Overcoming Your Wilderness Years
A new documentary on the visionary artist David Bowie explores his arc from Tin Machine (1989) to Blackstar (2016).
A. A new documentary on the visionary artist David Bowie explores his wilderness years, and the final creative arc of his life. Blackstar (2016) was an incredibly powerful album. The trailer deals with being dropped by EMI; image and identity changes; new creative projects; and existentially facing death.
B. Cronos (1993) is an innovative vampire film that established director Guillermo del Toro’s career. His latest film is an adaptation (available on Netflix) of Mary Shelley’s feminist novel Frankenstein. Cronos is getting a 4k restoration re-release. The trailer:
C. Today’s MIT OCW free course is on Studies in Film created by Professor Alvin Kibel.
D. Reform Australia is a new (far right) political party in Australia. My valued PhD Supervisor Dr Zareh Ghazarian is an expert on minor and micro parties. Read his PhD dissertation to book The Making of a Party System: Minor Parties in the Australian Senate (Clayton, Australia: Monash University Publishing, 2015).
E. How to live with ADHD.
F. Paramount has launched a hostile takeover of Warner Brothers. This is a return to the conglomerate mergers of the United States major film studios in the 1960s that presaged the 1970s auteur and blockbuster era.
G. Private Equity as an asset class and investment style is deeply affecting United States housing.
H. Michael Saylor’s overleveraged Bitcoin strategy was always going to fall apart. Now it has.
I. The United States and Australia have re-emphasised AUKUS security compact commitments in an AUSMIN diplomatic meeting: a Pentagon statement and a US Department of State factsheet.
J. Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio on AI investment for Bloomberg Television. Dalio’s latest book How Countries Go Broke (2025) is very affordable in its Amazon Kindle edition, as is the prior Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order (2021) also in its Amazon Kindle edition.