Tokyo Vice 📺

Michael Mann, celebrated for his 1980s hit serial Miami Vice, returns with a lush and hard-hitting examination of Japan’s tight-knit underworld in Tokyo Vice. Famously pitching the pastel saturated romp as MTV Cops, one can imagine a similar pitch of The Wire meets Black Rain for this HBO Max original. Traces of Ridley Scott’s 1989 Yakuza crime saga are evident from the primary casting to the unfolding narrative. Yet what sets this fish out of water story apart from its peers is the fact that Jake Adelstein, an American expatriate, dishes the inside scoop from the inside. After learning that Adelstein was the first Western journalist to work for Yomiuri Shimbun, a flagship Japanese newspaper, I’m set to tuck into Adelstein’s 2009 memoir of the same name.

Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music 🎶

A recent re-watch of Taylor Hackford’s Ray transported me right out of my mid-week funk, and helped me remember why the 2004 biopic is the cream of the crop. As someone that loves reflecting on the inspiring lives of yesteryear, Ray Charles sits right up there as a leading light. That a blind man managed to inveigle his way into the hearts and minds of the world, securing a landmark deal with ABC that eclipsed the likes of Frank Sinatra, is some kind of wonderful. This 1962 album was one of Charles’s first creative endeavours after leaving Atlantic Records, a highly controversial passion project that would become one of his most cherished and timeless offerings. I can’t wait to dive into David Ritz’s Brother Ray, his celebrated biography on the musical titan.

Less Than Zero 📚

A nostalgic longing led me to pick up Bret Easton Ellis’s debut novel while spring cleaning my bookshelf. The 1983 publication had a profound effect on me right after high school, its nihilist rhetoric and deadened cast of characters leaving me comfortably numb. Set against the sun-bleached backdrop of Los Angeles, the aimless narrative follows an ensemble of college kids addicted to MTV, drugs, and the pursuit of excess. What was most surprising, and slightly disconcerting, is how the book left me feeling as an adult. While the fatalistic cast of characters are compelling to behold much the way a highway accident or house fire steals our attention, it paints a troubling portrait of entitlement.

Gas Powered Kingmaker 🗞

Oliver Bullough’s phenomenal Guardian article, a sliver from his new book Butler To The World, is the first piece to really help me reckon with the tensions underlying the ongoing war in Ukraine. Bullough picks up where he left off with Moneyland, previously reviewed in this newsletter, this time taking aim at Dimitry Firtash, a well-connected Ukrainian billionaire with direct ties to the Kremlin. It’s incredible to realize how money can buy just about anything these days, from the sale of a former tube station to connections with British royalty, and its most revered politicians. The article also turned me onto Catherine Belton’s incredible Putin’s People: How The KGB Took Back Russia And Then Took On The West and this chilling quote from a former Putin insider on his old boss.

“He would have gone gladly after four years, I think, but then all these controversies happened. With the West now, there is such a serious standoff that it’s almost the Cuban missile crisis. And now he’s gone even deeper… He understands that if it goes further, he will never get out.’ — Sergei Pugachev

Tesla Vs. Detroit 📻

I’ve had EV’s on the brain ever since tuning into this four-part podcast series. While Musk’s reputation continues to be maligned in the face of his personal antics, it’s hard not to tip your hat to his groundbreaking accomplishments. That his hare-brained ventures have dethroned Jeff Bezos to make him the world’s richest man is measurement enough. As for the automotive EV giant, I’m in awe of the all new six-seater Model X Plaid and its controversial yoke steering wheel. As Doug DeMuro unveils their roomiest model to date, and the first and only car brand to truly innovate the interior functions of an automobile, Jeremy Clarkson proves that this ‘soccer mom car’ can leave an Audi R8 in the dust. While we have Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to thank for founding the fledgling company in 2003, due credit goes to Musk for lighting a fire under Detroit’s derriere.

Divided Soul 📚

As this 1971 UK article suggests, Marvin Gaye was a contrarian spirit, a recluse that hated the spotlight yet yearned to be loved by the world over. The D.C. native would find an early mentor in the guise of Harvey Fuqua, leader of the doo-wop quintet The Moonglows, who not only cultivated his unrelenting perfectionism but showed him how to sleep his way to success. Just as Fuqua used a fleeting relationship with Etta James to cut some incredible duets, the young upstart would wed Anna Gordy (seventeen years his senior!) to secure his seat at the Motown table. I loved reading about Here, My Dear, my personal favourite LP, commissioned as an alimony payment in his very public divorce some fifteen years later, and spurred on by his ongoing tryst with a teenage Jan Hunter (seventeen years his junior!).

“Berry Gordy thought like an oil man. Drill as many holes as you can and hope for at least one gusher. He wound up with a whole oil field.” — Marvin Gaye

Vangelis 👤

The last few weeks have brought the passing of one musical legend after another from Bob Neuwirth to Ronnie Hawkins and Depeche Mode’s Andy Fletcher. Yet it was the obituary of Vangelis, born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, that fanned the embers of nostalgia. If you’re a film nutter like me, than you’re intimately familiar with the touchstones of a Vangelis score. Films like 1981’s Chariots of Fire, 1982’s Blade Runner, and 1984’s The Bounty, a period blockbuster with a curiously bonkers plot line. His prodigious solo work was just as powerful, including his 1979 LP China (which features in Ridley Scott’s Chanel No. 5 commercial) and The Tegos Tapes, an eight-hour ambient compilation made for the exclusive use of a friend’s surgical ward.