2 minutes estimated reading time
Morizo
Akio ‘Morizo’ Toyoda, of the Toyoda family who made their first fortune designing automatic textile looms in the early 20th century and their second fortune as the founders of Toyota. During the week Toyoda-san is the chairman of Toyota Jidōsha kabushikigaisha. But in his spare time he liked to do circuit racing under the name Morizo. At first, the Morizo name was to keep his moonlighting racing of the radar of Toyota board. But recently it has become an asset, with Toyota and its GR performance brand creating some of the best drivers cars available.
Although talk about this as a Morizo only concept, it feels like the company might be feeling consumers out to possibly put this into manufacturing. If they did this, it would allow the company to take advantage of the GR Yaris-only components currently made and use them more widely.
The Criterion closet
Criterion as a publisher of DVDs and Blu-Rays is a badge of quality. The closest equivalent in the UK would be Curzon who bought Artificial Eye a number of years ago. One of the things Criterion do is video taste-makers who are allowed to take away some of their favourite films away from the company’s stock. Here are a couple of my favourites.
William Dafoe
Hideo Kojima
Watch trends
While much watch collector videos know feel more like Bloomberg reporting on a commodity because of the rise in the secondary market, this wrap-up strikes a nice balance. Some of the factors mentioned in this review appeared in my 2023 wrap-up and here.
Mexican street culture
If you had uttered those words to me before this week, I would have immediately thought of saints festivals, the day of the dead and the Chicano culture that grew out of Mexican communities who emigrated to the US. But there is so much more in Mexico itself as Refinery 29 shows in this film.
The 50 French words test
You can imagine the brief that came down to this government department in Quebec: make more English speaking visitors and businesses come to our province. The insights being along the lines of most English speakers don’t feel confident dealing with a foreign language, so how to do demystify French.
I don’t know who the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie used, but they deserve every penny of their fee with this film.