Watches, Stories, and Gear: The “Jaws” Watch, Heath Ledger’s Joker, and More

“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a weekly roundup of some our favorite watch content from Worn & Wound, great stories from around the web, and cool gear that we’ve got our eye on.

This week’s installment is brought to you by The Worn & Wound Shop.

Watches

“Affordable Vintage: Deep Dive with the Alsta Nautoscaph Jaws Diver”

“The year was 1975, and a movie by a relatively new director named Steven Spielberg was about to make people rethink their summer vacation plans. Jaws opened on over 450 screens, an unusually wide release for the time, and it would come to define the term, “summer blockbuster. There are many remarkable things about this movie that I could discuss—the directing, the soundtrack, the cinematography, etc.—but we’re here to talk about watches. In the film, Richard Dreyfus plays a young oceanographer named Matt Hooper who assists in hunting down our favorite homicidal Great White, and in a couple of scenes, he can be spotted wearing some kind of dive watch on a steel bracelet.”

Click here to read more.

“Editorial: Swatch Group Pulls Out of Baselworld, and Why It Isn’t a Surprise”

“After more than a year of speculation, it’s finally happened—Swatch Group, one of the most significant institutions of Swiss watchmaking, has pulled out of Baselworld. According to Swiss daily NZZ am Sonntag, Nick Hayek Jr. has stated, “Swatch Group has decided to no longer be present in Baselworld from 2019.” This, of course, continues the exodus of more the 600 exhibitors we saw last year. Having personally attended Baselworld four times now, it will be undoubtedly strange to enter Hall 1 and not see the red glow of the massive Omega logo towering over a long stretch of the exhibition center.

And yet, despite the deep significance of this news for the industry at large, it doesn’t comes as a surprise. It was only a matter of time.”

Click here to read more.

Stories

CineFix; “How Heath Ledger’s Joker Was Born”

“When makeup artist John Caglione, Jr. was hired on to create the visual look of the Joker for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, he ran into a problem — his initial instincts for the makeup design were too perfect. Heath Ledger’s performance and Nolan’s vision for the film required a Joker that dropped the comic book visuals for a more organic, psychopathic look. In this interview, Caglione talks about what it took to create the iconic look and how it went against his artistic training.”

New York Magazine; “What Happened to General Magic? Inside the company that invented the iPhone—two decades too early.”

“Chances are that you’ve never heard of General Magic, but in Silicon Valley the company is the stuff of legend. Magic spun out of Apple in 1990 with much of the original Mac team on board and a bold new product idea: a handheld gadget that they called a “personal communicator.” Plugged into a telephone jack, it could handle e-mail, dial phone numbers, and even send SMS-like instant messages—complete with emoji and stickers. It had an app store stocked with downloadable games, music, and programs that could do things like check stock prices and track your expenses. It could take photos with an (optional) camera attachment. There was even a prototype with a touch screen that could make cellular calls and wirelessly surf the then-embryonic web. In other words, General Magic pulled the technological equivalent of a working iPhone out of its proverbial hat—a decade before Apple started working on the real thing. Shortly thereafter, General Magic itself vanished.”

Click here to read more.

Gear

Laowa 24mm f/14 Macro Probe Lens

This one is for the camera nerds. Macro lenses generally have long focal lengths, which means that in most macro photography the subject will fill the frame without much environmental context. The Laowa 24mm Probe Lens is very, very different. It allows you to focus really close to your subject (2cm at 2:1 magnification!), which not only shows an incredible amount of detail, but because the lens is relatively wide you also get a lot of the surrounding environment. The result?Yeah, that’s pretty damn cool.

The lens is currently on Kickstarter for approximately $1,299. Click here to back the project.

Everlane Air Oxford Shirt

Oxford-cloth button-downs are wardrobe staples, but in the summer they can be a bit too stuffy (and with the weather we’ve been having, they’re downright unwearable). Everlane’s Air Oxford Shirt solves that problem by using tightly woven thinner yarn, which means that the shirt breathes a bit better without sacrificing durability.

$58—Shop here

Timex Marlin (Price Reduction)

If you’ve been tempted by the Timex Marlin before, then the reduced price via Huckberry might just push you over the edge. (Fyi: Huckberry calls it an “automatic” watch; it is, in fact, not automatic. It is a mechanical hand-wind.)

$169—Shop here