Updated May 17, 2013, 12.09 p.m. GMT with Italian TV report on Thursday’s incident involving Gandy and Le Bon’s Jaguar XK 120 Tullio M. Puglia
Jaguar is participating in this year’s Mille Miglia from May 16 to 19, 2013, fielding a total of 24 cars, including six from Jaguar Heritage Racing.
Its team includes Le Mans winner Andy Wallace and Alex Buncombe, and luminaries such as Olympian Sir Chris Hoy, Michael Quinn, three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, actress Hannah Herzsprung, models David Gandy and Yasmin Le Bon, and Salvatore Ferragamo, the grandson of the famed designer, with whom he shares his name.
The heritage models are three XK 120s and three C-types, while Jaguar will also field modern F-types, Lucire’s Car to Be Seen in for 2013.
On the first day, Gandy and Le Bon, co-drivers of an XK 120, were pushed off the road by another competitor, but have begun again at the starting line on May 17. A brief Italian news report is embedded at the end of the article.
Jaguar has previewed this year’s Mille Miglia with a short film, shown below, featuring Gandy, Le Bon, Buncombe, Murray Walker and, famously, Sir Stirling Moss and his 1952 co-driver Norman Dewis.
Ferragamo is the Jaguar F-type’s Italian ambassador, a duty he also has with Relais & Châteaux worldwide. He was presented with an F-type 3·0 V6 S at the Castello di Gabbiano, in Mercatale Val di Pesa, near Firenze. His co-driver for the event is Michael Quinn, grandson of Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons.
Bentley, meanwhile, says it will field two 4½-litre Supercharged Blowers, dating from the 1930s.
Updated May 17, 2013 at 12.46 p.m. GMT with videos from Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
In the 36 years since The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, we’ve had snippets of information here and there: TV specials celebrating various anniversaries, articles when the release of the disappointing Mary & Rhoda TV movie appeared, and retrospectives when Mary Tyler Moore herself was presented with a SAG award. But no one, till now, has put together a tome on how the show was created and its eight-year history.
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted and All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic is the best researched book on the topic. Newly released by Simon & Schuster, Armstrong has talked to the surviving members of the cast and crew, including writer Treva Silverman, and producers and creators Allan Burns and James L. Brooks, as well as Moore, Valerie Harper, Gavin MacLeod and others. She has exhaustively researched period articles and even feminist conferences. But don’t expect a laborious effort to get through the 300 pp.: anyone with even a passing interest in television sitcoms, television history in general, recent American history or the media’s role in the development of feminism will find Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted an absorbing and entertaining read, tracing the origins of the show in the 1960s to the years after its final episode, told chronologically.
It’s hard to believe now just how revolutionary The Mary Tyler Moore Show was in 1970. It’s even harder to believe that it had a difficult gestation and plenty of doubt among network executives. CBS had expected it to flop after its 13-episode commitment, not take home multiple Emmys. Ed Asner could have walked away permanently after a bad audition. But it became a ratings’ winner, catching the smart, urban crowd, and the fictional Mary Richards became the first mainstream character to tell America that it was OK to be single, over 30, and independent.
Jay Sandrich’s style of directing is mentioned—he believed that actors should play to each other, rather than on stage in the theatre, performing to the audience. That, the live audience, and the use of film helped lend The Mary Tyler Moore Show a different style. The use of Evan-Picone as a sole supplier of Moore’s wardrobe also helped with realism: Mary Richards might repeat an outfit during a season, which a real working woman would. Brooks and Burns, in their own commitment to reality, sought out female writers, who were extremely hard to come by in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to give the show an authentic voice. The networks themselves had remarkably few women, with the few female executives who had broken the glass ceiling needing to leave their high heels outside the washroom so that their male colleagues knew they were inside.
Norman Lear’s remake of Till Death Do Us Part, called All in the Family, which proved more ground-breaking in pushing the envelope, is also mentioned more than just in passing. All of it is placed into the context of the social changes in the United States at the turn of the 1970s, making Armstrong’s book a particularly useful text, covering many bases.
We read about male friends writing to CBS angrily when it was implied that she had stayed over at a boyfriend’s, or even about how ground-breaking one scene was when Mary’s visiting mother, talking to her father, says, ‘Don’t forget to take your pill,’ to which both father and daughter replied, ‘I won’t.’
The team’s personal demons—Ted Knight had anxieties stemming from his slow rise to stardom, for instance, and the pressure put on Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore’s marriage—are dealt with, and Armstrong successfully transplants the reader to the 1960s and 1970s as though the events were unfolding before us. The fact Mary Richards fought for equal pay but still accepted a lower rate did not endear the show fully to feminists, but The Mary Tyler Moore Show largely stayed true to not dealing with the issues of the day—rather, it would address them through character-driven plots, with one or two exceptions. On that note, it was quite unlike All in the Family, which would deal with racism or sexism head-on. Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted is better than any DVD commentary or documentary so far produced on the show. With over 300 pp., it is the definitive reference on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and to a lesser extent, its spin-offs. In terms of interest among American readers, we think it’s going to make it after all.
Armstrong has emailed Lucire with some of the events she has planned to promote her new book.
‘If you’re in New York, I especially encourage you to join us for MTM-related bar trivia to celebrate release week. There will be prizes—T-shirts, books, mugs, and free Entertainment Weekly subscriptions!’ she says.
‘So far I’ve got stuff planned for New York, DC, Chicago, Milwaukee, and LA, but I’ve still got more in the works, so if you’re somewhere else, please check my website for updates.’
Right now, those events are (please check her website for corrections and updates):
• Thursday, May 9, 7 p.m.: Mary Tyler Moore Show trivia night for Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted release. At Pacific Standard, Brooklyn.
• Monday, May 13, 12 p.m.: Mary Tyler Moore Show discussion and reading from Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted. At 92nd Street Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street.
• Friday, May 17, 7 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted reading and discussion at the Village Zendo, 588 Broadway (near Houston), Suite 1108.
• Monday, May 20, 12 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted reading and signing at the National Archives, Washington D.C.
• Tuesday, June 4. 7 p.m.: The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Modern Woman discussion at Boswell Book Co., Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• Wednesday, June 5, 8 p.m.: Sexy Feminism and Chicago Doll party, Old Town Social, 455 W. North Ave., Chicago—join us for a fundraising raffle, cocktails, and fun.
• Thursday, June 6, 7 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted Chicago launch party, Hemingway House and Museum, Oak Park.
• Friday, June 7: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted reading and talk at Book Cellar, Lincoln Square, Chicago.
• Sunday, July 7, 7 p.m.: How to Write a Non-fiction Book Proposal workshop with LA Writers’ Group.
• Tuesday, July 9, 7 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted panel discussion: What Has Changed for Female TV Writers Since the ’70s? With Mary Tyler Moore Show writer Treva Silverman. At Book Soup, Los Angeles.
• Thursday, July 11, 7 p.m.: A dialogue and how-to discussion about pop-culture writing with Gavin Edwards, co-author of VJ: the Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave. At Pop-Hop Bookshop, Los Angeles.
More proof that the economic focus is heading east: IWC Schaffhausen has made its first appearance as a sponsor of the Beijing International Film Festival.
The brand, which already has relationships with Kevin Spacey, Cate Blanchett, Jean Reno and Marc Forster in the occident, and Francis Ng, Julian Cheung and Anita Yuen in the orient, found it natural to extend its sponsorship to the Festival, holding a dinner, entitled ‘For the Love of Cinema’, at the Ming Dynasty city wall in Beijing.
Ng, Cheung and Yuen attended, along with actors Yu Nan, Joseph Chang, Li Zonghan, Andrew Lien and Xiong Naijin, as well directors Zhang Yimou, Chris Wedge, Chris Brown, Li Shaohong and Xue Xiaolu. IWC CEO Georges Kern and Benoit de Clerck, its Asia–Pacific managing director, played host. The event was supported by the Motion Picture Association.
The IWC Filmmaker Award was presented at the event to Zhang Yimou by de Clerck and IWC marketing and communications’ director Karoline Huber.
Huber said, ‘Zhang Yimou doubtlessly belongs to the greatest film-makers of our time, and he has won numerous awards and gained recognition at many national and international film festivals. It is an enormous pleasure for us to present him with this award.’ He was also presented with IWC’s latest Portuguese Chronograph Classic in stainless steel, with a special engraving on the reverse.
Aloe Blacc also held a private concert at the event, with DJ Miles Slater taking the party into the small hours.
Updated March 28, 2013 at 10.56 a.m. GMT with The Delivery film and other highlights
James Bond star Daniel Craig has helped launch the Range Rover Sport in New York City with a drive through Manhattan, revealing the car to a celebrity audience that included former American football player Michael Strahan, Yasmin Le Bon, Zara Phillips, MBE, and Jade Jagger, at Skylight at Moynihan Station on 8th Avenue.
The drive is part of a short film called The Delivery, broadcast live by Land Rover at www.newrangeroversport.com. The Delivery was directed by Jonathan P. B. Taylor, who most recently worked on A Good Day to Die Hard. It followed the journey of the new Range Rover Sport from Solihull to Manhattan, before it was driven by Craig over Manhattan Bridge to Moynihan Station.
Craig drove the earlier Range Rover Sport in his second Bond film, Quantum of Solace, but was also attracted to working with the company because of its connection to the charity SAFE, of which he is a patron. Among other things, SAFE uses mobile street theatre and community programmes to help effect social change in third-world countries.
Jaguar Land Rover says it chose New York for the launch as it sells more units in the US than in any other global market. New York is the car’s best selling city.
The new Sport is no longer based on a Discovery, but has a new platform based around the company’s aluminium architecture, lightweight suspension design and chassis technologies. It was developed alongside the latest Range Rover but JLR claims that 75 per cent of the Sport’s parts are unique to it.
It can be specified with occasional seating for sixth and seventh passengers, again appealing to the US market. The power seats can be folded to leave a flat floor.
The new V6 diesel is 420 kg lighter than the outgoing model, while carbon dioxide emissions have been reduced to 194 g/km.
The exterior design is more muscular and purposeful than the Range Rover presented last year, and some might say it is better balanced. It is positioned between the Range Rover and the smaller Evoque.
It is 62 mm longer than the outgoing Sport, but the wheelbase has been increased by 178 mm—the overhangs have been shortened to give it more muscular proportions compared to the previous model. At 4,850 mm, it is shorter than other seven-seater SUVs and E-segment saloons, says the company. The drag co-efficient has dropped to 0,34.
Connectivity includes Stolen Vehicle Tracking and a high-bandwidth wifi hotspot can be installed. An optional head-up display is available. Other features include lane departure warning, automatic high-beam assist, and a Wade Sensing feature that provides information on depth when driving through water.
Land Rover said it had set out to create the most capable Range Rover ever, one which would be agile on-road, but unbeaten by its rivals off-road.
In a release, Land Rover Global Brand Director John Edwards noted, ‘We’ve taken ride, handling and agility to another level for Land Rover to deliver a truly rewarding, sporting drive, together with unmatched luxury, capability and versatility.
‘Building on the success of the recently launched flagship Range Rover, the new Range Rover Sport also employs a vast array of new technologies which help to transform its performance, refinement and all round capabilities.’
Again recognizing its clientèle, the wheel sizes range from 19 through to 21 inches.
Suspension is fully independent, with double wishbones at front and multi-link at the rear. Wheel travel is 260 mm at the front and 272 mm at the rear; ground clearance has been increased to 278 mm. Land Rover’s Terrain Response 2 system selects the most suitable terrain program.
A hybrid diesel with 169 g/km carbon dioxide emissions will follow, but at launch, the Sport has a supercharged five-litre V8 developing 510 PS, and a three-litre diesel developing 292 PS. Three- and 4·4-litre diesels will be added in 2014.
Above, from top Michael Strahan. Yasmin Le Bon. Daniel Craig and SAFE’s Nick Reding. Jade Jagger. Zara Phillips, MBE. Sienna Guillory and Jamie Chung. Thierry Henry. Below More shots of the new Range Rover Sport.
TopGabrielle Chanel, Seen by Karl Lagerfeld, original drawing by Karl Lagerfeld. AboveAn Imaginary Meeting Between Coco Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld, original drawing by Karl Lagerfeld.
In our round-up of news from ‘The Scene’: as part of Chanel’s celebration of the jacket, the house has released a new video (below) featuring its history, with footage featuring Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel herself.
Designer Karl Lagerfeld has also released 11 sketches to celebrate the jacket, including illustrations of Gabrielle Chanel and an imaginary encounter between himself and the founder of the house.
The story picks up in the mid-1950s, when Chanel felt that the style of the time was too restrictive. The jacket was created for women who could wear it during the day with greater freedom and be stylish enough for the evening. The tweed jacket, which became a signature for Chanel, was also born. Style icons soon adopted the look: Brigitte Bardot, Grace Kelly and Romy Schneider sported theirs. Karl Lagerfeld’s arrival in the 1980s saw a revival of the jacket.
Lagerfeld honoured the jacket with a book, The Little Black Jacket: Chanel’s Classic Revisited by Karl Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld, and a series of exhibitions. Milano will play host to the next exhibition opening April 4, with new works (featuring Keira Knightley, Diane Kruger, Carla Bruni and Carole Bouquet), before it moves on to Dubai.
Meanwhile, last week’s Gucci Private Suite at Ellerslie during the Auckland Racing Club’s race week was the place to be for New Zealand’s largest city. William Yoon, Gucci’s Asia-Pacific president, and Helen Koo, the managing director for Australia and New Zealand, played hosts. Gucci—in line with its own equestrian heritage—sponsored one race, the Gucci Sprint, where a horse named Vogue won. Celebrities included occasional Lucire correspondent Amber Peebles (in Gucci) and her husband Brooke Howard-Smith, Rachel Hunter, Academy Award nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes and Jonathan Morrison, Boh Runga, Clifton Piper, Cameron Ireland, Sandy Nairn, and Michelle Blanchard.
Top WOW models at Brancott Vineyard celebrating the start of harvest with Patrick Materman, chief winemaker for Brancott Estate. Above Hayley Westenra performs at the Brancott Estate vineyard.
Brancott Estate not only has a new wine out—its limited-edition Brancott Estate Chosen Rows Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2010—but it marked the occasion with an exclusive performance at its vineyard in Marlborough with Hayley Westenra and the World of Wearable Art models.
The release, literally from chosen rows at the vineyard, is a complex, layered wine, limited to 3,500 individually numbered bottles worldwide. It is Brancott Estate’s first limited edition, retailing at NZ$80 at the vineyard’s Heritage Centre, fine wine retailers, and through selected retailers in New Zealand.
Those rows were singled out for delivering exceptional quality fruit. The vintners then looked for ripeness of flavour and a special flavour profile, seeing which were the best fruit for this more exclusive edition.
The wine reveals layers of exotic fruits, roasted hazelnut and spice, while remaining fresh.
In a release, Brancott Estate chief winemaker Patrick Materman says, ‘We’re excited and proud to be launching Brancott Estate Chosen Rows Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2010 and believe now is the right time to bring this exceptional new wine to the market. This is an age-worthy wine which will slowly evolve and reveal more of itself in the following 10 years …
‘Our deep understanding of complex and ageworthy natural aroma compounds of Marlborough sauvignon blanc, together with our long-term learnings of the soil types on Brancott Vineyard has given us a unique opportunity to create this prestigious wine which is the pinnacle of our winemaking.’
Centre Arnaud Sabard, Hayley Westenra, Patrick Materman and Cathy McKeown. Above Michael Cooper and Bob Campbell with a WOW model.