#thethousands

Beautiful Losers is directed by Aaron Rose and tells the story of his semi-legendary Alleged Gallery in downtown ’90s NYC. Alleged provided an incubator for a group of taggers, skateboarders and other criminally disposed minds AKA young artists (such as Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Barry McGee etc) who hung/worked and 20 years later became famous and successful beyond your wildest dreams. Tough life huh?

The film covers off their progression from DIY street art twenty-somethings to mainstream success in advertising, film, and graphic design. Even though it somewhat glosses over trickier subject matter about what happens to punk ideals when they meet big bucks – the film does provide nice insights into some of the greater artistic minds of our time. Plus their can-do-art attiude is pretty inspiring.

Special props must be given to Harmony Korine and his general randomness. “Hey, my friend Samuel’s head, was found right there back in ’86″. Yes its good to know he’s still got ’95 Letterman interview in him. Rad.

Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton, Champs-Elysees, the Countdown, Marc Jacobs’ New York, The Darjeeling Limited, Marc Jacobs, Designer Marathon, Slaves of New York **Marc Jacobs, I love you, let me countdown the ways!

I loved you first back in the Parsons days when you had long hair and wore it in pink furry pom-pom elastics – in fact this is when I loved you best! Your infamous ’93 Perry Ellis ‘grunge’ collection comes a close second though – take notes people, that’s how you turn a failure into a success. When you get fired for being too street and a few years later start running a major French fashion label!

I love you third and fourth best when you made bags with some of my favourite visual artists – Takashi Murakami and Stephen Sprouse. And fifth, ’cause you took those beautiful LV luggages you made for The Darjeeling Limited and auctioned them for charity.

I love you last because I could wear anything from every collection you release if I could afford it – which I can’t, that’s why this one is last.

PS: I also love that you let people make fly-on-the-wall documentaries of you (Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton) so I can revel in my sick-fan-girl obsession with you.

I have soft spot for Noah Baumbach as he directed one of my favourite ’90s-era films Kicking and Screaming - all about brilliantly articulate (read quotable) downwardly mobile 20-somethings. Greenberg - Baumbach’s latest – is almost like Kicking and Screaming for 40-somethings: a rom-com that’s acerbic, funny and endlessly quotable.

Roger Greenberg (played brilliantly by Ben Stiller) is a 40-something carpenter (former 20-something musician) who, after a mini mental breakdown, returns to his home town of LA via 15 years in NYC to house sit for his more stable and successful brother. He reconnects with the people he left behind and half-heartedly woos his brother’s PA Florence, played with awkward charm by Greta Gerwig (she of mumblecore fame).

Greenberg is one of those guys whose life just didn’t turn out how he planned. Instead of coming to terms with this, he obsesses about his amost-made-it past and the fledgling romance that he is simultaneously trying to destroy. All this to avoid coming to terms with being old(er) and not “having it all” (aka career, spouse and spawn). Greenberg doesn’t spell death to rom-coms but it does show that they can have a darker (or more realistic) side too.