Most of the London Film Festival press screenings this past week and next week are taking place at a Cineworld multiplex within the Trocadero, an entertainment complex between Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus with a sort of rundown backwater space station vibe. I can almost hear Mal Reynolds saying to Zoe, “I reckon we best not linger.” Somewhere, Han Solo is sitting with his back to a corner and telling Chewie, sotto voce, to keep his eyes open.
Alas, there are no charming scoundrels like Han or Mal about the place to make it more interesting.
It’s a weird place — since the original restaurant folded and it re-opened as a general entertainment centre in 1986, it’s lurched from one financial crisis to another, gradually using less and less of the building; large chunks of it are empty, and I gather it’s mostly going to be rebuilt into a generic hotel (as if London needed more of those).
This makes me think of a place in Dallas that used to be a major multiplex theater, plus a gaming center, a little food court, and I think the far end was a restaurant, not sure about the entire space. The theater was the only thing that took, and even that eventually folded up. Empty for a while, I think some other stuff was tried, and now it’s an evangelist church. They sure inherited a good parking garage.