The American

Taking his cues equally from both classic European literature and Continental cinema, Anton Corbijn delivers his latest, The American, a film certain to divide audiences down the middle.

Our antihero Jack/Edward/Mr. Butterfly (George Clooney) fills almost every frame of film and it begins no differently. We’re introduced to him cold, with no background information apart from the two tattoos he sports on his arm (a military insignia reading: Ex Gladio Equitas) and his back (a butterfly), as he sits post-coitus with his swooning Swedish blonde. They decide to go for a walk. We know it will not end well.

Snipe Top 5: Gorgeous London clocks

Check out these five beautiful clocks which can be found in public places around London. Time waits for no man, but you can at least console yourself with some cool designs as you feel it slipping through your fingers.

Jubilee Clock, Harlesden
One of many clocks erected around the Empire in 1887/8 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The Harlesden clock seems dainty and vulnerable amid the busy road junction which has grown up around it. What was intended to be magnificent has become something rather cute. Other examples of Jubilee clocks from around the Empire here – some of them are absolutely hideous.






Moorfields Eye Hospital
Deeply cool. This clock is shaped like an eye, at an eye hospital. It’s so apt! Commissioned in 1999 to mark the Queen’s visit to the hospital, which goes to show that there are some good reasons for retaining the monarchy.






Waterloo Station
Already famous of course, but Snipe doesn’t compile these Top 5s to be contrary. This clock is included for all the times that people have stood below it, hopeful and nervous, waiting for their lover to return. A good contender for the the most romantic object in London. Amazing that Richard Curtis hasn’t ruined it yet by employing in the finale of a gushy rom-com.

St Dunstan-on-the-West Church
The first public clock in London to have a minute hand when it was put up in 1671. Two giants batter out the quarter hour bells with a couple of clubs. Great stuff. Loads of fascinating history here and here, including that the church escaped the Great Fire of London by the skin of its teeth and that Pepys was an occasional worshipper (see this Top 5 for more on that ubiquitous little chap).








Newgate Street Clock
This modern clock (erected (do you erect a clock? Don’t answer that) in 2007) has its own horribly designed website which declares, with less than total confidence: “Almost certainly the only public clock in the world with a wandering hour dial”. What the flip is a wandering hour dial? It’s a surprisingly lovely mechanism whereby the hour symbol rises and sets above the minutes like a sun. Hard to describe, strangely satisfying to apprehend.

Bonus Random Fact For Clockophiles
18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus had the idea for a floral clock made out of a garden of living flowers. He reasoned that it would be possible to tell the time depending on which flowers were open at a certain moment and which closed (details here). Isn’t that a cool idea? It didn’t work though, because it’s bonkers.

London agenda for Wednesday 20 October

London agenda for Wednesday 20 October
1. Glam/punk/art meets garage angularity with The Dogbones, Vile Imbeciles, and Kitty Junkbrother at Dublin Castle [London Gigs]
2. Kraut beat with Wolf People and Toehammer at the Lex [London Gigs]
3. See the gig of the year (electronica version) with God Don’t Like It: Drum Eyes / Nedry / Rocketnumber9 / Devilman / Becoming Real / Husband at Corsica Studios [Run Riot]
4. Classical music without rules at Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment:the Night Shift [Run Riot]
5. Relax in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden [Tired of London]

FaithSFX is the beatboxer in those Argos ads beating the memory of Bing Crosby with bags of oranges

That new Argos ad is creepy. It takes the Little Drummer Boy duet with David Bowie from the 1977 Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas, removes Bowie, and digitally manipulates Crosby into a modern beatboxer. It’s a revulsion of Fred Astair-dancing-with-a-hoover proportions.

But who is doing the virtual beatboxing? Step forward London’s FaithSFX.

Der Bingle and Bowie in better times

And that Argos ad:

Snipe Top 5: London bus routes for sightseeing on the cheap

It’s fun acting a tourist in your own city for the day, especially if that city happens to be London. But do you know how much it costs to get a sightseeing bus in this day and age? £20 at least, and that won’t leave you much change to buy any tacky souvenirs. Help, however, is at hand. Here are five regular bus routes which will give you a great day out for the cost of an updated Oyster card. Just avoid rush hour.

Number 11: Fulham Broadway -> Liverpool St
Love this bus. It starts (or ends, of course, if you’re that way inclined) in plushy Fulham, louches down the King’s Rd and preens through Sloane Square. Then it gets serious, marches through Westminster, past Big Ben and within curtseying distance of Buckingham Palace. Then Whitehall, the Strand, Fleet St, the Bank of England…it’s got it all, and more: it finishes up right next to the Shoreditch bars. Truly, this is the king of bus routes.

Number 100: Elephant & Castle -> Wapping
Research indicates (and there’s only so long Snipe is willing to spend on bus-spotters websites) that this may be an exclusively single decker route. Now, obviously for optimum sightseeing you would want to nab the seats upstairs at the front of a double decker, so you could put your feet up and pretend to drive. However, this route is still pretty cool. Get your hit of brutal urban planning in E&C, hit Blackfriars Bridge where you can check out the South Bank and Tate Modern, then slalom by St Pauls and down to the Tower of London before heading on a loop of underrated Wapping. Finish at this pub.

Number 53: Plumstead -> Westminster
Great parks to start down by Woolwich and Blackheath, and the option of stopping off for all the varied Greenwich treats. Then get a taste of what’s really going on in London at the moment in New Cross and up the Old Kent Rd. Push through Lambeth and across Westminster Bridge to finish in the more salubrious surroundings of Horse Guards Parade. Might not be the prettiest route, this one, but you’ll see many sides of the modern city.

Number 13: Golders Green -> Aldwych
Goes close enough by Hampstead Heath to justify a stop if it’s a pleasant day. If not, enjoy a plush entrance to central London through St John’s Wood and Lord’s cricket ground. After that it’s London sightseeing 101 as Baker St, Oxford St, Regent’s St and Picadilly Circus are gobbled up in quick succession. Well, depending on the traffic obviously. This is very much your basic sightseeing and shopping tour bus. Few frills, but it gets the job done.

Number 29: Wood Green -> Trafalgar Sq
Passing the Emirates is always cool, then head on into Camden where you can gawp at the freaks/marvel at the self-expression on show, and maybe hop off for a quick pint. Then on to Euston and the student areas, where you may choose to avail yourself of a swift drink. From there skirt along by Soho (where you could…etc) and Covent Garden (ditto). Finish in Trafalgar Square, and celebrate a hard day’s tourism in the customary fashion.

Commiserations to the 388, which would have made this list had it not made Snipe late for work loads of times last year. Now we’re even.

London agenda for Tuesday 19 October

London agenda for Tuesday 19 October
1. Sketch fetish performers at Life Drawing at the Book Club [Le Cool]
2. Experimental music at Galvanised [Run Riot]
3. Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood at the Working Man’s Club [Run Riot]
4. Tired of London, Tired of Life’s Second Birthday Party [Tired of London]

Indy to launch new, cheaper paper direct to landfill

After Alexander Lebedev and son Evgeny made a hit out of the Evening Standard by taking it free earlier this year, we wondered if they would also make the newly purchased Independent free as well.

Nope. The family Lebedev is launching a completely new paper, titled i, and edited by the Indy’s editor, Simon Kelner. i will cost 20p to the Indy’s £1.

The new paper is “specifically targeted at readers and lapsed readers, of all ages, of quality newspapers and will combine intelligence with brevity, providing an easily digestible essential daily briefing.”

These smaller dailies created by existing dailies have had a poor run in North America. The Chicago Tribune publishes Red Eye (logo, a red ‘i’), which won the battle against the Chicago Sun-Times’ Red Streak. Canada tried a nationwide version with Dose, which lasted four months.

The Independent launches i — the UK’s first new quality daily newspaper for 25 years [Evening Standard]

EMI/Citibank lawsuit is taking place in New York to keep Guy Hands tax-free

EMI/Citibank lawsuit is taking place in New York to keep Guy Hands tax-free
No Rock & Roll Fun points out that EMI financier Guy Hands, whose company, Terra Firma, is currently suing Citibank over alleged misleading information insisted that the lawsuit take “place in New York rather than the more appropriate London, because if he came to London,” it would ruin Hands tax avoidance scheme. Hands never visits the UK, where his family lives, for tax purposes.

Something to remember about the Citi-Hands trial [No Rock & Roll Fun]

Snipe Top 5: Online glimpses into great London history

London is a living museum, and the internet is full of resources that can help illuminate the history right under our noses. Here are five of the best.

BFI’s Big Smoke, London on Film
Brilliant, brilliant collection of films of London life, many in surprisingly luscious colour, somehow dating back to 1896. Don’t ask us how they managed that. If you’re going to waste an hour of your life on YouTube today, waste it on this.

Gustave Doré’s London Engravings
Doré was a 19th century French engraver who created some fabulously dark illustrations for The Bible, Divine Comedy and Poe’s The Raven. Check those out. He’s in this Top 5 for his impressions of London c.1870 which were condemned at the time for focussing too much on the poor and seedy side of the city. Of course, that’s what now makes them so fascinating. Extra credit assignment: compare and contrast with Hogarth’s work from the previous century.

Samuel Pepys on Twitter
You’ve got to love the man who’s tweeting daily diary updates as Samuel Pepys. Sample tweet: “Into the garden with my wife and went about our work to dig up my gold. Lord! what a tosse I was in that they could not tell where it was.” If you’d rather follow Kim Kardashian then Snipe doesn’t want to know you. Fuller entries at this blog, updated daily.

London Walks Podcast
A caveat: Snipe has not listened to these podcasts of London walks, so take this as a suggestion rather than a recommendation. It seems like a good idea though, and a great way to bring attention to the hidden history lurking in the shadows of every London street. Let us know if it delivers on its promise.

Museum of London iPhone App
iPhone only, unfortunately, but if you’ve got one, get this. It’s a genuinely useful application of geolocation (not like all that Foursquare nonsense) which shows you what historical sites you are near, along with a picture from the past and a little explanatory blurb. Feels like the prototype for some really cool things that will be coming up in the next few years.

London agenda for Monday 18 October

London agenda for Monday 18 October
1. Listen to the dreamy and non-specific music of Kisses [Le Cool]
2. Prepare for the the Decline Of Western Civilisation Part II: The Metal Years [Le Cool]
3. Journey back in time to the age of dinosaurs at the monthly pop science party Super/Collider [Run Riot]