Merely months from buzzing our towers once again, it’s still too soon to make a call on what Mr Tom Cruise’s Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell will be rocking in Top Gun 2. Despite IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN’s official role as watchmaker to the US Navy’s real-life fighter-pilot school, aka “TOPGUN”, details remain strictly classified (for now…) What we can tell from fleeting glimpses throughout the trailer is that a matte-black bracelet watch is involved. Given the vast array of stealth-mode watches out there in solid ceramic, PVD nitride or DLC carbon coatings, that hardly narrows things down.

The America’s Cup is as tough as it gets. “It’s the highest level of sailing,” says Mr Massimiliano “Max” Sirena. “For sure higher than the Olympic Games.” Mr Sirena should know. He is about to compete in his seventh America’s Cup, having previously been part of two winning campaigns. The first in 2010 with BMW Oracle Racing, for the USA. His second in 2017 with Emirates Team New Zealand. Now he’s back with Italy’s Luna Rossa Challenge as team director and skipper, a role he previously held in 2013. In January, Mr Sirena will lead his 11-man crew in the Prada Cup in Auckland, a set of match races that will determine which club will meet defenders Emirates New Zealand in the 36th America’s Cup in March. Taking the title from the reigning Kiwis would be particularly sweet: after all, he helped them win it. “I will give a thousand per cent to try to win the Cup for Luna Rossa and for Italy”, he says.

He may not have filmed a single second of it, but Mr Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” is a masterpiece of video art: 1,440 minute-long, painstakingly researched clips from thousands of different film and TV shows, depicting a peripatetic 24-hour day, in real time – whether it’s a close-up shot of a character’s watch, a clock in the background, or an alarm clock “kerchunking” from 5.59 to 6.00 (Groundhog Day, natch).

Merely months from buzzing our towers once again, it’s still too soon to make a call on what Mr Tom Cruise’s Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell will be rocking in Top Gun 2. Despite IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN’s official role as watchmaker to the US Navy’s real-life fighter-pilot school, aka “TOPGUN”, details remain strictly classified (for now…) What we can tell from fleeting glimpses throughout the trailer is that a matte-black bracelet watch is involved. Given the vast array of stealth-mode watches out there in solid ceramic, PVD nitride or DLC carbon coatings, that hardly narrows things down.

The America’s Cup is as tough as it gets. “It’s the highest level of sailing,” says Mr Massimiliano “Max” Sirena. “For sure higher than the Olympic Games.” Mr Sirena should know. He is about to compete in his seventh America’s Cup, having previously been part of two winning campaigns. The first in 2010 with BMW Oracle Racing, for the USA. His second in 2017 with Emirates Team New Zealand. Now he’s back with Italy’s Luna Rossa Challenge as team director and skipper, a role he previously held in 2013. In January, Mr Sirena will lead his 11-man crew in the Prada Cup in Auckland, a set of match races that will determine which club will meet defenders Emirates New Zealand in the 36th America’s Cup in March. Taking the title from the reigning Kiwis would be particularly sweet: after all, he helped them win it. “I will give a thousand per cent to try to win the Cup for Luna Rossa and for Italy”, he says.