20 fascinating facts about east London

Recognise this? (See 17)

Spiral Notebook: After a flight of fancy, down to earth with a bump

Unless you have wealth, webbing or feathers, there is little glamour left in air travel.

The humiliation of the consumer is one that no other service would demand save perhaps Apple with an iOS upgrade or the NHS and its proctology (with whom, tellingly, air travel has a weird kinship).

Exhibition: Bridge at Museum Of London Docklands

WHAT'S ON

Bridge is a free exhibition of artworks responding to the capital's crossings showing at the Museum Of London Docklands, West India Quay. We have selected four of the works from the exhibition with words of explanation or evocation.

Spiral Notebook: Lutfur Rahman - here comes the new boss, same as the old boss?

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

Racked by weariness and relief, the new Mayor of Tower Hamlets wept. He was hurt, he said, by accusation that he was racist, that he was a disciple of division.

Spiral Notebook: Why learning to code should be an essential part of a child's education

Canary Wharf Group sponsors a coding club network across Tower Hamlets.

This nationwide network of volunteer after-school clubs aims to let children rip the screen off their computers and tablets and let them rummage around with the gubbins inside.

Spiral Notebook: Hard hat, hard luck, hard heart

This is a public service announcement.

I was minding my own business, as is required on a Canary Wharf bench at lunchtime. Then I was approached, tentatively, by a man in a high viz jacket carrying a hard hat.

Exhibition: Estuary, Museum Of London Docklands

If the capital is moving east, then the Thames Estuary is moving west. An unnerving thought for a city that generally views this journey's end as a place of damp and mystery, a repository of detritus and industrial skeletons.

Spiral Notebook: Welcome To The Paunch

Eran Creevy is not the only director who can pitch a Canary Wharf set thriller:

Fade in: We're with Roger Fairbrother, mid-50s, fat. He marches down a corridor, beads of sweat on his face. He carries a box, a man on a mission.

Through corridor windows, we see autumn leaves gather in mulchy pools. Smokers huddle in the Allotted Smoking Area. "Roger!"

The camera rises to capture Barry Wheedle, same age but leaner. Frantic. He follows, waving papers.

Roger stops. He doesn't turn. When Barry speaks he is talking to Roger's back.

"You forgot to fill in Requisition Schedule 43 (a) and (b) and to sign here, here..." He gulps. "...and here."

Roger turns slowly. Like a battleship. Menacing. Growling.

"I'm a busy man Barry."

"You've gotta sign. You know what happened last time."

Roger snaps.

"I know what happened last time!"

"The disciplinary board."

"Damn the board, Barry. And damn you. I gotta get these toner cartridges to accounts otherwise Barbara goes into the sales meeting without her forecasts. She goes in there naked, for Christ's sake."

Flashback 18 years. Cut to: An office. The Sales Manager is berating Barbara. Barbara, 30s, weeps. She runs out the office, crashing into Roger. Betrayal blazes in her eyes.

Cut to present: The corridor. Roger is lost in the memory, guilt captured in a sheen of sweat. "I can't let that happen again. Not on my watch." Calmer now. "I gotta go Barry."

Roger turns. Barry reaches out touches Roger on the shoulder. The touch is like electricity, like the remembrance of lost friendship.

"What happened to you Roger? You've changed."

"Everybody changes, Barry. It's called life and she's a bitch."

Barry laughs.

"Remember the days when we just used to enjoy this stupid, pointless merry-go-round and damn the consequences."

Flashback 35 years. Cut to: Two men, Young Barry and Young Roger party in the Supplies Office. Mess. Everything is covered in Post-It notes including... Young Barbara, happy, laughing. In love.

Smash cut to present: "I gotta write you up," says Barry. Failure to sign a requisition schedule is a reprimand. Mandatory."

"You do what you gotta do."

Roger faces the exit, ready to push through to an unknown fate.

He stops short of the door. Lost. Broken. With a passion that he once used to invest in stationery supplies, Roger suddenly throws the box through the corridor window.

"Roger? What the hell?"

With every last ounce of energy in his corpulent body, Roger lifts himself through the frame and out.

He runs like he used to in the old days. Carefree. He breathes the clean fresh air. He kicks up the leaves. Like he used to with Barbara.

He seizes his chest. Pain erupts. He falls to his knees. Then topples forward into the puddles.

Close up on his mouth.

"Post-Its," he whispers with his last breath. "Post-Its."

Fade out

Welcome To The Punch: Shooting in Canary Wharf

The dead of night in east London. The streets are deserted, the cloistered colonnades of Canary Wharf, quiet. It's dark, of course, but the neon sheen of the tall towers provide a geometric, shimmering glow.

Into this frame of chrome and steel, enters an armed gang. Identical in appearance, otherworldly in their gas masks and seeing the Wharf circuits as a loop to slingshot them, and their ill-gotten gains, to freedom and riches.

In their wake, a driven cop, Max Lewinsky, willing to break the rules to bring down criminal mastermind Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong).

Smoking cartridges ejected from chambers bounce on the pavement, their deadly cargo thudding into walls and flesh.

"Pe-ow," the actors shout like nine-year-old cowboys. "Peow, peow." (Or an onomatopoeia of their choice).

The director has to remind them, again, not to make the noises. That'll be done in post-production.

In the meantime, the camera is recording their mouths acting as muzzles and it's distracting from the high-sheen action.

"You can't fire guns in and around Canary Wharf," actor Mark Strong tells The Wharf as we sit in a Soho hotel a week before the release of Welcome To The Punch, which sees much of its action take place in familiar locales.

"We had these specially made automatic weapons and the cartridges would come out but they would make no noise and there was no muzzle flare, that was put on later.

"That meant we kept running around going..." [he makes a "phut-phut" sound] "... and we kept on having to be told not to make the noise. If you're filming at night around that area it has to be very quiet."

And "filming at night around that area" was very much in the mind of Isle of Dogs director Eran Creevy as he began envisioning a palette for his slick cops and robbers thriller, a follow-up to his 2008 debut, the more realistic, down and dirty Shifty.

No London buses, red telephone boxes or bobbies' helmets adorn the film which aspires to emulate the Hong Kong shoot-out actioners or the simmering take-downs of Michael Mann.

Eran is open about his influences and inspirations.

"I wanted to make something from a film buff's point of view, a genre-geek, who grew up loving films like Bullit and conspiracy movies like Three Days of the Condor, The French Connection, Heat and Infernal Affairs; I have a massive love for Michael Mann, the Scott brothers and also Hong Kong cinema, especially the films of John Woo," said the ebullient director. (James McAvoy likens him to Danny Boyle in his infectious enthusiasm.)

"I live in east London and I was jogging around the island and through the city and I'd see these angles and shots and wondered 'why doesn't anyone shoot around here?' There is a futuristic Tokyo style weird clean streets with no litter.

"You can't enter Canary Wharf without being tested for gunpowder on your steering wheel. It's a crazy place and just the most beautiful metropolis."

Think east London and criminals and you're in the territory of Jack the Ripper or Guy Ritchie's lovable cockney canon and its imitators.

"This seemed very determined not to be your usual geezer, gangster, apples and pears crime film," McAvoy told The Wharf.

"I've seen a lot of those being really great as well but it's willingness not to rely on gritty British realism seemed refreshing.

"It felt quite fresh in terms of what Britain produces. It wasn't about the street, it's what's happening in the financial world and the political world that's what fuels the action, a high political conspiracy."

Strong said: "When we make films about London they tend to be caper comedies. It's fascinating that Eran's chosen to shoot at Canary Wharf, the palette of chrome and steel and give it a look which is more like a Heat or Casino, than what we're used to. "

"We don't make many action movies in this country is the simple reason is economics. Once you've made one in London you can't sell it in Europe or America because they're not interested."

The result is a story about two men - both damaged yet both noble - who face each other from different sides of the law and find a weird bond when they are threatened by forces bigger than both of them.

It is a story that initially was filled with arthouse moments, with complex personal histories, all shot and in the can when the director had a sudden change of heart.

Sometimes you have to be ruthless to make a film that moves with a bit of pace and I saw this movies as something that lives in the immediate, with these two men steam training towards one another.

So I cut a lot of the flashbacks and made them live in the present. I love that minimal style of film-making in the 70s where you don't feel you have to shoehorn in all this backstory about the characters.

The result is bullet fast and true.

Strong says: "The introduction of the script describes that [slickness] and when I met Eran he was unequivocal that's what he wanted to do, he wanted to make an aspirational movie.

I remember reading the script and wanting to find out what happened at the end and I thought what was very interesting that, under the guise of an action movie, there is also this story about guns themselves, about arming the police and the idea that the politicians might be using the issue of gun crime to get votes.

"There's a real possibility that it might cross borders that people see it as an international movie set in London rather than a London movie."

And it might not be the last time, Eran comes knocking on the doors of Canary Wharf Group. He said: "Once we'd production designed the movies so there were no red buses no red telephone boxes or parochial police cars or uniforms we'd created a parallel universe to London, almost a separate London. It borders on being a sci-fi movie.

Ridley Scott has never made a big movie in London and I wondered why that was. And I think we're a new generation of film maker that has grown up around a new London. You think of the London, Ridley would have known - grey and rainy with power cuts and the rubbish on the street - but the new metropolis has sprouted up into the air.

"There's going to be a new generation of film makers that set more films here. We have visual canvas to tell more aspirational, glossy style thrillers that wasn't there before."

I want to make a few more in that universe neon noir London and I won't try to justify it next time because I think the audience will just buy it."



GETTING STARTED

Director Eran Creevy is a bundle of nervous energy. Hard to imagine that this man who spills out words so fast and with such glee could be the focussed director described by his star James McAvoy.

McAvoy said: "The energy flies off him but he is so in possession of his craft.

"His skillset is fantastic, his understanding of the film business is full. That's why he managed to make a movie that looks like $20-$30million dollar movie for peanuts."

Ask how the film came about and the Isle of Dogs film-maker is off and running.

"After making Shifty, which was a more verite style of film, I wanted to make something that harks back to the archetypes of the grizzled cop, the mastermind super criminal but set it in a beautiful, modern London.

"I gave my first 180 page draft to my producers. They were expecting a kitchen sink drama and they were like, 'alright we see what you're trying to do'. We sat around for the next few years, crafting the screenplay and trying to make it work.

"We got the financing but James was off doing X-Men First Class and Mark was doing Green Lantern and John Carter.

"We needed an executive producer to give the film traction. We sent the screenplay to Ridley Scott (inset) and asked if he would help the film move forward.

"He loved Shifty and responded to this script. I flew out to LA to meet him and then he came on board and started making phone calls immediately.

"When someone like Ridley Scott comes on board it gives a certain cachet to the project so things started happening. What Ridley says goes.

"Ridley was making Prometheus at the time and his mind was there but he still found the time to watch the rushes every night.

"He left us to it but he became very involved in the edit, giving me the benefit of his advice."

Film review: Welcome To The Punch (15)

FILM
Welcome To The Punch
(15) 99mins
★★★✩✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Director Eran Creevy's grasp exceeds his reach in this Wharf-set thriller but there are still moments of scintillating brilliance.

REVIEW
Straight into the action, as the director decrees. The throbbing soundtrack, the neon wash, the chrome taking what little light there is and creating a shimmering space ship vibe.

Slick biker thieves engineer their escape with the loot with only a lone cop, breaking rules, to pursue them.
But he is left with a bullet in his leg and a nemesis that becomes an obsession.

Fast forward - everything's fast - and Max (James McAvoy) is burnt-out and beleaguered and noble but broken gunman Jacob (Mark Strong) has found peace of sorts in Iceland. But when Jacob's son is caught up in trouble he must return, setting the two back on a collision course.

Meanwhile, rumbling in the background, pulling invisible strings and leaving our protagonists dangling, is a meta-plot of corrupt police, cynical politicians and a quest for votes that puts guns on the streets.

Eventually, the two become unlikely and uneasy allies in a grander power struggle that culminates in a devastating shoot-out somewhere we know to be Wood Wharf.

Ambitious stuff. And a tall order. Especially as the director has given himself a self-denying ordnance - he has dumped flashbacks (except the prologue) and back story in favour of momentum.

This means that the film speeds through with enviable pace and the tension is ratcheted remorselessly.

This also means much explanation is left on the cutting room floor, with Jacob and Max never fully fleshed-out to the satisfaction that the twisting plot demands.

Creevy's multi-layered plot has various levels of success too, with the cops and robbers a meaty triumph but the politics a limp, camp follower, meaning the climax is uneven.

Winning the acting honours in this very masculine film is Andrea Riseborough, whose cop mixes it up with little concession to her gender.

She finds herself lifted by a tide of neat cameos from a cast that has big names from Creevy's busy contacts book.
Among them Peter Mullen, David Morrissey, Daniel Mays and, in another eye-catching display of louche menace, Johnny Harris.

Mark Strong is, as ever, impeccable, conveying Jacob's fractured steel. Willowy McAvoy occasionally feels adrift in underpowered Lewinksy and, overall, if the viewer feels short-changed then it is in the editing suite that the crime occurred.

Memorably though Eran Creevy succeeds in his self-stated mission to give London a sheen of gloss and, in doing so, has cracked opened the door for more shiny London thrillers (many hopefully made by him) and for that there should be gratitude.

Food review: Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecote

FRENCH
Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecote
Mackenzie Walk
★★★★✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Should be a perfect marriage: cut-above steak and chips delivered in style - and quickly - in a French brasserie setting.

REVIEW
So if Gordon Ramsay were here, in my nightmare, bellowing about my failing rest- aurant, he would be saying that 53 items on the menu is not variety, it's lack of confidence, and how could I possibly produce deep impaled garlic butter snails with a lettuce foam and wild mushroom and venison stroganoff with a thyme brush tickle out of the same kitchen with the same clapped-out crew?

And I would be all like, "I'm just burnt out, chef" and "we're just haemorrhaging money. We can't afford to cook fresh."

And he'd yank me out of the walk-in where I'm hiding and shout: "You can't afford not to."

Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecote has the confidence and brio of Paris so it's not like that. It's the opposite of that.

It does one thing, it does it well, it does it all the time and if you don't like the thing it does then (a) you had your taste buds numbed by too many Zoom ice lollies or (b) you should take up finger painting or whatever because there's not enough joy in your life.

(Note how I'm filling for time. None of that "my companion plumped for A while I sampled the natty little B" schtick. Let's face it, we had steak and chips. That's kinda the point.)

Here's the big idea, which has worked well in the City, worked well in New York and has now come to Canary Wharf.

One set menu, one price (£21), no reservations, all done and dusted in under an hour. But not fast food - steady food, consistent food, loved food.

It goes like this: a green salad with walnuts dressed with mustard vinaigrette followed by steak frites with a secret recipe sauce - served half now, half later so the frites stay crispy and the steaks stay hot.

Yes, there are bits and pieces around the edges - wine, or dessert and coffee - but essentially it's a take-it-or-leave-it deal. Vegetarians are catered for but nominally because "entrecote" is a premium cut of beef, dummy, so veggies only need Babelfish and a brain cell to get the message.

It's all about the steaks - British, grass-fed, mature, aged for four weeks before cooking - and nestling, between demi-courses, on candle-heated silver trays. And - wow - if red velvet cupcakes evolved into happy ruminants, their meat would taste like this.

Brisk doesn't mean unwelcoming. Take the setting - the French brasserie interiors with wood panels, banquette seating and jaunty paintings.

Best of all, the uniformed waitresses, giving a Downton Abbey feel - it's an incongruous through-the-looking-glass antidote to zombie Wharf.

So who comes here? We're guessing you wouldn't take a new client - you'd want reservations and clean cutlery between courses to impress.

But when Bob's down from the Bolton office and you have some leeway on the expenses and Bob doesn't get into town that often then Bob's in for a rare treat.

I envy Bob.

Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecote, 18-20 Mackenzie Walk, 020 3475 3331, relaisdevenise.com

© First published in The Wharf on June 11, 2012

Docks will become pageant hub

The waterways around Canary Wharf and east London will become a breath-taking floating spectacle next week.

From Wapping to London Bridge, a mile-long Avenue Of Sail will see 105 large vessels line the banks.

And West India Dock will become a hub for hundreds of motor craft that will be taking part in the £10.5million privately-funded Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on Sunday, June 3.

Pageant master Adrian Evans said: "London will never have seen its like."

The pageant itself, which begins at Battersea bridge, will come down river as far as Wapping but the vessels will head off into waters around Canary Wharf and Greenwich.

However, anyone hoping to view the dispersal beyond the Royal Docks is likely to be disappointed. The Thames Barrier will be closed for the day to stabilise the tide.

Mr Evans, pictured, said: "Things really start happening [next Thursday]. That's when the Avenue of Sail starts to build. This will be made up of 105 vessels too large to pass under London Bridge.

"We put down moorings on the mile from London Bridge on both sides of the river to Wapping so you'll get this fabulous vista tall masted vessel from London Bridge right through on to Wapping and there are all kinds - tall ships, Thames sailing barges, a Royal Navy minehunter, a whaler, a schooners, some steam tugs, a classic ocean racing yacht, there is even a Chinese junk.

"The Avenue of Sail also includes St Katherine's Dock - we're putting a dozen vessels in there."

Water taxis will buzz to and fro taking invited guests and crew to their vessels in a scene reminiscent of the heyday of the 18th century lightermen. In all, there will be 20,000 people in 1,000 vessels afloat during the pageant.

Mr Evans said: "On Thursday and Friday several hundred motorised vessels will be gathering in West India Dock which will be turned into a marshalling yard for boats.

They'll be coming from all over the country - historic vessels, barges, narrow boats, service vessels and so on.

"Whilst they're in West India Dock they'll be given the once-over by the Port of London Authority and the Marine and Coastguard Agency to make sure they pass safety checks and are appropriately ship-shaped and ready for the pageant.

"On Saturday morning they all leave to make their way to their mustering positions."

One of the showpiece vessels normally berthed in South Quay is notably absent. The Spirit Of Chartwell is undergoing a transformation to a royal barge fit for a Queen.

Mr Evans said: "She will look majestic dressed in the most exquisite detailed adornments which have taken months of work by some of our most talented craftsman including hand-sewn banner and superb prow sculpt, made by City and Guilds."

Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: "This is the biggest such flotilla for 300 years, a kind of Dunkirk except more successful and more cheerful."

Go to thamesdiamondjubileepageant.org for details of times and vantage points.

© First published in The Wharf, May 24, 2012