is an interesting way into Chuck Klosterman’s new book. Just think. Only 30 years ago, 5.5 billion souls were sucking in air (up from 3 billion in 1962). I’m no mathematician but are we bonking like never before? While the nineties experienced the same amount of cultural upheaval as its forebears, it is generally looked upon as a decade of relative calm and prosperity, at least if you were alive and kicking in the developed world. While undeserving nostalgia compelled me to pick up a copy, it’s made the new Netflix series Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? that much more appetizing. 
 

Sydney Johnson πŸ‘€

Is it me or is The Crown getting better with every season? First Gillian Anderson’s disappearing act as Margaret Thatcher and now Salim Daw’s magnetic turn as Mohamed Al-Fayed. S5E3 offers one of the most compelling portraits of the Egyptian billionaire and his quixotic dream to be validated by the British aristocracy. Which is where Sydney Johnson comes in. Johnson was a Bahamian native and became the personal valet to the Duke of Windsor when the former monarch was governor of the islands during WWII. His long-held tenure would lead Johnson to retain his red and gold livery for Al-Fayed, a discovery that has gone viral. Peter Morgan has his finger on the pulse.

β€œSydney is a dictionary… he’s a very cultured man. He got all these things out of boxes and safes and storage rooms, and he knows their history.” β€” Mohamed Al Fayed
 

Donna Summer - Donna Summer 🎢

This recent episode of Still Processing unpacks Summer Renaissance, Beyoncé’s late-night tales LP, through the lens of disco queen Donna Summer. Which is how I found myself diving into her under-appreciated 1982 self-titled album celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The curated collection is a compelling package, packed with a variety of rhythmic offerings, compulsive and seductive in equal measure. After a few sittings, I’ve come to see how the Quincy Jones production marks Summer’s zenith and is a truly fitting B-side to another Jones production Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

β€œThe world is not always going to remember us for our contributions but we can do it for each other.” β€” Jenna Wortham
 

Thanks for reading. To show your support, forward it to someone who’d like it or treat yourself to one of my books.

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WRITING | @jamespillion
FILM | @jamespillionfilm

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Bondi, NSW,
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