August 2026
Four recommendations from the past month. One film, one book, one album, and one place. Not the best of August, simply four things I think are worth your time.
Olivia Wilde · Director
A sharp script and uniformly excellent performances make The Invite one of the year's most enjoyable trips to the cinema. It balances tension and humour with impressive confidence, trusting its audience more often than it explains itself.
Warren Ellis · Author
A surprisingly moving meditation on collecting. Ellis uses a small, almost absurd object to explore memory, grief, and the strange ways possessions accumulate emotional weight over time. It left me thinking about why we keep things at all.
Masayoshi Takanaka · Artist
A blind record-store purchase that became the soundtrack to my summer. Effortlessly joyful without ever becoming background music, it's the sort of record that rewards both attentive listening and a room full of friends.
Greenpoint · Brooklyn
Stretching the limits of its 1,000-person capacity, Warsaw somehow hosted an Olivia Rodrigo pop-up show this month. The contrast between one of the world's biggest artists and one of New York's smallest venues made the evening feel almost surreal.