Friday 17 November 2017

Justice League (2017)

I've been a fan of the Justice League (originally of America) comic books since my age was in single figures, so even if I had concerns about the big screen version, I felt I owed it to my 9-year old self to see it as close to release as possible.

I think my 9-year old self would have enjoyed parts, laughed a few times, and found large chunks of it to be boring. Because my tastes at 9 still rattle about in my skull today.

Justice League is all over the map as a film, both tonally and in terms of its storytelling. At one point it turns into the prologue to the Lord of the Rings movies, while at another it seems to be aiming for the dizzy heights of Avengers 2.

I laughed a few times, but when everyone is a comedian, it throws the balance of the movie off. There's little weight to anything you see on screen.

Characters are ill-defined. It's really the Batman and Wonder Woman Show with a little bit of the Flash thrown in for good measure, but they're not well-served by the film. Aquaman can't make up his mind if he's depressed or a happy-go-lucky guy having the time of his fishy life, and Cyborg is about as bland as the computer that he might be turning into.

Some people thought Joss Whedon replacing Zach Snyder would be the saviour of the film. He wasn't, he's just a guy telling jokes at a funeral.

I didn't hate it though. There was enough to keep me mildly entertained for the most part while I was watching it, but it's not a good film, and the more I think about it, the more I realise how not good it is.

Marvel with its films for the most part manages to succeed because it is interested in the individual film first and the shared-universe building almost as an afterthought - and when the universe connects, it mostly feels like it has earned it. The DC movies, post-Man of Steel (and with the omission of Wonder Woman) still seem to be trying this in reverse.

There's loads more that I could complain about - the unspecial effects, the climactic battle, which feels like every other DC universe climactic battle (including Wonder Woman's - the biggest misstep in that film, for my money), but I think I've moaned enough).

At least I'll always have the Justice League animated series.

Thursday 16 November 2017

The Florida Project (2017)

The Florida Project is the story of a mother and daughter living in a hotel in Florida that's on the wrong-side of the tracks from Disneyworld, and it's a very well crafted film.

The title is a reference to the original name for Walt Disney's plan that would (in watered-down form bcome Disneyland), but it also evokes the US's housing projects, which is effectively what the featured hotels of the film have become.

At times it's a very amusing film. The part-improvised dialogue has a definite sense of verisimilitude while also being laugh-out-loud funny.

The film also manages an impressive balancing acts with the characters. Although they are faced with a tough life, their response to their circumstances is often far from exemplary, which makes for an entertaining watch, although you probably wouldn't want any of the characters as next-door neighbours. Even so, your sympathies for the most part still reside with them. Much of that is due to the amazing performances of the actors inhabiting those roles.

The photography of the film is also impressive. Generally it's shot at the level of the children, so there are lots of frames with large amounts of sky. Curiously, this seems to better evoke a feeling of America for me than I imagine shooting at the adult level would have (probably because when I've been to the US, I've probably spent more time looking skyward than at my feet). There's a vibrant, sun-soaked feel to film, which again lends that sense of actuality to it.

If The Florida Project doesn't bag an Oscar or two come awards season, I'll be very surprised.


Tuesday 14 November 2017

Paddington 2

My introduction to Paddington as a child was through the 5 minute short animations that were shown on BBC-1 in the 1970s (and repeated ever since). From then I moved onto the books from which the television series had been adapted (by Michael Bond himself), which were familiar from my knowledge of these truncated adaptations, but so much more satisfying.

When the first Paddington film was released, I thought it would be another horrible film version that completely fails to understand the property it is turning into a popcorn sales-generating machine - but surprisingly not only was the film a decent piece of entertainment, but it was true to the spirit of the small bear with the hard stare,

Of course Paddington 2 as a sequel would likely Ghostbuster 2 the original (yes, that is an verb now).

Except it didn't. Paddington 2 is at least every bit as entertaining as the original (if not more so). Usually when I go to see family films at the cinema, I'm the only adult sans children, but this time I was not the sole single adult in the cinema (and there were some adult couples too).

The humour in Paddington works for the multiple generations - there are jokes that are aimed for the adult audience, but it's because of their sophistication, not because they are the pop culture plundering jokes that Dreamworks animations like to employ.

The story is well-told and is again in keeping with the Michael Bond books, although obviously expanded for a big screen adventure, rather than the chapter approach his books take. The overall tone is appropriately light, although there are some moments of genuine peril for the bear. There are also some moments that only the flintiest heart would fail to be moved by.

Furthermore, the morality of Paddington is a welcome thing in a world where heroes are being (rightly) knocked off their pedestals left, right and centre. Paddington's small acts of thoughtful kindness are something that everyone should be aspiring to. It's a shame though that the one hero you can always count on is a fictional, (very-well) animated bear.

Monday 13 November 2017

Hidden London: Down Street

The tour of Down Street Station began at the Atheneum Hotel on Piccadilly. Overlooking the north side of Green Park, it is located midway between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park Underground stations, being about a five minute walk from either.

Down Street itself runs north from Piccadilly, with the Atheneum on its southeast corner. Opposite the side entrance to the hotel is the ox-blood-tiled facade of what used to be Down Street Station.

The entrance hall to the station has now been replaced by the Mayfair Mini Mart, and the entrance to Down Street Mews to the right of the mini mart. Only the left hand entry way is still used by London Transport as the disused station serves as an emergency exit from the Piccadilly Line.


Down Street Station didn't have much of a chance at life. Its Leslie Green-designed entrance was built in a side street rather than on Piccadilly in an area where the inhabitants were unlikely to use the Underground as they would have considered it beneath them (both literally and figuratively).

The upgrading of Hyde Park Corner and Green Park also saw their entrances being moved closer together, further negating the need for Down Street. In 1932 it closed, never to reopen as a working station.





The station platforms are accessed via a spiral staircase encircling a now-defunct lift shaft. The lift only held two people at most and was installed after the station was closed as a result of its war-time use. The original passenger lifts no longer exist.




Although much of the fabric of the station dates back to the Second World War, or earlier, the stairs are much newer, having been replaced in response to the King's Cross Fire of 1987.


In 1939 the station came back into use when it was decided that the main telephone exchange for the Railway Executive Committee should be relocated to a more secure location. Down Street became the secure wartime headquarters of the REC in response.





The committee room


The markings on the floor show where the table in the previous picture stood.
The station was outfitted with meeting rooms, offices, dining facilities, washrooms, lavatories, dormitories and the aforementioned telephone exchange.

The evidence of these facilities still remains in the station with the partition walls and some remnants of the fittings - although sometimes this is no more than a mark on the wall.
















The telephone exchange in service. The trunking in the centre of the picture connected the main exchange board with the operators' desk. 

Remains of the main exchange board.




Remains of the trunking

Staff were expected to live and sleep in Down Street to avoid attracting attention to the site, although there were also some recreational facilities and executive flats above ground.

As the Piccadilly Line still ran through the station, it was possible for the railway executives to travel to and from their secret headquarters by train. They would signal the driver to stop with a red signal at the end of a truncated platform, and would board in secret via the driver's cab, leaving the train's passengers none the wiser.


The lights of Down Street can still be seen by passengers on the Piccadilly Line.
 As well as housing the REC, Down Street also acted as a temporary home for Winston Churchill while strengthening work was undertaken on the Cabinet War Rooms. Churchill slept in the office of Gerald Cole Deacon, the Railways Companies' Association Secretary.

After his time staying at Down Street, Churchill requested that quarters be built at the station for his own personal use. Construction was completed in 1941, but it does not appear that Churchill ever returned to stay at Down Street.


The steps on the right-side of the picture had been removed to allow pipes to run along the corridor as part of the work adapting the station for Churchill's use.

A cubby hole created within the walls, possibly to house a secure telephone line for Churchill.


Corridor providing ventilation to the tunnels


Disused passenger lift shaft, now used as a ventilation shaft



Tiles next to the disused lift shaft



Throughout the war, the management of the railways was coordinated from the offices at Down Street. After the REC left the site at the end of 1947, the station returned to its pre-war use, providing ventilation to the Piccadilly Line, which it still does to this day.















Friday 10 November 2017

Clapham South Deep-Level Shelter


My second Hidden London Tour (I wrote about the first here) was to Clapham Deep-Level Shelter.

The tour met outside Clapham South Station. Across the road from the entrance to the station at the southeast corner of Clapham Common is a pillbox structure that served a one of the entrances to the shelter.


The entrance the tour used is slightly further south of the station on Ballham Hill. From the outside, it's undetectable as it's been integrated with the surrounding buildings.

There are 180 steps down to the shelter (as we were told repeatedly). The journey down was fairly easy, but I can't say I was looking forward to the return to the surface.



The bottom of the stairs led out into a corridor, which was not all that dissimilar to some of the passageways between platforms in Underground Stations, although the signs on the walls gave an obvious indication of its World War II use.



From the slightly underwhelming entrance corridor, the tour moved on to the shelters themselves. These were all named after historical Admirals.

The shelters began construction in 1940 in response to the Blitz, although were only completed after it had finished. They were available though when the V1 attacks on London began in 1944.

At the time, the shelters were constructed with the intention of using them as the starting point of an express line that would run beneath the existing Northern and Central Lines. Shelters were completed at Chancery Lane (Central Line) and at Belsize Park, Camden Town, Goodge Street, Stockwell, Clapham North and Clapham South (Northern Line). A proposed shelter at St Paul's was not built due to worries about undermining the Cathedral, and a shelter at Oval Station was not completed due to construction difficulties.

Rather than being built to accommodate Underground Trains, the shelters are actually full-scale railway tunnels. Two parallel tunnels were constructed - one for southbound trains, the other for northbound trains.

The tunnels were then divided into a top and bottom half and sectioned off to create the shelters. 





The capacity of the shelters was originally planned to accommodate 10,000 people at each location, although this would have been a bit of a squeeze. It was finally decided to reduce this number to 8,000. However, the shelters never reached full occupancy.

Access to the shelters was granted by ticket. For people bombed out of their homes, semi-permanent residency was granted. Those people would be able to store their own bedding in the shelters; everyone else would have to bring their own.







Places in the shelter were allocated according to a numbering system that can be seen on the bunks.




Air vent.



After the war, the shelter at Clapham South was used for a number of other purposes. In 1948 it was used to temporarily accommodate Jamaican  immigrants who had travelled to the UK on Empire Windrush.

Three years later in 1951, the shelter became the Festival Hotel for the Festival of Britain.



The shelter's constant temperature also made it suitable for archival storage, a purpose that it served for several years.


On the way back up to the street level, one of the guides pointed out a feature of the staircase that had not been so obvious on the way down. The shelter uses a double-spiral staircase with one of the staircases going to the top level of the tunnels, with the other going down to the bottom level.


Double-spiral staircase. While it might not be immediately obvious, the landing on the opposite side belongs to the other staircase.

And yes, the 160-step climb wasn't fun. I managed to be first to the top, but I couldn't talk for five minutes afterwards.

Hong Kong Railway Museum

For a little bit of context, I've been fascinated by trains for most of my life. I can't make any claim to being a true fanatic - my...