Good afternoon, everyone.
I spent last night eating fried rice and dumplings and staring at beautiful framed black-and-white photos of Chinese immigrants at the Lee association in Chinatown. My friend Macy Gilliam hosted a dinner there for an organization she’s involved in called The David Prize, which gives New Yorkers with the best pitches $200,000, no strings attached, to make the city a better place. We heard past winners including Dr. David Ores, who helps people who are having a hard time getting jobs because of bad tattoos. It was also fascinating to hear from the Lee family about the role their space plays in preserving the spirit of Chinatown, a rapidly changing neighborhood in New York City due to development and real estate prices. After hearing from some members of the association about the significance of selling whole chickens in Chinatown (it’s a clear sign that they’re fresh), and getting a surprise visit from Assemblywoman Grace Lee, I waited for my Uber on Mott Street and took in the lights and lanterns and happy groups of friends eating noodles behind big glass windows.
Today’s newsletter includes: How the Saie Beauty team brought back a discontinued Tom Ford eyeshadow before Tom Ford did, Teddy Kim’s official review of New York Film Festival, Bloomingdales’s CEO is inspired by Le Bon Marché, the Bridgehampton Target has Hamptons-themed Target wallpaper, Banana Republic launched a film studio, and heirloom apples are having a moment.
An official dispatch from NYFF (with light spoilers). By Teddy Kim
Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim. Today, he wrote about New York Film Festival, and the etymology of the word “artificial.”
If there’s a central theme that ties together all the films I saw at NYFF this year, it’s the anxiety of creation. You can take it a few different ways. Biological: you’ve become a parent and have these new responsibilities of raising up a new person that’s completely dependent on you. Technological: you’ve created something new, maybe an artificial intelligence that’s becoming worryingly independent of you. Authorial: you’re trying to start a company, or make a movie, but you’re worried that you’re faking it until you make it, coming up with it all on the fly, or that you’re not capturing the story in the right way. In all of these instances, at least part of the anxiety comes from the fact that, in trying to imbue what you’re making with something good and true, you have to take a look in the mirror and ask: Am I being honest with myself?
Take Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, for example, which examines the life of a Russian business leader and family man as he navigates the ethical quandaries of a wartime Russian society that refuses to use the word “war.” That big lie is mirrored in his domestic lie, his unwillingness to address the heart of his labyrinthine marriage. Whether the social ills start at home or vice versa is unclear. But when you watch the film, think about the advice the main character gives his son about how to deal with violence and whether he follows it himself.