💎MY FAVOURITE THINGS💎 || Life’s What You Make It

MY FAVOURITE THINGS | Life’s What You Make It

“How you understand the whole question of victimhood depends very much on where you start the clock and where you think the story begins.”

— DAVID K. SHIPLER

At the start of the year, I packed up my life Down Under and set a course for the sun-drenched shores of Lisbon. Years of living in and out of suitcases in foreign countries has reshaped my modus operandi, encouraging me to see life as a series of teachable moments. My first year in Portugal led me to discover that this gift cuts both ways. That we can give back just as much as we get. By facing down my introversion and offering myself up in the spirit of giving, I inadvertently founded a tight-knit collective of like-minded souls. Who knew vulnerability could not only build self-worth but inspire me to be a little more, well, me.

Happy Holidays! Thank you for reading. In the spirit of giving, please enjoy my end of year playlist 🎶. The perfect way to kick off the silly season ⛄️

Até já! See you in 2024 Xo

1948 📻

The 1948 Arab-Israeli war, ignited in the face of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, is remembered for very different reasons. A day of joyful celebration to Israelites. Nakba, or ‘the catastrophe’ to the Palestinians. Two well-worn adages resurfaced during this episode of The Daily. There are always two sides to any given story and secondly that history is written by the victors. It feels like an eternity has come to pass since the October 6th invasion. David K. Shipler, the former New York Times bureau chief to Israel in the late 1970s, reminds why history is the only answer to the riddle.

“When you go to the Middle East you see immediately how people are imprisoned by history. I kind of think of it as an arsenal of memory.” — David K. Shipler

The Battle Over Napoleon’s Legacy 🗞

Nothing quite compares to witnessing uninterrupted spectacle on the big screen. Ridley Scott, well versed on the art of the epic, frames Napoleon, and his subject’s complex legacy, around his first, and only love. Joséphine de Beauharnais. Though this commercially saleable idea is the perfect ploy, I was left hungry for nuance. Michael Schulman’s profile on the 86 year old filmmaker proved ripe fodder but Adam Gopnik’s 1997 article scratched the itch. I loved learning about Nabulio, the headstrong Corsican native who always had to have the last laugh. The autodidact was an enlightened myth-maker, a power broker whose passion for pageantry haunts the French Republic to this day. Here’s hoping Scott’s four hour director’s cut is heavy on the exposition.

The Creator 🎥

Gareth Edwards has crafted the perfect dilemma in a dystopic drama where mankind is at war with artificial intelligence. In a surprise turn, we learn A.I’s insurgent forces are close to annihilation, their mechanical rear-ends up against the block. Yet in assigning AI’s ‘secret weapon’ to an innocent child, Edwards knowingly lures the audience into a moral challenge. The Creator marks my favourite version of John David Washington, his top bill talents falling into all the right places. Edwards achieves what Neill Blomkamp (Chappie, Elysium) could never quite pull off in delivering one of the best science-fiction films I’ve seen since Looper. It delivers spectacle and a story arc worthy of our generation’s Star Wars.

Interview With A Cannibal 🖥

Interview With A Cannibal offers a glimpse into the sordid life of Issei Sagawa, a deranged individual who gained notoriety for the premeditated murder and desecration of a Sorbonne class mate in 1981. Renée Hartevelt was selected for her health and beauty, which goes some way to explaining why he gorged on her refrigerated corpse. Deported back to Japan after Sagawa’s exploits became pop culture fodder, a loophole allowed him to walk free in 1986 after doctors judged him ‘sane but evil’. Lucrative book deals and TV guest spots made him a household name but no amount of fame could wash away the stigma. Sagawa’s ability to tell the whole truth in this VICE doco is chilling.

“My desire to eat a woman had turned into an obligation.” — Issei Sagawa

Irma Vep 📺

Alicia Vikander slips into the hallowed heels of Musidora and her infamous character Irma Vep in this HBO limited series. The character, I was stunned to discover, was taken directly from Les Vampires, a ten part serial from 1915. Olivier Assayas leans into the meta moment, rebooting the series, scene for scene, to better understand how the sausage is made. In true French style, there’s excessive lip service to Louis Feuillade, the serial’s director, (Fritz Lang and Luis Buñuel were acolytes) yet Assayas excels best in his exacting depiction of the film business. Watching René Vidal (Vincent Macaigne) cajole and coerce his leading actors into his singular vision cuts to the bone.

The Hitchhikers’s Guide the Galaxy 📚

Elon Musk’s obsession, detailed in depth in Ronan Farrow’s hard-hitting exposé, with The Hitchhikers’s Guide the Galaxy had me curious. From the opening pages, including a foreword detailing the unlikely conception of Douglas Adams’s hare-brained idea, I was clucking my teeth in approval. Adams knows how to write, to cut through the fat and get to the juice of his characters and the extraordinary settings they’re forever stumbling into. I love the snide undercurrent that runs throughout, the biting wit directed at the fat cats. I’m looking forward to rewarding myself with a rewatch of the 2005 film adaptation.

Scrapper 🎥

A grim London morning had me snuggling up with this new English dramedy. A coming of age story of a precocious pre-teen (Lola Campbell) facing up to the five stages of grief. Humour helps the medicine go down when the sudden arrival of Harris Dickinson turns the Home Alone inspired narrative into an estranged daddy daughter picture. Scrapper marks Charlotte Regan’s debut feature outing and is filled with layers of colourful vignettes that promise to leave you chuckling into your favourite sofa throw. The ‘working class film full of joy’ turned me onto No Ball Games, her charming look at council estate life through the eyes of children.

The Future of Agents 🗞

Wherever I turn, headlines of AI’s first birthday decry the promise and pitfalls of large language models. When the hysteria reached deafening levels with Sam Altman’s ouster from OpenAI, I bit the bullet with this Hard Fork interview and Decoder conversation with Barack Obama. By the time Bill Gates slipped into my inbox, I was ready for anything. Agents, according to the Microsoft co-founder, have nothing in common with Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith from The Matrix. Well, unless we’re the KFC Colonel calling himself God at the end of the trilogy. The question now isn’t when this product arrives but rather how long it’ll take before we’re bitching about our personal E.A’s.

“If you tell your agent that you want to watch Star Wars, it will know whether you’re subscribed to the right streaming service, and if you aren’t, it will offer to sign you up.” — Bill Gates

The Burial 🎥

Jamie Foxx delivers two ace-in-the hole performances this year. The cherry on top is that both They Cloned Tyrone and The Burial have absolutely nothing to do with franchise reboots or spandex suits. Foxx has a very particular way of holding my attention, his ability to humanize a well-worn archetype (the hot-shot attorney) second to none.This true-story courtroom drama explores the limits and bounds of American jurisprudence. Maggie Betts mounts American capitalism on a spike with great fanfare and makes you want to stick around for the verdict. Tommy Lee Jones makes for an interesting sidekick yet its in Foxx we trust.

General Idi Amin Dada 📹

Kevin MacDonald’s The Last King of Scotland, the 2006 sleeper hit of a young doctor’s experiences in the employ of Idi Amin Dada marked my foray into the bizarre life of the former Ugandan dictator. Barbet Schroeder’s 1973 portrait of a despot-in-training makes clear that MacDonald didn’t go far enough. Certain sequences are so laughably baffling that I forgot they were the direct side-effect of Amin’s reign of terror. Schroeder’s documentary is fascinating for all the things left unsaid. Christopher Munnion’s 1972 write-up in the New York Times, published after being deported from Kampala fills in the pieces. The result is pure fire journalism.

Sara Tavares 👤

The sudden passing of Sara Tavares from a malignant brain tumour took everyone by surprise. Everyone that is but her closest friends. A longtime resident of Graça, my first neighbourhood in Lisboa, the 45 year old artist battled her diagnosis for over a decade. Yet that didn’t stop her from choosing life, getting lost in music and giving back at every turn. Born and raised in Lisboa, Tavares shot to fame at the tender age of sixteen with an acclaimed cover of Whitney Houston’s One Moment in Time during a 1994 televised contest. I’ve found particular solace in her back catalogue, noughties releases like Balance and Xinti.

Atlas 🎶

My predilection for ambient electronica like Ryuichi Sakamoto, Brian Eno and Suso Saiz echoes Michael Fassbender’s sentiments in David Fincher’s The Killer. It drowns out the incessant noise. Laurel Halo’s new album, Atlas, has been my November crutch and grows on me with every re-listen. There’s an ethereal and ghostly edge to every track, a smattering of samples that haunt the soul. Laurel Anne Chartow came onto the scene with 2012’s Quarantine releasing on Hyperdub. I’ve been digging her recent NTS playlists (this one is a gem) and can’t get enough of her collab on John Cale’s new single.

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WRITING | @jamespillion
FILM | @jamespillionfilm