Author Topic: London Spy: Ben Whishaw, dreamy lover/genius Ed Holcroft and sage Jim Broadbent  (Read 571688 times)

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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LONDONSPYFANART



By Hannah December 03 2015 12:53 AM                   simplywalkintomordor                   http://sherlocksbuttonhole.tumblr.com/post/134430538439
                         http://sherlocksbuttonhole.tumblr.com/tagged/%28and-that%27s-the-name-i-use-for-my-art-btw%29


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« Last Edit: January 17, 2017, 05:30:18 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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LONDONSPYFANARTJO


« Last Edit: January 17, 2017, 05:30:39 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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« Last Edit: January 17, 2017, 05:31:04 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Front-Ranger

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  • Brokeback got us good.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Magic!


Thanks, Lee, I think it's pretty magic too. Hugely sad also--very Brokeback. I'm watching London Spy via Amazon, and I've seen two of the five episodes--the third one will not be released until next Thursday, so I'm very frustrated, and trying NOT to read too much past what I've already seen. The British fans (who saw the series on BBC 2 in November and December) are brokenhearted and insanely creative, doing fanart and fanfic--alternate time-times and what-might-have-beens; again, so Brokeback! Ah, the pain, the anguish, we knew it well, and I feel for them, poor things!

 :'( ::) :-* ;D


« Last Edit: February 12, 2016, 11:18:36 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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The British fans (who saw the series on BBC 2 in November and December) are brokenhearted and insanely creative, going fanart and fanfic--alternate time-times and what-might-have-beens; again, so Brokeback! Ah, the pain, the anguish, we knew it well, and I feel for them, poor things!


I'll just add--if you are thinking about checking out the series--there really are a lot of Brokeback parallels, so much so that London Spy almost seems like one of those alternate reality Brokeback fantasies--imagine Ennis del Mar (Alex Taylor) is apparently a young, rich investment banker (!) who is actually a mathematical genius MI6 spy (who still don't talk too much) and Jack Twist (Danny Holt) is a London gay club kid (well, slightly aging club kid) with doe eyes and a rather feminine intuition. In this case it is Jack, not Ennis, who survives, and one day he visits and asks Ennis's mother if he could see Ennis's bedroom. With a surreal 'twist'--this happens twice! Two scary Pa del Mars--but ONE of the Ma del Mars is the scariest of all! Well, it's Spy Stuff after all, and I better say no more for the present. Just remember--like Jack was, Danny is fearless.

 :o ::)


 


Alex's two--"fathers". Not!



« Last Edit: February 12, 2016, 11:19:15 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to the show is that images and moments from this distinctive story are likely to linger in the memory for days. Danny can’t give up the search for what he knows to be real, and London Spy pays tribute to that resilience by offering indelible moments of discovery, romance and fury.






http://variety.com/2016/tv/reviews/london-spy-review-ben-whishaw-1201679167/


TV REVIEWS
By Maureen Ryan
Chief TV Critic
@moryan
JANUARY 18, 2016 | 09:30AM PT


London Spy




U.K. writers regularly churn out well-wrought drama series with top-notch casts, and London Spy has all the usual things going for it — smart writing, evocative use of locations, an atmosphere of yearning, erudite suspense. And yet there is something singular about this terrific program, a spare, off-kilter intensity that sets it apart from its peers.

The series is lean, enigmatic and not that interested in linear storytelling; it’s a sensitive exploration of emotional truth and of the complexities behind elaborate performances of identity. It’s elliptical and indirect at times — and sometimes a little too enigmatic — but its narrative drive is strengthened by a percolating anger at injustice, fear-mongering and prejudice. This haunting drama becomes more captivating over the course of its five installments, thanks in large part to sensational performances from Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling.

London Spy could have gone terribly wrong, given the luridness of its real-life source material: In 2010, a dead man was found locked inside a gym bag in an apartment connected to the U.K.’s security services, and the British press had a field day speculating about the mix of spycraft and sexual practices that may have led to the man’s death.

The good news is, though elements of a similar story are threaded through London Spy creator Tom Rob Smith has not come up with an exploitative, “ripped from the headlines” riff on a tabloid tale. He’s much more interested in what it costs people to be true to themselves, and how easy it is for the powerful to demonize and shame people for what transpires in their personal lives, even in this supposedly more enlightened age. Threaded through this hall-of-mirrors spy story is the deep irony of a government using lies, subterfuge, manipulation and outright persecution to get at — or invent — “truths” that are supposed to protect their citizens.

The fulcrum of the story is Whishaw’s Danny, who, after a late night of partying, encounters Alex (Edward Holcroft), who couldn’t be more different from the dissolute Danny. Whishaw’s character is a warehouse worker living an aimless life, but his instincts and powers of perception come to the fore when something goes awry in his relationship with Alex, a restrained and buttoned-down banker. Jim Broadbent plays Scottie, an old friend who helps Danny when he runs into serious trouble. It would be unfair to say much about Charlotte Rampling’s complicated role, but every one of her scenes with Whishaw crackles with the electricity of skilled performers working at the top of their games.

Given that much of the enjoyment of the opening episodes has to do with the way the series keeps the viewer pleasurably off balance, the less said about the plot, the better. But what gives this drama an exceptional amount of richness and impact is the way that its meditations on reality and identity are tied to Danny’s very concrete emotional concerns. Despite the best and most duplicitous efforts of an array of powerful forces, a desperate Danny continually insists that whatever Alex’s hidden agendas and identities, their relationship has been truthful and real on some level. Danny’s credibility and even his life are often at stake, but the way that Scottie, a well-connected bureaucrat, helps him dig up some of the truth is generally depicted believably.

It’s no wonder that Whishaw (Spectre) is appearing constantly in film and television; he’s clearly one of the finest actors of his generation. He plays Danny’s doggedness and confusion with unwavering conviction, and it’s hard not to admire the character’s devotion to the facts, whatever the cost. The security services, the media and even Scottie are continually surprised by Danny’s persistence, but Whishaw makes Danny’s disdain for his personal safety somehow seem winning, and there’s an innocence about the character that offsets some of the darkness and turbulence of his past. Danny may not have much in the way of money, power or education, but, as the story progresses, his integrity exceeds that of almost everyone involved in Alex’s life.

Occasionally, the show veers into overly enigmatic preciousness; one scene set in a bathhouse is shot from an odd and distracting array of angles. But when Broadbent, Rampling and Whishaw are given confrontational conversations to dig into, London Spy is nothing short of mesmerizing. Broadbent is wonderfully subtle throughout, so when he goes big in a scene in which he recounts the security services’ persecution of gay employees, it’s impossible to take your eyes off him. Smith does a generally fine job of exploring the ways in which spy agencies have used the sexual identities of their agents to cow, manipulate and harass them in the past, and London Spy implies not much has changed since the discriminatory “mole hunts” of the past.

The narrative goes a bit Gothic as it enters the home stretch; it’s a bit on the nose for characters in a twisty spy story to wander through a hedge maze on a country estate. That said, this cast — which included Mark Gatiss as a memorably decadent music producer — would be gripping even if its members were reading the phone book. Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to the show is that images and moments from this distinctive story are likely to linger in the memory for days. Danny can’t give up the search for what he knows to be real, and London Spy pays tribute to that resilience by offering indelible moments of discovery, romance and fury.




TV Review: 'London Spy'
(Series; BBC America, Thurs. Jan. 21, 10 p.m.)


Production
Filmed in London and Kent by Working Title Television, BBC America, BBC Two, NBC Universal and BBC Worldwide.

Crew
Executive producers, Tom Rob Smith, Juliette Howell, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Polly Hill, Hilary Salmon, Liza Chasin; producer, Guy Heeley; director, Jakob Verbruggen; writer, Smith; camera, Gerry Vasbenter; production designer, Lisa Hall; editor, Victoria Boydell; music, David Holmes; costume designer, Suzanne Cave; casting, Nina Gold, Robert Sterne. 60 MIN

Cast
Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Adrian Lester, Mark Gatiss, Edward Holcroft



« Last Edit: February 12, 2016, 11:19:53 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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« Last Edit: January 17, 2017, 05:31:36 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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London Spy
Episode 2
"Strangers"










In the Dining Room, at dinner

Danny (Ben Whishaw):
Your son was murdered.
The attic was staged.
And everything you've read about his death is a lie.





Frances (Charlotte Rampling):
After dinner, perhaps you will join me for a drink.





After dinner, in the Library:

Frances:
My son wasn't gay.
Before you hold some sort of parade through the house, hear me out.
Alistair didn't think like ordinary people.
He didn't feel what ordinary people feel.
In his eyes, everyone was a puzzle.
He took immense satisfaction figuring out what a person wanted and then giving it to them.
As if we were all computers, waiting for the correct code.
Alistair could be anything a person wanted him to be.
In your case, it appears you craved romance, a good old-fashioned love story.
He gave it to you.
Meanwhile, he continued giving other kinds of stimulation to other kinds of people, men and women.
If he was involved with someone who hankered after risk, he would have provided it.
Danger, pain, submission, domination.
Alistair was as precocious sexually as he was intellectually. To him, they were one and the same.
Sex was just another form of decryption.
You think I'm cruel? Perhaps I am.
But not in this instance.
I wanted to preserve your illusions.
We had hoped that you would go home and mourn in the belief that your relationship was perfect.







You loved him, I see that.
However, I cannot allow you to be unaware of the facts, in case you blunder further into a situation you simply do not understand.
I'm not surprised he used a different name. He was playing a part.
The part of a conventional lover.













Danny:
I haven't read many books.
I haven't been to many places.
But I have--fucked a lot of people.
And there's one thing you just can't fake.
Inexperience.






The body's tense when it should be relaxed.
It hurts when it should be fun.
And it's dirty when it should be clean.
I don't care how smart you are, your muscles can't lie.
I'm talking about feeling his--inexperience--as clearly as I can feel this glass.





Do you follow me, Frances? I can see you do.





So I know for a fact you're lying.
I know for a fact that your son, the man I loved, was a virgin.
What I don't understand is why you're so keen to convince me otherwise.
When he told me you were dead, he wasn't lying, was he?


Frances:
Amongst all the lies you've heard here this weekend, recognise one truth-- "no fuss" is the best piece of advice you will ever be given.




« Last Edit: January 17, 2017, 05:32:23 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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London Spy
Episode 2
"Strangers"






At Hampstead Heath


Scottie (Jim Broadbent):
Journalists make difficult bedfellows. You can't just tell them what to print.
You didn't want to discuss it with me first?


Danny (Ben Whishaw):
I knew you'd try and talk me out of it.
Make me think what a dumb idea it was.


Scottie:
What is this? Mistrust?
It is.
I see.
You trusted me with your life, but not now, not with this!


Danny:
My life is small, this is organisations, institutions.


Scottie:
You see me as one of them, don't you?
The suit, the education, the job - I'm part of the Establishment.


Danny:
Well, aren't you?


Scottie:
How dare you, young man! How dare you presume to know me.
I know you because I've heard every secret you have to tell.
What do you know about me? Answer me.


Danny:
- I know -


Scottie:
You know where I live.
You know what films I like, you know what music I listen to.
Did you know that I suffer from depression?
Did you know that in the past I drank every night, every day, every morning, I drank until a stranger could smell it on me!
Do you know just how fucking far I am from being part of the Establishment?
How dare you mistrust me when you don't know!
You want to know who I am, who I really am I'll show you.


Danny:
Where we going?


Scottie:
Come on.
Then you can decide whether you trust me or not.


At a different part of Hampstead Heath, in a wooded, if bleak, area


Scottie:
This is the spot where my career as a spy came to an end.
I was a spy a long time ago.
In a world very different to this one.
I was recruited at Cambridge.
I said yes partly because it wouldn't be a normal life, with regular hours.
I was desperate to avoid the five o'clock home time whilst not being bohemian enough to imagine life without a proper profession.
Not very patriotic motives, I suppose.
But they rather liked that about me, an utter lack of idealism.
Romantics make unreliable spies.







It was my third year with MI6.
I was travelling back to London on the night train.
A handsome man entered my carriage sat opposite me.
The tips of our shoes touched.
Our eyes chanced.
He asked the most mundane questions in the most exciting way.
When we arrived at Paddington, I went to the gentlemen's and waited in a cubicle, door ajar, hoping.
I can't tell you how happy I was to see him.
It meant that I hadn't been wrong.
And that for the next 15 minutes or so, I wouldn't be alone.

After all these years, prudishness runs deep.

The next day, I was approached by a Soviet operative who described how the Soviet Union welcomed "Men like me".
"Under Communism we're all equals.
"And once I'd completed my mission here, in a country that would always hate my kind, I could set up home in Moscow and be free."

Some "men like me" actually believed that lie, but I was not one of them.
So all that remained was a blackmail.
I'd be exposed.
Arrested.
Disgraced.
So that night I bought a rope and came here.

But sitting on that branch, noose ready, I thought to myself, "There is another way."







Danny:
You told your bosses you were gay.


Scottie:
(explosive laughter)
What a remarkable wrong answer!
However, the option did not yet exist.
No, I explained to my section head that I'd been approached by a Soviet operative and I detailed the nature of the blackmail.
He asked if the allegations were true.
I admitted that I'd made a mistake with a man and that the operative probably had evidence of that mistake.
But it was only once.
An act of disgusting madness.
"I'm not a homosexual. And I'm not a traitor."







Hard for them to believe the second statement when they knew that the first was a lie.
So I proposed, preposterously, they employ someone to follow me for the rest of my life, photograph my every move, I would never touch another man.
I didn't discover until later that there haven't been a Soviet operative.
There'd been an internal investigation.
You've heard of a mole hunt? Well, this was a fag hunt, which they saw as more or less the same thing.
Her Majesty's Secret Service had had its fingers burnt by one too many queer spies.
But my prompt confession saved my life.
I was moved from MI6 into what was then named Ministry for Transport where I was little more than a penpusher, whispered about by those in the know.
Out of gratitude and fear, I kept my end of the bargain.
And for 11 years, I did not touch another man.






(That night, in Scottie's house, in the Dining Room)


Scottie:
Will you sleep?


Danny:
(shakes his head wordessly "no".)


Scottie:
Then I propose we stay up all night and wait of the morning papers together.











None of the respectable papers print a word--









--instead, only this tabloid--






https://newspapersinfiction.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/sex-spies-salacious-front-pages/



(Afterwards--unutterable sadness--)





« Last Edit: January 17, 2017, 05:33:49 pm by Aloysius J. Gleek »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"