On November 5, 1831, two east Londoners turned up at King's College School of Anatomy in The Strand with the body of a young boy to sell.
Gruesome though it was, their deal was not unusual. John Bishop and James May along with Thomas Williams, who lived in Nova Scotia Avenue in Shoreditch, were Resurrection Men who made a living answering the needs of the anatomy schools.
As a new exhibition at the Museum of London attests, the economics were grim but undeniable - demand outstripped supply.
The hospitals and private schools needed 5,000 cadavers a year for dissections. In 2006, the Museum of London Archeology uncovered a cemetery at the Royal London Hospital in use between 1825 and 1841.
The skeletons found there showed evidence of dissection, from craniotomies to severed limbs.
Surgery was something of a bloody lottery but lack of training material hampered would-be surgeons further - they were left to share bodies or study wax models.
Thomas Wakley, founder of The Lancet, wrote in 1827: "Even at the enormous prices now demanded by the Resurrection Men an exceedingly small supply can only be obtained."
The trade of the grave robbers was necessary but reviled. Fears about entering the afterlife intact and the serial killing indignities of Edinburgh grave robbers Burke and Hare persuaded many to take precautions.
Some were buried in metal coffins (Mrs Campbell's last refuge of 1819 is on display), while others stood guard over newly-buried loved ones. Some laid mantraps in cemeteries.
But still the deals between the Resurrection Men - "burkers" - and the hospitals held firm.
So, when Bishop and May presented the corpse at the Strand school and demanded 12 guineas, it was not an unusual transaction.
And although the fresh state of the body alarmed anatomist Richard Partridge, he still handed over eight guineas.
However, his suspicions grew and he alerted police. A coroners jury offered a verdict of murder with Bishop, Williams and May the prime suspects.
On 19 November, Supt Joseph Sadler Thomas searched the cottages at Nova Scotia Gardens and found clothing in a well and one of the privies. Not just from the so-called Italian boy (believed to have been Carlo Ferrari) but from multiple murders.
Bishop, 33, Williams, 26, and May, 30, were all found guilty of related crimes. Before sentence was passed Bishop admitted that the Italian boy was, in fact, from Lincolnshire on his way to Smithfield. He had been drugged with rum and laudanum and when he lost consciousness he was pitched into a well to drown.
They also admitted to the murder of Frances Pigburn and her child who were sleeping rough in Shoreditch, and a boy named Cunningham. Williams and Bishop admitted to stealing up to 1,000 bodies over 12 years.
They were hanged at Newgate on December 5, 1831, before a crowd of 30,000 with May respited because he had no knowledge of the murders.
The case of the "Italian boy" was one of the drivers of the Anatomy Act of 1832 which tried to put the Resurrection Men out of business by providing "unclaimed" bodies for dissection.
In the 100 years following the Act 99.5% of the 5,700 corpses delivered came from workhouses, asylums and hospitals. The poor paid the price but the Resurrection Men were out of business.
These days, 1,000 bodies are needed a year. They are provided mostly by donors but, still, demand outstrips supply.
And the bodies of May and Williams? They were removed the same night - for dissection.
- Doctors, Dissection And Resurrection Men at the Museum of London. Go to museumoflondon.org.uk.
Saturday, 10 November 2012
Stage review: 55 Days, Hampstead Theatre
STAGE
55 Days
Hampstead Theatre
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Two charismatic actors reveal the compelling contrasts of two celebrated historic figures in Howard Brenton's nuggety Civil War clash.
REVIEW
Hampstead Theatre has been reconfigured. The seats are placed on either side of the stage which creates some awkwardness (backs to the audience, darling) but promotes the idea of division; a Parliament of opposites.
Which is the theme of Howard Brenton's marvellous new play set at the tail-end of the English Civil War when battle fatigue could have tipped the country back into the kind of tyranny it had spent years trying to escape.
The 55 days of the title is the time (1648-49) between the rampant Army purging parliament of latent royalists and the moment when this most bloody chapter of English history was brought to a close with an axe.
"We are not just trying a tyrant, we are inventing a country," declares Oliver Cromwell.
And the sticky business of nation-building - of compromise and idealism - is the theme that excites the playwright.
The Roundheads are winning the war but likely to lose the peace as, yet again, brother is set against brother over the meaning of victory and the interpretation of God's will.
Amid the chaos, however, two characters (then as now) take centre stage and both are embodied by actors equal to the challenge.
King Charles I is prissy and self-righteous, the only one dressed in historical garb - with the familiar lace and flounces - and with a lilt of Scottish to his precise voice as he calls upon his position as heaven's sacred anointed to scare the bejesus out of his God-fearing opponents.
Mark Gatiss is clever in the court scenes and intriguing in isolation with the poignancy driven solely by his predicament and never from his glassy heart.
Douglas Henshall as Oliver Cromwell is the charismatic and flawed pivot of the piece.
Cromwell had no official leadership position but provided the moral heft and Henshall shows us the dithering and the decisiveness in a mesmerising and nuanced performance.
What Brenton calls the "obligation" scene - the fictional meeting of the two men - is as nourishing and accomplished as the long build-up demands with Cromwell urging Charles to see sense and "come to terms" and the king preparing serenely and doggedly for martyrdom.
The scene is topped by the trial where the brightest legal minds make law on the hoof to counter the king's mix of canny insight, blind intransigence and unexpected populism.
Director Howard Davies stages all this amid flanks of filing cabinets, with tiny ties and tinny typewriters conjuring the thin gruel of post-war squabbling.
Simon Kunz, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Daniel Flynn and Gerald Kyd provide solid support in a rewarding work; a reminder that the institutions we take for granted were carved, with blood and blister, from stubborn stone.
Until Nov 24. Go to hampsteadtheatre.com.
55 Days
Hampstead Theatre
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Two charismatic actors reveal the compelling contrasts of two celebrated historic figures in Howard Brenton's nuggety Civil War clash.
REVIEW
Hampstead Theatre has been reconfigured. The seats are placed on either side of the stage which creates some awkwardness (backs to the audience, darling) but promotes the idea of division; a Parliament of opposites.
Which is the theme of Howard Brenton's marvellous new play set at the tail-end of the English Civil War when battle fatigue could have tipped the country back into the kind of tyranny it had spent years trying to escape.
The 55 days of the title is the time (1648-49) between the rampant Army purging parliament of latent royalists and the moment when this most bloody chapter of English history was brought to a close with an axe.
"We are not just trying a tyrant, we are inventing a country," declares Oliver Cromwell.
And the sticky business of nation-building - of compromise and idealism - is the theme that excites the playwright.
The Roundheads are winning the war but likely to lose the peace as, yet again, brother is set against brother over the meaning of victory and the interpretation of God's will.
Amid the chaos, however, two characters (then as now) take centre stage and both are embodied by actors equal to the challenge.
King Charles I is prissy and self-righteous, the only one dressed in historical garb - with the familiar lace and flounces - and with a lilt of Scottish to his precise voice as he calls upon his position as heaven's sacred anointed to scare the bejesus out of his God-fearing opponents.
Mark Gatiss is clever in the court scenes and intriguing in isolation with the poignancy driven solely by his predicament and never from his glassy heart.
Douglas Henshall as Oliver Cromwell is the charismatic and flawed pivot of the piece.
Cromwell had no official leadership position but provided the moral heft and Henshall shows us the dithering and the decisiveness in a mesmerising and nuanced performance.
What Brenton calls the "obligation" scene - the fictional meeting of the two men - is as nourishing and accomplished as the long build-up demands with Cromwell urging Charles to see sense and "come to terms" and the king preparing serenely and doggedly for martyrdom.
The scene is topped by the trial where the brightest legal minds make law on the hoof to counter the king's mix of canny insight, blind intransigence and unexpected populism.
Director Howard Davies stages all this amid flanks of filing cabinets, with tiny ties and tinny typewriters conjuring the thin gruel of post-war squabbling.
Simon Kunz, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Daniel Flynn and Gerald Kyd provide solid support in a rewarding work; a reminder that the institutions we take for granted were carved, with blood and blister, from stubborn stone.
Until Nov 24. Go to hampsteadtheatre.com.
Film review: Skyfall (12A)
FILM
Skyfall
(12A) 142mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Fifty years on and still no-one does it better - and this Bond spectacular ranks among his finest, and most personal, adventures
REVIEW
The 50th anniversary of this most rewarding of franchises demands a suitably sharp and explosive response.
Skyfall is just such a response. Director Sam Mendes has created a gritty and personal story which has a fair smattering of exotic locations (Shanghai is de rigueur for a blockbuster these days) but is mostly set close to home. Very close to home.
Play Bond bingo with the recognisable locations including, obviously, the District line and, less obviously, the swimming pool above the Four Seasons in Canary Wharf. (Less obviously because its been transposed to China.)
But the geographical location is nothing compared to the proximity of the plot to the heart of the protagonist (simmering Daniel Craig).
The past returns to haunt melancholic M (a peerless Judi Dench) and Bond must track down and destroy the threat before the threat gets there first.
The fact that the threat comes in the form of bitter blond bombshell Silva ups the ante for he is one of the cleverest, slimiest, creepiest villains of the canon, with Javier Bardem licking his lips as he gets to create a camp horror straight from Gotham City.
As Bond and M fight a rearguard action against this most formidable of foes (they resort to Home Alone/A Team style make-do-and-mend which is always fun if not spectacular) the snarky but affectionate relationship between the matriarch and the bad boy is filled out in sparse and wry exchanges.
All this happens between gloriously OTT action set pieces, captured by imperious director of photography Roger Deakin who shoots acts of destruction like works of art.
"What's going on! Report!" says the glacial M listening in from HQ.
"It's rather hard to explain ma'am," says Bond's sidekick.
And so it is with this Bond which is packed with talking points and plot twists that, by next week, will have set Twitter alight but until then remain under embargo.
Suffice it to say we get to meet new characters, Eve (Naomie Harris), Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) - remember those names - as well as the new beetle-browed Q (Ben Wishaw) who gives Bond nothing more fancy than a gun and a radio.
"Not exactly Christmas," snarls Bond.
"Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that any more."
And so it goes. Ribbing the formula. Destroying the formula. Embracing the formula. Renewing the formula.
Throughout there are hat-tips to Bonds past, beautifully and lightly done - the DB5! - but nothing gets in the way of the muscle-crunching action that culminates in a fittingly intimate finale hurling us straight into the next 50 years.
Can't wait.
Skyfall
(12A) 142mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Fifty years on and still no-one does it better - and this Bond spectacular ranks among his finest, and most personal, adventures
REVIEW
The 50th anniversary of this most rewarding of franchises demands a suitably sharp and explosive response.
Skyfall is just such a response. Director Sam Mendes has created a gritty and personal story which has a fair smattering of exotic locations (Shanghai is de rigueur for a blockbuster these days) but is mostly set close to home. Very close to home.
Play Bond bingo with the recognisable locations including, obviously, the District line and, less obviously, the swimming pool above the Four Seasons in Canary Wharf. (Less obviously because its been transposed to China.)
But the geographical location is nothing compared to the proximity of the plot to the heart of the protagonist (simmering Daniel Craig).
The past returns to haunt melancholic M (a peerless Judi Dench) and Bond must track down and destroy the threat before the threat gets there first.
The fact that the threat comes in the form of bitter blond bombshell Silva ups the ante for he is one of the cleverest, slimiest, creepiest villains of the canon, with Javier Bardem licking his lips as he gets to create a camp horror straight from Gotham City.
As Bond and M fight a rearguard action against this most formidable of foes (they resort to Home Alone/A Team style make-do-and-mend which is always fun if not spectacular) the snarky but affectionate relationship between the matriarch and the bad boy is filled out in sparse and wry exchanges.
All this happens between gloriously OTT action set pieces, captured by imperious director of photography Roger Deakin who shoots acts of destruction like works of art.
"What's going on! Report!" says the glacial M listening in from HQ.
"It's rather hard to explain ma'am," says Bond's sidekick.
And so it is with this Bond which is packed with talking points and plot twists that, by next week, will have set Twitter alight but until then remain under embargo.
Suffice it to say we get to meet new characters, Eve (Naomie Harris), Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) - remember those names - as well as the new beetle-browed Q (Ben Wishaw) who gives Bond nothing more fancy than a gun and a radio.
"Not exactly Christmas," snarls Bond.
"Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that any more."
And so it goes. Ribbing the formula. Destroying the formula. Embracing the formula. Renewing the formula.
Throughout there are hat-tips to Bonds past, beautifully and lightly done - the DB5! - but nothing gets in the way of the muscle-crunching action that culminates in a fittingly intimate finale hurling us straight into the next 50 years.
Can't wait.
Stage review: You Can Still Make A Killing
STAGE
You Can Still Make A Killing
Southwark Playhouse
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Nicholas Pierpan's morality tale watches the Masters of the Universe struggle to move on with their feet of clay following the Lehman Bros collapse.
REVIEW
Remember the man who walked out of Lehman Brothers bearing a box and a shell-shocked expression? This is his story. Sort of.
This is the story of all of them - what happened following those end-of-days in 2008: who won, who lost and the price they paid, in terms of kudos, yoga mats, lattes and souls.
Writer Nicholas Pierpan puts a human face to the Masters of the Universe, takes them home and makes them sheepishly explain their actions to their peevish wives.
He rips away the Gieves and Hawkes carapace and prods away at the raw nerves beneath seeing what stuff these men are made of, stripped of their expense accounts and their vacuous locker room brinkmanship.
Edward and Jack are old friends. Fidgety Jack (Ben Lee) was busy being a surgeon but was lured to the hothouses of Canary Wharf by posturing, pompous Edward, a chip-on-his-shoulder Croydon boy.
But the survival of the fittest demands swift acrobatic moral re-positioning.
So while Jack flourishes in his hard-bitten hedge fund, ousted Edward (Tim Delap) spitballs with prospects in Starbucks, sells the dream house and finally, at wit's end, joins the FRA (the fictitious FSA) where he plots his revenge against the System.
Their wives ride the same rollercoaster. Shrill Fen (Kellie Bright) abandons dreams of a third child and moves out to Acton, which might as well be Soweto until it becomes Nirvana; while sinuous Linda (Marianne Oldham) sucks up to the yummy mummies she hates. All want to conform, all want to be different.
Their fortunes change in ways that would reveal too much. (It is soapy fare, to be honest, with bombshells and declamations that don't ring true but move the plot along.)
All are despicable and honourable; all are false and honest. In short, they're human, simply reacting, shifting, settling and justifying.
Director Matthew Dunster fills the wide stage with lacquered desks and swivel chairs that become offices and coffee shops and schools while a uniformly robust cast offers plenty of treats and talent. (William Mannering as FRA foot soldier Chris nearly steals the show armed only with a bag of nuts.)
When the story of how art responded to the financial meltdown comes to be written, this smart play may only make a footnote but it does attempt a more ambitious reach than some of the more simplistic dialectic tracts.
Future versions will be shorter. Two hours 40 minutes doesn't suggest the fast-snap of a City on heat.
Instead it is a muffin-topped morality tale intent on capturing what happens when a combatant quits the trenches and is forced into no-man's-land.
- Until November 3, southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
You Can Still Make A Killing
Southwark Playhouse
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Nicholas Pierpan's morality tale watches the Masters of the Universe struggle to move on with their feet of clay following the Lehman Bros collapse.
REVIEW
Remember the man who walked out of Lehman Brothers bearing a box and a shell-shocked expression? This is his story. Sort of.
This is the story of all of them - what happened following those end-of-days in 2008: who won, who lost and the price they paid, in terms of kudos, yoga mats, lattes and souls.
Writer Nicholas Pierpan puts a human face to the Masters of the Universe, takes them home and makes them sheepishly explain their actions to their peevish wives.
He rips away the Gieves and Hawkes carapace and prods away at the raw nerves beneath seeing what stuff these men are made of, stripped of their expense accounts and their vacuous locker room brinkmanship.
Edward and Jack are old friends. Fidgety Jack (Ben Lee) was busy being a surgeon but was lured to the hothouses of Canary Wharf by posturing, pompous Edward, a chip-on-his-shoulder Croydon boy.
But the survival of the fittest demands swift acrobatic moral re-positioning.
So while Jack flourishes in his hard-bitten hedge fund, ousted Edward (Tim Delap) spitballs with prospects in Starbucks, sells the dream house and finally, at wit's end, joins the FRA (the fictitious FSA) where he plots his revenge against the System.
Their wives ride the same rollercoaster. Shrill Fen (Kellie Bright) abandons dreams of a third child and moves out to Acton, which might as well be Soweto until it becomes Nirvana; while sinuous Linda (Marianne Oldham) sucks up to the yummy mummies she hates. All want to conform, all want to be different.
Their fortunes change in ways that would reveal too much. (It is soapy fare, to be honest, with bombshells and declamations that don't ring true but move the plot along.)
All are despicable and honourable; all are false and honest. In short, they're human, simply reacting, shifting, settling and justifying.
Director Matthew Dunster fills the wide stage with lacquered desks and swivel chairs that become offices and coffee shops and schools while a uniformly robust cast offers plenty of treats and talent. (William Mannering as FRA foot soldier Chris nearly steals the show armed only with a bag of nuts.)
When the story of how art responded to the financial meltdown comes to be written, this smart play may only make a footnote but it does attempt a more ambitious reach than some of the more simplistic dialectic tracts.
Future versions will be shorter. Two hours 40 minutes doesn't suggest the fast-snap of a City on heat.
Instead it is a muffin-topped morality tale intent on capturing what happens when a combatant quits the trenches and is forced into no-man's-land.
- Until November 3, southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Stage review: A Chorus Of Disapproval
STAGE
A Chorus Of Disapproval
Harold Pinter Theatre
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
More tautness and and vigour is needed, but this Trevor Nunn production is still a clever study of provincial lifes, loves and obsessions.
REVIEW
If Rob Brydon were to bring his immense but particular talents to a dramatic role in the West End then the part of put-upon am-dram director Dafydd Ap Llewellyn would be the velvet slippers of his dreams.
The hangdog Welshman of TV fame plays the hangdog Welshman of Alan Ayckbourn's clever-clever suburban farce with brio and eagerness.
Dressed in baggy cords, droopy cardigan and dismayed jowls, Brydon is outstanding in what is, generally, an underpowered version of the revival by the normally meticulous Trevor Nunn.
The scene is set - the light operatic society under the jackboot of the Welsh dragon - is bringing to life The Beggar's Opera, which, amid its tarts and rogues, is centred on a love triangle.
In the twee provincial society, straight from a Mike Leigh 1980s playbook, one love triangle is already in place and another is about to emerge with the arrival of Nigel Harman, who goes from flat-haired dweeb to cock of the walk as he hoovers up the desperate housewives.
The stage is crammed with stereotypes - emotional teens, vampish mares, dodgy dealers - but the set pieces are frequently lost in the fussiness of conveyor belt stage management.
Sometimes - such as in the pub scene - it's difficult to hear (the man behind me repeated the punchlines to his partner) which doesn't play to the strengths of a charming but pallid Ashley Jensen, who, in Extras, did nuanced pragmatism beautifully.
Essentially this is as silly as Noises Off but here the frivolity appears laboured and freighted with needless significance.
A missed opportunity for a starry cast straining at the comic leash.
Until January 5, agttickets.com
A Chorus Of Disapproval
Harold Pinter Theatre
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
More tautness and and vigour is needed, but this Trevor Nunn production is still a clever study of provincial lifes, loves and obsessions.
REVIEW
If Rob Brydon were to bring his immense but particular talents to a dramatic role in the West End then the part of put-upon am-dram director Dafydd Ap Llewellyn would be the velvet slippers of his dreams.
The hangdog Welshman of TV fame plays the hangdog Welshman of Alan Ayckbourn's clever-clever suburban farce with brio and eagerness.
Dressed in baggy cords, droopy cardigan and dismayed jowls, Brydon is outstanding in what is, generally, an underpowered version of the revival by the normally meticulous Trevor Nunn.
The scene is set - the light operatic society under the jackboot of the Welsh dragon - is bringing to life The Beggar's Opera, which, amid its tarts and rogues, is centred on a love triangle.
In the twee provincial society, straight from a Mike Leigh 1980s playbook, one love triangle is already in place and another is about to emerge with the arrival of Nigel Harman, who goes from flat-haired dweeb to cock of the walk as he hoovers up the desperate housewives.
The stage is crammed with stereotypes - emotional teens, vampish mares, dodgy dealers - but the set pieces are frequently lost in the fussiness of conveyor belt stage management.
Sometimes - such as in the pub scene - it's difficult to hear (the man behind me repeated the punchlines to his partner) which doesn't play to the strengths of a charming but pallid Ashley Jensen, who, in Extras, did nuanced pragmatism beautifully.
Essentially this is as silly as Noises Off but here the frivolity appears laboured and freighted with needless significance.
A missed opportunity for a starry cast straining at the comic leash.
Until January 5, agttickets.com
TV: Mental torture porn
Who watches this stuff? Seriously. I was about 10 minutes into Homefront - nothing else on is the excuse - and what have we got? A young wife with a bawling bairn and a hubbie in Helmand gets a visit from a beret-clad doom merchant.
Next thing, just after she tried to push him and the bad news from the room - they're marching a flag-draped coffin out the back of a Hercules at Brize Norton.
She's a melting wreck and I'm thinking - why put us through the wringer? We could flip over and watch the news. We have to do that, it's an obligation, it's the least we can do considering. But this...
It's like children's hospital dramas. Little Lucy Dawson hovers between life and death as nature's cruel hand slaps her frequently around her bloodless face for a laugh. Why would anyone... I mean, why...
And if that's not enough - get the real thing straight from the bedside. Watch authentic pain. Weep real tears as the genuine Lucy Dawson is watched over by parents too despairing to care that they've got their own Facebook fan page.
Give me anodyne. Give me vanilla TV. Give me Terry And June over Terry And June: Conjoined And Condemned any day of the week and a repeat on Sunday.
giles.broadbent@wharf.co.uk
Next thing, just after she tried to push him and the bad news from the room - they're marching a flag-draped coffin out the back of a Hercules at Brize Norton.
She's a melting wreck and I'm thinking - why put us through the wringer? We could flip over and watch the news. We have to do that, it's an obligation, it's the least we can do considering. But this...
It's like children's hospital dramas. Little Lucy Dawson hovers between life and death as nature's cruel hand slaps her frequently around her bloodless face for a laugh. Why would anyone... I mean, why...
And if that's not enough - get the real thing straight from the bedside. Watch authentic pain. Weep real tears as the genuine Lucy Dawson is watched over by parents too despairing to care that they've got their own Facebook fan page.
Give me anodyne. Give me vanilla TV. Give me Terry And June over Terry And June: Conjoined And Condemned any day of the week and a repeat on Sunday.
giles.broadbent@wharf.co.uk
Film review: Looper (15)
FILM
Looper
(15) 118ms
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Confident writer-director Rian Johnson delivers some mind-bending twists in an ambitious tale of time-travelling gun slingers.
REVIEW
Looper doesn't just deliver one mind-bending action movie - it delivers about four. The fact that two of that number are Back To The Future and Terminator shouldn't irretrievably damage the IQ - for the other two are far more ambitious, complex and intelligent.
Like Inception (which also starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the premise is simple but the implications are extraordinary and require a switched-on, forward-facing audience.
The story - along with the stripped down, lo-fi 2044 that is the film's drab setting - come from the fernickety mind of writer-director Rian Johnson, who made a stylish impact with 2005's Brick, also starring Gordon-Levitt for whom he wrote the part of hitman Joe.
Gordon-Levitt's appearance jars at first - like Ed Miliband post-op - but the reason for the brutish physog becomes apparent when the older version of himself is dumped back in his time - it's Bruce Willis.
The head-scratching conceit is this: In the future, the Mob use illegal time-travelling technology to send their marks into the past.
There, hitmen, called loopers, take their lives and the silver strapped to their backs - and dispose of bodies that don't technically exist.
But the loopers are not forward-thinkers. In exchange for loot now, they will have to kill off their future selves at some point.
When Bruce Willis comes back for dispatch, the younger Joe loses his nerve and Willis flees, heading off on a cold-blooded killing spree of his own in order to save his future family.
In some kind of Oedipal nightmare, Young Jo has to destroy his older self because Mob boss Abe (Jeff Daniels), sent back in time to oversee this end of the operation, will ensure both incarnations are bumped off.
But Future Joe, in Terminator style, is on the trail of the kid who will grow up to be the Rainmaker, the fearsome uber-boss who triggers his death 30 years' hence.
Present Joe has sufficient clues to predict his targets and finds himself in the remote homestead of tough-but-vulnerable Emily Blunt where she tends to the needs of odd toddler Cid.
While the blank (indeed unpleasant) duo of Present and Future Joe lack any kind of sympathy or charisma, Blunt's Sara is the damaged soul who, finally, brings a welcome human dimension to the movie.
But Blunt doesn't take top acting honours. They go to wee Pierce Gagnon who manages to convey menace and enigma despite being cute as an psycho button.
This hard-but-brittle flick is a slow-starter (all that infernal exposition) and the downtime is too easily spent ticking off the derivative time-travelling tropes.
However, the spectacular (and genuinely shocking) final sequences make up for the shortage of early charm and tie up the cleverly twisting plotlines with panache.
The film is not always likeable but it is a solid two hours of truly mind-bending entertainment.
Looper
(15) 118ms
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Confident writer-director Rian Johnson delivers some mind-bending twists in an ambitious tale of time-travelling gun slingers.
REVIEW
Looper doesn't just deliver one mind-bending action movie - it delivers about four. The fact that two of that number are Back To The Future and Terminator shouldn't irretrievably damage the IQ - for the other two are far more ambitious, complex and intelligent.
Like Inception (which also starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the premise is simple but the implications are extraordinary and require a switched-on, forward-facing audience.
The story - along with the stripped down, lo-fi 2044 that is the film's drab setting - come from the fernickety mind of writer-director Rian Johnson, who made a stylish impact with 2005's Brick, also starring Gordon-Levitt for whom he wrote the part of hitman Joe.
Gordon-Levitt's appearance jars at first - like Ed Miliband post-op - but the reason for the brutish physog becomes apparent when the older version of himself is dumped back in his time - it's Bruce Willis.
The head-scratching conceit is this: In the future, the Mob use illegal time-travelling technology to send their marks into the past.
There, hitmen, called loopers, take their lives and the silver strapped to their backs - and dispose of bodies that don't technically exist.
But the loopers are not forward-thinkers. In exchange for loot now, they will have to kill off their future selves at some point.
When Bruce Willis comes back for dispatch, the younger Joe loses his nerve and Willis flees, heading off on a cold-blooded killing spree of his own in order to save his future family.
In some kind of Oedipal nightmare, Young Jo has to destroy his older self because Mob boss Abe (Jeff Daniels), sent back in time to oversee this end of the operation, will ensure both incarnations are bumped off.
But Future Joe, in Terminator style, is on the trail of the kid who will grow up to be the Rainmaker, the fearsome uber-boss who triggers his death 30 years' hence.
Present Joe has sufficient clues to predict his targets and finds himself in the remote homestead of tough-but-vulnerable Emily Blunt where she tends to the needs of odd toddler Cid.
While the blank (indeed unpleasant) duo of Present and Future Joe lack any kind of sympathy or charisma, Blunt's Sara is the damaged soul who, finally, brings a welcome human dimension to the movie.
But Blunt doesn't take top acting honours. They go to wee Pierce Gagnon who manages to convey menace and enigma despite being cute as an psycho button.
This hard-but-brittle flick is a slow-starter (all that infernal exposition) and the downtime is too easily spent ticking off the derivative time-travelling tropes.
However, the spectacular (and genuinely shocking) final sequences make up for the shortage of early charm and tie up the cleverly twisting plotlines with panache.
The film is not always likeable but it is a solid two hours of truly mind-bending entertainment.
Purpose of the cable car is crystal clear
An advert now labels the cable car a legacy item. "Thanks to the Games," it reads, "you can now fly across the Thames and see London in a whole new light." This is part of a series of adverts branded "Gift of the Games."
Now, one could quibble, if one were so minded, over the direct correlation of the Emirates Air Line and the Olympic Games.
Obviously, traffic escalated over those summer weeks, although I suspect this was due to people killing time between events at Excel and The O2 rather than travelling between the two.
Besides, the Emirates Air Line was never touted as a piece of Games infrastructure and, through pricing and ticketing (and very nearly through its late launch) was excluded from routine travel plans.
However, my quibbling is muted. If someone wants to give the cable car an Olympic sheen I'm not going to get too vexed.
But, the truth is, the cable car never really made sense as an adjunct to the Olympics. However, it makes perfect sense as an adjunct to the Crystal.
Shamefully late for a resident of the area, I took my debut flight last week. Mostly because I got free tickets as part of the hoopla that surrounded the opening of the greenest building in the world, dedicated to innovative thinking about urbanisation.
Taking to the air, after a short walk from that squat, pointy building (the East Angular?), the Air Line made sense in a way it never did before.
From around the world, city mayors, digital thinkers and futurologists will convene at Siemens campus. The cable car (although disappointingly analogue) is a perfect mood music for their deliberations - dramatic, innovative, sexy, leftfield and a tiny bit bonkers. (Plus it opens up the lunching options for delegates.)
I should add that the journey over the Thames is London's latest must-do experience.
From a certain vantage point, with perspective foreshortened, when the loop of the river turns the Greenwich peninsula into an island and when the Royal Docks and river make a drowned archipelago of Silvertown, the notion of a Water City is as obvious as it is breathtaking.
PS The Crystal is reminiscent of the Millennium Dome - snazzy exterior but a purpose that is not entirely clear to the average passer-by. Fortunately, we're not picking up the bill for this one.
giles.broadbent@wharf.co.uk
Now, one could quibble, if one were so minded, over the direct correlation of the Emirates Air Line and the Olympic Games.
Obviously, traffic escalated over those summer weeks, although I suspect this was due to people killing time between events at Excel and The O2 rather than travelling between the two.
Besides, the Emirates Air Line was never touted as a piece of Games infrastructure and, through pricing and ticketing (and very nearly through its late launch) was excluded from routine travel plans.
However, my quibbling is muted. If someone wants to give the cable car an Olympic sheen I'm not going to get too vexed.
But, the truth is, the cable car never really made sense as an adjunct to the Olympics. However, it makes perfect sense as an adjunct to the Crystal.
Shamefully late for a resident of the area, I took my debut flight last week. Mostly because I got free tickets as part of the hoopla that surrounded the opening of the greenest building in the world, dedicated to innovative thinking about urbanisation.
Taking to the air, after a short walk from that squat, pointy building (the East Angular?), the Air Line made sense in a way it never did before.
From around the world, city mayors, digital thinkers and futurologists will convene at Siemens campus. The cable car (although disappointingly analogue) is a perfect mood music for their deliberations - dramatic, innovative, sexy, leftfield and a tiny bit bonkers. (Plus it opens up the lunching options for delegates.)
I should add that the journey over the Thames is London's latest must-do experience.
From a certain vantage point, with perspective foreshortened, when the loop of the river turns the Greenwich peninsula into an island and when the Royal Docks and river make a drowned archipelago of Silvertown, the notion of a Water City is as obvious as it is breathtaking.
PS The Crystal is reminiscent of the Millennium Dome - snazzy exterior but a purpose that is not entirely clear to the average passer-by. Fortunately, we're not picking up the bill for this one.
giles.broadbent@wharf.co.uk
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Let's see this through to the end
"Hour forty five straight through." There it is again, the glorious prospect of a theatre production without interval.
Conventionally, there's an artistic reason - such as a compelling narrative - that persuades management to pass up a plump drinks tab.
But Love And Information by Caryl Churchill is perfect for multiple divisions. The production is all bite-sized chunks, one-set mini-fragments that could be stopped any time for a pinot and a puff.
Maybe it's Churchill - she has the clout to call crunch time on the Pringles. Either way, to the rest of us it's a blessing.
The cursed faff of disassembling the quantum packing of the seat set-up, the stand-up-sit-down bob-o-rama, the buffeting queues at bars and the tyranny of the toilet question.
We do it in the cinema, two hours without the need for a stretch, so why in theatres? Especially in the Royal Court which has the plushest seats in theatre-land.
The biggest challenge for theatres is the suspension of disbelief - why hobble the fantasy with an obtuse anachronism from the era of The Potter's Wheel.
giles.broadbent@wharf.co.uk
Conventionally, there's an artistic reason - such as a compelling narrative - that persuades management to pass up a plump drinks tab.
But Love And Information by Caryl Churchill is perfect for multiple divisions. The production is all bite-sized chunks, one-set mini-fragments that could be stopped any time for a pinot and a puff.
Maybe it's Churchill - she has the clout to call crunch time on the Pringles. Either way, to the rest of us it's a blessing.
The cursed faff of disassembling the quantum packing of the seat set-up, the stand-up-sit-down bob-o-rama, the buffeting queues at bars and the tyranny of the toilet question.
We do it in the cinema, two hours without the need for a stretch, so why in theatres? Especially in the Royal Court which has the plushest seats in theatre-land.
The biggest challenge for theatres is the suspension of disbelief - why hobble the fantasy with an obtuse anachronism from the era of The Potter's Wheel.
giles.broadbent@wharf.co.uk
Film review: Killing Them Softly (18)
FILM
Killing Them Softly
(18) 97mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Andrew Dominik's impressively slow-burn tale of Mob retribution gives room and rope for the sleazeball characters to go hang themselves.
REVIEW
It's 2008. US election time. Barack Obama is preaching hope and George Bush is throwing money at the banks to keep the economy, and the American dream, alive.
Far from this slick, high falutin' phrase making, a pair of scuzzy, bumbling Keystone crooks figure they're on to a sure thing, taking down a Mob game because they know Markie (Ray Liotta), who did the same thing a while back, will take the heat.
This is capitalism, red in tooth and claw, says director Andrew Dominik. You have a buck, I take a buck off you.
Where's the honest deal, he asks. In a credit default swap, or down in Louisiana where the truth is brutal and comes with a beatin'. Who are the real crooks? Greedy Goldman Sachs or Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) and Frankie (Scoot McNairy), the artless, sweaty hoodlums poking the hornet's nest for an easy dime.
Chief hornet is Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt playing sleazy chic) who has to sort out this mess and restore order.
He calls on Mickey (James Gandolfini) to give him a hand. But Mickey is a sozzled mess, facing jail, a divorce and a glass that empties too quickly and fills too slow.
We know this because Mickey tells us. This is a talkie. There is violence, slayings - uncompromising, poetically shot grubby headshots - but the director (who took us into deadbeat minds in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford) is more interested in the hopes and fears of pitiable sleazeballs trying to make a dishonest day's living so they can get the hell out.
Jackie doesn't like the touchy-feely stuff. He prefers "killing them softly, from a distance" but he still gets dragged in, taking Mickey's miserable, martini-sodden confession and giving Frankie some options.
Elmore Leonard's in there, in spirit, with the rhythmic street slang and the code of machismo. Tarantino too, but if you put two crims in a car tossing dialogue to and fro ahead of a job, Tarantino is inevitable.
And don't forget Guy Ritchie for the arch, stylised direction although Lock, Stock is gloss and varnish compared to this rain-beaten, noirish dinge-fest. Says 2008 on the pack, yes, but the browns and oranges and rusty GTOs suggest the '70s, home of the source material - George V Higgins' pulpy Cogan's Trade.
Dominik does a great job for a film with little plot. He builds character, tension and is happy to let the screen shift to slow-burn to give the druggies time to find their high.
The script is crackling: brimful of one-liners and mordant, slapstick wit, and the cast show they know how to give their blunt-toothed schmucks heart, or at least, purpose.
But, in the end, this is just business pal. Nothin' personal.
Killing Them Softly
(18) 97mins
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Andrew Dominik's impressively slow-burn tale of Mob retribution gives room and rope for the sleazeball characters to go hang themselves.
REVIEW
It's 2008. US election time. Barack Obama is preaching hope and George Bush is throwing money at the banks to keep the economy, and the American dream, alive.
Far from this slick, high falutin' phrase making, a pair of scuzzy, bumbling Keystone crooks figure they're on to a sure thing, taking down a Mob game because they know Markie (Ray Liotta), who did the same thing a while back, will take the heat.
This is capitalism, red in tooth and claw, says director Andrew Dominik. You have a buck, I take a buck off you.
Where's the honest deal, he asks. In a credit default swap, or down in Louisiana where the truth is brutal and comes with a beatin'. Who are the real crooks? Greedy Goldman Sachs or Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) and Frankie (Scoot McNairy), the artless, sweaty hoodlums poking the hornet's nest for an easy dime.
Chief hornet is Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt playing sleazy chic) who has to sort out this mess and restore order.
He calls on Mickey (James Gandolfini) to give him a hand. But Mickey is a sozzled mess, facing jail, a divorce and a glass that empties too quickly and fills too slow.
We know this because Mickey tells us. This is a talkie. There is violence, slayings - uncompromising, poetically shot grubby headshots - but the director (who took us into deadbeat minds in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford) is more interested in the hopes and fears of pitiable sleazeballs trying to make a dishonest day's living so they can get the hell out.
Jackie doesn't like the touchy-feely stuff. He prefers "killing them softly, from a distance" but he still gets dragged in, taking Mickey's miserable, martini-sodden confession and giving Frankie some options.
Elmore Leonard's in there, in spirit, with the rhythmic street slang and the code of machismo. Tarantino too, but if you put two crims in a car tossing dialogue to and fro ahead of a job, Tarantino is inevitable.
And don't forget Guy Ritchie for the arch, stylised direction although Lock, Stock is gloss and varnish compared to this rain-beaten, noirish dinge-fest. Says 2008 on the pack, yes, but the browns and oranges and rusty GTOs suggest the '70s, home of the source material - George V Higgins' pulpy Cogan's Trade.
Dominik does a great job for a film with little plot. He builds character, tension and is happy to let the screen shift to slow-burn to give the druggies time to find their high.
The script is crackling: brimful of one-liners and mordant, slapstick wit, and the cast show they know how to give their blunt-toothed schmucks heart, or at least, purpose.
But, in the end, this is just business pal. Nothin' personal.
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