A Czech Company Just Unveiled an Electric Car That Looks Retro in a Good Way: Here’s What We’re Reading Today

The Daily 5 is Sharp’s essential reading list for what’s happening in the world today. Make sure to follow us on Twitter or subscribe to the Sharp Insider newsletter to stay up to date.

1. Check out Cuba’s first 5-star hotel with it’s own tobacco lounge

“Now that relations are starting to improve with Cuba, so are the accommodations. Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana has beaten everyone to the punch by becoming the island nation’s first 5-star hotel. Located in Old Havana, the resort is housed in a 100-year old European-style shopping arcade. The 246 guestrooms overlook the historic city while some even offer balconies. The rooftop is a hub for activities offering a pool and a restaurant with expansive views of the Capitol and the Great Theater of Havana. But the main attraction is their tobacco lounge which pairs the country’s two specialties — cigars and rum.”

– uncrate.com

2. Bigger isn’t always better

“This Bluetooth speaker might not look like anything special on the outside, but on the inside, it’s packing dual 8W drivers, which are far louder than the 5W or 6W drivers you’d find in most similar speakers. That does come at the expense of battery life, but eight hours is good enough for most use cases.”

– deals.kinja.com

3. Electric cars are in, adding a retro look is even more in

“Have you ever heard of MW Motors? No, you haven’t. Let me fill you in: MW is a Czech firm that, this week, unveiled what it said on its website was, “Not a concept.” The car, they insist, is “real.” It’s an electric called the Luka EV, and even if this is car is never made, I think it looks good, so there’s that.

“MW—slogan “We challenge the norm”—also says on its website that the car will have a motor on each wheel making 66 horsepower. It also says the range will be 300 kilometers, or around 186 miles. The top speed is 90 mph. It goes zero to 60 in 9.6 seconds. It weighs approximately 1,800 pounds. All of these claims carry this not-exactly-assuring-caveat: “*Unofficial in-house testing.”

– jalopnik.com

4. How A Quiet Place used silence to terrify its audience

“Harrowing, suspenseful, and emotional, Paramount’s A Quiet Place is a terrific piece of horror storytelling that pulls you in from its opening frames and doesn’t loosen its grip for the entire runtime. You probably know the premise by now: a family tries to stay alive in a world overrun by creatures who hunt using sound, which means one stray noise or careless mistake could spell the family’s untimely demise.

“Scott and I have always talked about, for many years now, that sound is one of the greatest tools in a filmmaker’s toolbox to generate suspense and horror. So we kept thinking, if you could make sound itself the monster in a movie – if you could make sound the equivalent of the shark in Jaws – that would be something really, really special. So it was that idea, which we hoped would be terrifying. And it was this general idea of – Scott and I were watching a lot of silent movies in college and even to this day. Some of our favorite filmmakers are Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton obviously, the French filmmaker Jacques Tati. We love silent film so much, and we were like, ‘It’d be so cool to make a silent film in a modern day genre context.’ We’re like, ‘We’ve never seen that before. That would be bizarre and interesting.’ So A Quiet Place was born from those two disparate paths.”

– slashfilm.com

5. Spring/summer fashion do’s and don’ts

“When it comes to menswear trends, there are ‘swerves’: deviations from the norm that mark you out as a man capable of overtaking in the fashion fast lane. Then there are those that you should swerve altogether if you don’t want to resemble a car crash.

“With the nineties resurgence in full swing, consider adding yet another re-entry to your trend bucket list. “With many and varied endorsements ranging from Louis Vuitton to Justin Beiber, bucket hats have been promoted from Britpop throwback to high-fashion accessory,” says stylist Giles Farnham from the River Island Studio.”

fashionbeans.com