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- Hamilton Introduces Two Sci-Fi Dune Part Two Inspired Venturas; Fears Brings Back The Sporty Redcliff; Hanhart Recreates The Moby Dick; And More From Timex And FC X seconde/seconde/
Hamilton Introduces Two Sci-Fi Dune Part Two Inspired Venturas; Fears Brings Back The Sporty Redcliff; Hanhart Recreates The Moby Dick; And More From Timex And FC X seconde/seconde/
Both Fears and Hanhart give this Monday a very vintage vibe, and I like it
It's About Time
February 26, 2024
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Any Dune fans out there? What do we think of movie-themed watches?
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In this issue:
Prop Watch For Dune Part Two Inspires Two New Futuristic Hamilton Ventura Limited Editions
Fears Brings Back The Redcliff, A Sporty And Dressy Collection Of Simple Round Watches
Timex Teams Up Once Again With Danish Fashion Brand NN.07 For A Cool Take On The Expedition North Field Post
Hanhart’s 417 ES Moby Dick Brings Back The White Pilot Chronograph
The Frederique Constant Introduces A Seconde/Seconde/ Modified Slimline Moonphase Date Manufacture
Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 51 seconds
👂What’s new
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It’s pretty clear now that Hamilton is the best watch brand when it comes to product placement in movies. We’ve seen them in the new Indiana Jones, in all the Christopher Nolan movies that made certain models famous, even in The Martian and The Avengers. What I didn’t know is that Hamilton watches have been featured in over 500 movies. And whatever your thoughts are on product placement, that’s impressive. Often, filmmakers will just use an existing Hamilton watch in the movie, but sometimes, as is the case with the Nolan movies, the watchmaker creates unique watches for the movie, which find their way to consumers. Well, Hamilton has a new movie watch to show off - a duo of new Ventura models inspired by the prop watch that Hamilton created for the Dune Part Two movie.
Take a look at the photo of the new Ventura’s above. The new watches are on the left and the right, and in the middle is the prop that Hamilton has created for the movie. Working together with the film’s prop master, Doug Harlocker, the idea has been to craft a watch from another world, with different rules, with a display that was not guided by traditional watch norms and the result is the “Desert Watch”, worn by the Fremen of Arrakis. And you can see a bit of familial relations between the Desert Watch and the regular Hamilton Ventura. But only a bit.
Moving on to the watches you will be able to buy, starting with the Hamilton Ventura XXL Bright Dune Limited Edition. It comes in the familiar Ventura XXL case that was released a bit over a year ago and the changes from the original are subtle. The same is the oversized black PVD coated case that measures a beefy 52mm wide and 46.6mm from top to bottom. Thankfully, it’s not a porker as it’s only 11.8mm thick. It’s powered by an unspecified Hamilton quartz movement and it has to be quartz to power the light up section of the otherwise black dial which has a blue futuristic pattern matching, in part, the blue of the prop.
The other release, the Hamilton Ventura Edge Dune Limited Edition, is less of a traditional Ventura, if you can call that watch traditional, and leans much closer to the prop from the movie. You see less of the flowing lines of the Ventura, and much more of a sci-fi watch, mostly thanks to a molded frame on top that divides a digital display into hours and minutes. The same blue is used for the numerals on the display, as well as the crown and a glowing element in the center of the dial. It’s still a large watch measuring 51mm wide, 47.2mm long, and 13.8mm thick.
Both the Hamilton Ventura XXL Bright Dune Limited Edition and the Hamilton Ventura Edge Dune Limited Edition are available now, with the XXL Bright Dune limited to 3,000 pieces and priced at $1,750 and the Edge Dune limited to 2,000 pieces and priced at $2,500. See more on the Hamilton website.
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Nicholas Bowman-Scargill wasn’t really happy with the fact that his family business, founded by his great-great-great grandfather Edwin Fears, went out of business in 1976. He believed that the historic Fears watch company should be brought back and he did exactly that in 2016. The new Fears’ debut model was the Redcliff, a quartz watch that took cues from historic Fears models. This was an instant hit and Fears moved on to creating more mechanical models, with more vintage inspiration and a departure from the round case into more cushion shapes. Well, now Fears is reintroducing the Redcliff as the Redcliff 39.5 Date, a simple round case with an almost sporty appearance and some pretty amazing dials.
Starting off with the case, it comes in an attractive stainless steel case that measures 39.5mm wide, a fantastic 9.95mm thick and with a 47mm lug-to-lug. The bezel is rounded and polished, while the rest of the case gets a sporty brushed look. A sapphire crystal is on top, and with the screw-down crown you get an equally sport 150 meters of water resistance.
There are five different dials available on the new Redclif, with two of them being special and limited (in purchase location, not number) edition. Starting off with the three regular editions, they come in Pewter Grey, Cherry Red, and Raven Black. The Pewter Grey comes with a fantastic 80s-like vertically brushed all-sliver dial, black gold-plated hands and indices, and an electric blue seconds hand. The Raven Black and Cherry Red have a sunburst finish. All three (actually four, but more on that a bit later), have a grooved chapter ring with second/minute markings and a great looking color-matched date at 3 o’clock. The indices are baton markers and the pipette hands pay homage to the history of Fears watches which often used these hands.
The fourth model is a boutique edition which keeps the exact same look as the three regular editions, but with a mallard-green sunburst dial and an indigo two-piece strap that will be available for purchase only at Fears’ Bristol headquarters. The fifth is an edition Fears created with Collective Horology, and available only through them. It's called they Onyx and features a stone dial made of onyx, ditching the sporty look and going more dressy. The case is fully polished, and while the hands remain lumed, the dial features simple white and silver printing. This one comes only on a black Barenia leather strap but a bracelet can be purchased separately.
All five versions have the automatic La Joux-Perret G100 movement inside, taking place of the quartz movement of the original. It beats at 28,800 vph, has a 68-hour power reserve and Fears claims it’s accurate to -/+7 seconds per day. Apart from the Onyx, all the other watches come on either a black or grey nylon textile strap or on a 3-link bracelet with fitted end links, brushed and polished finishing and a push-button micro-adjustment.
None of the five versions of the Fears Redcliff 39.5 Date are limited in number, and just the two will be limited in purchase location, and all five are available now. The four versions with regular dials are priced at $3,300 while the Onyx version is priced at $3,600. See more on the Fears website.
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Two years ago, Timex teamed up with the ever-more-popular Copenhagen-based fashion brand NN.07 known for their minimalist approach to everyday clothes for a version of the Timex M79 watch with a deep blue bezel. It was extremely successful and sold out instantly, so it’s no surprise that they’re working together again. Their second collaboration comes in the form of a very cool (apart from the “Original Tick Tock” name they’re using) Expedition North Field Post with subtle details hinting at NN.07.
The watch comes in the familiar Expedition North Field Post, meaning it’s 36mm wide and comes in stainless steel, with a fitted steel bracelet and with a fully brushed finish, which is exactly what you want from Timex. Sporty, durable and looking more expensive than it actually is. The dial comes in the recognizable white color with its hour and minute hands, along with indices are coated in a bright yellow lume. There’s a date window at 3 o’clock and the reference to the NN.07 collaboration can be found on the cobalt blue seconds hand and 7 o’clock hour marker, a nod to 2007, the year NN.07 was founded. Inside is a Japanese quartz movement.
The Timex X NN.07 Expedition North Field Post is limited to 1,000 pieces, same as the last collaboration, meaning that they are likely to sell out just as fast. The watch will be available for purchase on March 1, 8 a.m. EST for a price of $200. See more on the NN.07 website.
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Starting off as a maker of Swiss stopwatches and moving to Germany in 1902 to start making watches, Hanhart has made some of the most significant military watches in German history, finding their place on the wrist of German pilots and naval officers for decades. In the 50s they made the 417, the first pilot’s chronograph for the German Armed Forces, but only a few years before it was retired. But, in the meantime, admirals and doctors in the navy have discovered a variant of the 417, named the Moby Dick by collectors, the same watch with a white dial and it became very popular in these circles. A couple of years ago, Hanhart revived the 417 pilot’s chronograph and now they’re brining back the white dial version with the 417 ES Moby Dick.
The watch comes in a 42mm wide and 13,3mm thick stainless steel case with a significantly domed sapphire crystal on top and Hanhart’s recognisable fluted bi-directional bezel. The bezel usually features a red marker on top, but with this edition it’s been replaced by a cream one. Water resistance is 100 meters, which is great considering the vintage piston-style pushers that operate the chronograph.
The dial is pearly white, with the same bi-compax layout of the original. In fact, everything is based on the original. The numerals, the fonts, the hands and markers, they are all pretty much the same as those found on the original 417 chronograph, which shows intense commitment from the brand. There’s one tiny deviation from the original - the numerals are outlined in black and filled with a cream colored Super-LumiNova, just like the pencil-shaped heat blued hour, minute and seconds hands.
Inside is the Sellita SW510, a familiar, robust and easily servicable movement which beats at 28,800vph and has a decent power reserve of 58 hours. The watch comes on a light brown calfskin strap with white stitching.
The Hanhart 417 ES Moby Dick is not limited in number and is available now. Price is set €1,940. See more on the Hanhart website.
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Like we established several times, the customisations that Romaric André, known as seconde/seconde/, span a wide range of impressions, from brilliant to completely cringey. What you can’t deny is that seconde/seconde/ has a very distinct sense of humor and when it hits, it hits hard. Now he has teamed up with Frederique Constant for two limited editions of the Slimline Moonphase Date Manufacture.
This one hits, but only when you hear the entire story. FC makes fantastic watches that are incredible value, but they’re still lacking a bit in recognition from the broader market. They want people to know that FC makes their fantastic watches by hand, and it seems that this was the brief they gave to seconde/seconde/.
He used the Frederique Constant Slimline Moonphase Date Manufacture as the base for his project. This is a beautiful watch rendered in stainless steel with nice proportions of 42mm wide, 11.3mm thick and with a 47.5mm lug-to-lug measurement. On top is a sapphire crystal and out back is another crystal with the overly long and a bit cringy text that reads: “How do we tell the world that manual-assembly is at the core of our Manufacture? We asked artist seconde/seconde/. He took it too far.” That’s one my one issue with seconde/seconde/ - he does take it too far and makes the joke too obvious. It would have worked perfectly even without the text that nobody can read otherwise.
On the base of the Slimline Moonphase Date Manufacture, seconde/seconde/ redesignes the dial to exaggerate the handmade nature of it. The hour markers look as if they were dropped on the dial, and the text looks like it was handwritten. Even the moonphase disc looks like it was amateurishly drawn. There are two versions of the watch - one with a rose gold crown and rose gold dial details limited to just 10 pieces, while the other has a stainless steel crown and dial details, available in 100 pieces.
Inside is the automatic in-house caliber FC-705 which beats at 28,800vph and has a 38 hour power reserve. It’s decently good looking with a rose gold skeletonized rotor, perlage, circular striping, and blued screws. The model with the rose gold elements comes on a brown alligator strap, while the all-steel one is available on a black alligator strap.
According to the Frederique Constant website, the rose gold-detailed Slimline Moonphase Date Manufacture is sold out, but there’s something weird going on with the all steel version. While the watch has already gone on sale, and used to have a buy it now button, it now just reads “coming soon”. I’m not sure if this means it’s sold out (then why doesn’t it say so like the rose gold variant) or they’re moving some things around. Anyways, both versions are priced at €3,295. See more on the FC website.
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually likewatches
A closer inspection reveals an intriguing combination of shapes and finishes. The case sides have a blasted inset surrounded by a polished lip. The lugs feature circular brushing on their curved surfaces, while their flattened tops are matte. For me, one of the key details is the matching arc-shaped textures on the bezel and crown. The finishing is nicely executed, and all the edges are sharp. Too sharp, actually. I’m told they will smooth things out a tad on the final versions, as the prototype felt a bit raw.
⏲️Wait a minute
A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting
If you want to make a sports fan happy, give them a deep dive into a goofy pool. To wit: Ben Dowsett going nearly 5,000 words on the jump ball, that contested toss that has started every game of basketball since 1891. Micro-analyzing the tradecraft used by both referees and players, Dowsett crams the piece with GIFs and videos aplenty to illustrate why it takes more than height to win the tip.
Magazines have been writing about Al Sharpton for damn near 40 years. But the Al Sharpton of now is not the Al Sharpton of then, and Mitchell Jackson’s profile gets its arms around the civil rights activist with such totality that it’s hard to imagine anything short of a book-length biography could match it. It’s not the last word on a complicated man, but it’s perhaps the best.
This is an incredibly disturbing, bone-chilling, stomach-churning report on a marketplace of girl influencers managed by moms and stalked by men. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you. Seeking social media stardom for their underage daughters, mothers post images of them on Instagram. The accounts draw men sexually attracted to children, and they sometimes pay to see more.
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
There are a couple of unfinished and unreleased movies that haunt me. Sergio Leone never managed to get his war epic about the siege of Leningrad off the ground, I would have loved to see Kubrick’s Napoleon, just like David Lean’s Nostromo. There’s still some chance that somebody will let Oliver Stone shoot Pinkville, his telling of the My Lai massacre, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
Then, there are movies who have been shot, or mostly shot, but are hidden away and almost impossible to see. There’s not much to see of the The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but chances are we will at some point get to see The Day the Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis’ haunting story of a clown in a concentration camp, or maybe even Orson Welles’ take on The Deep, which has been assembled in a rough cut by the Munich Film Archive.
But the one unreleased movies that I know I will see one day has also been directed by Welles and reconstructed from dailies and rough cuts by the Munich Film Archive is his Moby Dick. This is supposed to be one of his best movies, and there are several clips from it on YouTube. Here’s Welles giving the sermon of Jonah, it really does look impressive.
💵Pre-loved precision
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