My colleagues have spent the past few weeks dealing with the gorgeous hellfire that is fashion month, but I don’t have to. I’ve been writing for style magazines for a decade now (next year is my “decade of i-D bylines” anniversary!), but I’ve only been pulled into “doing” fashion week once, I found my ignorance to the subject so humiliating that I vowed to never go back again. My name is Doug, and instead I focus on what I like: watching movies, listening to music, and writing about them both.
I don’t call myself a critic, partly because it’s been a long time since I last got paid to be a real bitch about something, which I think is a noble art that should be protected. I have friends who are awesome at it, skewering bad stuff with so much panache that it sometimes makes me jealous. (Shoutout Hannah Strong’s review of In the Hand of Dante, a screamer of an Oscar Isaac movie I skipped at Venice Film Festival, and Laura Snapes’ Ed Sheeran review that’s burned into my brain.) But the pleasure of this job is, for me, getting to tell you about the culture that I think is awesome, or that has stuck with me since I first encountered it.
First, a vibe check. My favorite records of last year were Adrianne Lenker and Camilla Cabello’s albums; my favorite movies The Brutalist and All We Imagine as Light. I subscribe to the sort of unoriginal gay guy school of thinking, where my taste runs the gamut from low-brow pop music to what’s typically considered “good” cinema. Zara Larssvon Trier if you will.
Aggro Dr1ft: My friends left this Harmony Korine movie (that I compared to a feature length GTA cutscene) laughing at it. I low-key think it’s reflective of where cinema’s heading: excessive, amorphous, and hard to pin down.
Stepmom: Saccharine studio movie about a mother (Susan Sarandon!) dying of cancer hating her ex-husband’s new wife (Julia Roberts!) for the part she’ll play in her kids’ future. Considered trash, it’s got 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I cry at it every time.
Saltburn: I’m pro Emerald Fennel and her big, bonk-hammer movies that are often hokey on the page but are so crisply directed that you forgive their flaws. Saltburn was a slay, and I can’t wait for her to fuck up Wuthering Heights for everyone. I respect it.
As someone who has shamelessly stanned the Swedish pop girl Zara Larsson when no one else would (where were you during her 2021 IKEA performance?), it’s so vindicating to see her finally get her flowers. She bagged the support slot on Tate McRae’s US tour and—maybe it’s just my algorithm but—I’m seeing every video from her set and not one from Canada’s supposed Britney successor. That being said—McRae’s got the chart cache. Her track with Morgan Wallen has hit number one on Billboard while Larsson’s “Midnight Sun” is riding high at 45 on the Slovakian chart, with barely a peep elsewhere. Pop’s echo chamber is so interesting. How can someone feel like the biggest star in the world on TikTok while the layman radio listener barely knows they exist? And in such cases, who is the real star? I don’t know, but I do know that Larsson is one of the most talented and humble artists working today—Beyoncé’s first white daughter—and I’m glad that the internet, at least, has finally recognized that. Her album dropped on Friday, and features a sample from Tiffany Pollard’s magnificent takedown of Gemma Collins on Celebrity Big Brother.
Everyone right now is telling you that Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is the best movie released this year, and I think they’re right. If you’re the kind of person to refer to the director as “PTA,” you probably already caught it this weekend. It’s one of those movies that makes you question why every big studio movie that came before it isn’t on its level: behemothic, controlled, an indictment of where America is heading. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a revolutionary—part of a group known as the French 75—living in isolation with his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) after the disappearance of his partner, a fellow rebel played by a world-class Teyana Taylor. That’s a very surface level setting for a near-three hour film that spins off on wild side narratives but never loses sight of its main goal. You can read Lakin Imani Starling’s conversation with Teyana Taylor from our newly released issue here.
There’s this really good bit in One Battle After Another. The French 75 burst into a government building and force everyone inside to the floor. As the sirens blare, a revolutionary named Junglepussy announces herself, strutting across the tables as everyone freaks out around her. It’s the first “Let’s fucking go!” moment in a movie that’s full of them, and that’s thanks to the legend that plays her. Funnily enough, that’s the musician Junglepussy (government name Shayna McHale). I dropped her a line to ask her one question and she responded with this.
What was your favorite job back in the day? And can you shout out your favorite co-worker?
“I used to work at Patricia Field Boutique in New York City with Dai Burger. I was Junglepussy back then, but I wasn’t making music. [Dai Burger] was, and she asked me to host one of her mixtapes. That was one of the first times another artist imagined my voice contributing to a larger story, like Paul Thomas Anderson has!”
I’ve been listening to this Dove Ellis guy a lot.
Current favorite TikToker is this British guy who nonchalantly acts out how he would have solved the world’s greatest injustices—like Jesus’ crucifixion (“Pack it in now, get him down”) and the Titanic disaster.
The tech world is gagged that one of the lightest and most powerful portable chargers is branded by Haribo.
Also hugely into Oscar nominated actor Kodi Smit-McPhee’s e-boy pivot.