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Topic: What is London like in January?

Ray Faultless
Film Handler

Posts: 96
From: Amington, Tamworth, England
Registered: Jun 2001

posted 01-13-2008 08:33 AM

£14 for the first show £17.50 after that. Yes it is high prices but this may be a once in a lifetime chance for Claude being as its so far to travel.

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Cameron Glendinning
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 845
From: West Ryde, Sydney, NSW Australia
Registered: Dec 2005

posted 01-13-2008 04:37 PM

Make sure you only go to the big cinema at Odeon Lester square complex or at the Empire complex, As the other screens were NOT worth the money ( disclamer, 15 years ago was the last time I was in London!)
The Empire screen one was impressive, cinema 2 had once been a small newsreel cinema, Screen 3 was once a managers office [Eek!]

Odeon Lester Square is amazing and has been restored since I was there (the photos I have seen are jaw dropping good) but screen 1 2000 plus seats, screens 2-7 have less than 100 seats.

I hope you have a safe flight!

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 01-13-2008 04:40 PM

£17.50 for a seat in the fleapit? Bugger me with a soldering iron!!! I wonder if that holds the world record for the most expensive (routine, i.e. excluding special event screenings) cinema admission for a normal scheduled show.

The National Film Theatre on the south bank of the Thames (nearest tube = Waterloo) offers a much more diverse range of films to see (including silents presented with live music, and usually perfect technical presentation of all formats), and the tickets are still 'only' £8ish. But it has to be admitted that none of the three auditoria come even close to matching the Odeon Leicester Square for impressiveness of the space.

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-13-2008 11:30 PM

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for the very useful information about the London cinema theatre you had recommended. I will try to go to the Odeon if time will permit. Will it be difficult for someone like me who does not know London to easily find it? Haw far is it from Hammersmith? By the way, what are they showing during the coming week? I might be able to find the time to go Friday night if I had recovered from my twenty hour flight. I hate to spend all that money and find myself falling asleep.

-Claude

-

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 01-14-2008 01:11 AM

Eastbound Piccadilly Line tube from Hammersmith to Leicester Square - about 3-4 miles, and takes around 20-25 minutes. The cinema is about 100 yards from the station, on the Charing Cross Road side of the square.

Odeon Leicester Square Programme - it'll change on Friday, though.

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Cameron Glendinning
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 845
From: West Ryde, Sydney, NSW Australia
Registered: Dec 2005

posted 01-14-2008 03:39 PM

I stand corrected, as from Odeon site above

quote:
Leicester Square:
1679 seats
4 wheelchair spaces
DTS & SDDS
Mezzanine 1:
60 seats
1 wheelchair space
DDS
Mezzanine 2:
50 seats

DDS
Mezzanine 3:
60 seats

DDS
Mezzanine 4:
60 seats

DDS
Mezzanine 5:
60 seats

DDS

The NFT screen 1 is pretty good, based on a classic 50's Fox Cinemascope house, The programming is very interesting. Presentation at the highest standards.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 01-14-2008 05:52 PM

Agreed - you don't want to be watching a 1.38 film sitting in one of the side blocks of seats in NFT1. Your neck won't forgive you for days!

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Howard Johnson
Film Handler

Posts: 87
From: Felpham , West Sussex, UK
Registered: Jun 99

posted 01-15-2008 04:22 AM

Don't forget that London is not typical of the UK, if you have time try to go to a provincial town which is not far such as Brighton. It's by the sea, only 52 minutes by train, has a fantasy Royal Pavilion and a Victorian pier.

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Stephen Furley
Film God

Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002

posted 01-17-2008 01:25 PM

Well, Claude should be here by now. I'm not sure what time he was due to arrive, or whether he will have been affected by today's events at Heathrow, aircraft crash landed on a BA flight from Beijing. According the the BBC "All BA short-haul flights from Heathrow have been cancelled and others delayed."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7194086.stm

I'm not sure if both runways could still be used, but given the position where the aircraft came to rest, I think it may well have closed the Southern one.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 01-17-2008 03:53 PM

Just got out of the train at Dundee en route to a meeting, and walking to the hotel a TV in the window of an electronics shop was showing the headline 'Airliner crash lands at Heathrow'. 'Yikes - Claude!' was my first thought, and I was relieved to find when I got to my room and switched on the radio that it was a flight from Beijing, not San Francisco (and, of course, that no-one was seriously hurt).

If Claude was on a transatlantic red eye he should have got in before the disruption started. Fingers crossed. And with any luck, some west London scrap merchant should have worked out how to tow away the carcass of a written off 777 by the time he heads home!

I guess it's too early to speculate, but I'll do so anyway: given that there was no fire and that the power from both engines appears to have failed shortly before landing, I can't help but wonder if the BA plane ran out of fuel for some reason.

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Ben Wales
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 602
From: Southampton. England
Registered: Jul 99

posted 01-17-2008 04:12 PM

Two reasonable Eating places I can recommend in Central London is the West End Kitchen and Stockpot, both in Panton Street and only 5 mins walk from Licester Square!.

They are a few yards away from the Odeon Cinema in Panton Street.

For Beer several Real Ales Pubs in the area, for the Cheapest Beer in Liecester Square is the Wetherspoons Pub "Moon Under The Water" next to the Odeon L/S (the big one), this pub is a favourite haunt for Projectionists in the West End [beer]

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Stephen Furley
Film God

Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002

posted 01-17-2008 04:24 PM

quote:
If Claude was on a transatlantic red eye he should have got in before the disruption started. Fingers crossed. And with any luck, some west London scrap merchant should have worked out how to tow away the carcass of a written off 777 by the time he heads home!

Would they allow it to be moved before it had been inspected where it stood by investigators? If the runway did have to be closed the presumably the flights which were cancelled were to allow the remaining one to be used by incoming flights which were already on their way.

I received an e-mail from Claude on Tuesday, in which he said that his fright was at 07:00, I think that's 15:00 London time, and that the journey would last 17 hours, including two hours in LA. If I'm correct that would have got him into London at 08:00 this morning; I'm not sure what time the accident happened. I hope he arrived before it happened, and wasn't delayed by it; that's about the last thing he'd need after a flight that long. At least nobody was seriously hurt in the accident.

I don't know what Heathrow's like to get into with a foreign passport, the only airport where I've done that in recent years is Newark, where the queues look worrying long, but there are loads of desks, and they actually clear them quite quickly. The previous one was Leningrad in 1974, where they hardly glanced at our passports and visas, and we were cleared in seconds. There weren't many people entering the airport at that time though.

edit:

Sorry Leo, I missed the words 'By the time he heads home' in your post.

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Ben Wales
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 602
From: Southampton. England
Registered: Jul 99

posted 01-17-2008 04:32 PM

quote: Stephen Furley
I hope he arrived before it happened, and wasn't delayed by it; that's about the last thing he'd need after a flight that long.

It was a British Airways Boeing 777 from China and it happened at 12:40pm and lost all power on final approach and landed just short of the Runway and skidded without Landing wheels etc.

If it was not the skill of the Pilot and Crew this could had been a lot worst so it is been reported tonight.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 01-18-2008 03:18 AM

quote: Stephen Furley
Would they allow it to be moved before it had been inspected where it stood by investigators? If the runway did have to be closed the presumably the flights which were cancelled were to allow the remaining one to be used by incoming flights which were already on their way.

Reported just now that (i) the pranged Boeing may have to be left in situ for some time in order to complete investigations, as you say, and (ii) that the runway was now open, with flights taking off starting at the opposite end. This strikes me as a bit dodgy, because it can't give departing passengers much confidence taking off over the wreckage of a crashed airliner, and, more importantly, what happens if a departing flight has to abort its take-off for some reason and ends up near or at the site where investigators are working?

quote: Stephen Furley
I don't know what Heathrow's like to get into with a foreign passport...

An American friend who tried it in 2004 described the experience using language you'd expect to hear in a Tarantino film. She was in the queue for three hours, mainly because she had the bad luck to be in the queue behind passengers on a flight from Pakistan, many of whom, for obvious reasons, were being asked a lot of questions.

quote: Stephen Furley
...the only airport where I've done that in recent years is Newark, where the queues look worrying long, but there are loads of desks, and they actually clear them quite quickly.

I've heard horror stories about the larger airports, and in particular have been advised to avoid entering the US through JFK or LAX. Partly for that reason and partly because they fly a connection from the easiest airport to get to from where I live (Teesside), I always use KLM/Northwest for trips to the US unless they're a lot more expensive than another option. You arrive in the US at either Minneapolis and Memphis, where there is only one international arrival being processed at any time; and so even in the worst case scenario (being seated right at the back of the plane) the wait is never more than 20-30 minutes. If you can online book a seat near the front of the economy cabin, you can be through in ten minutes flat.

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Tim Rectanus
Film Handler

Posts: 51
From: Raleigh, NC, USA
Registered: Jul 2005

posted 01-18-2008 12:49 PM

Oh, I have a lot of catching up to do on this thread. The opening of U23D this comin week as well as another film that we are opening when I am in the UK means I haven't had time to sit down at the computer and check in.

First off, thanks for all of your help leading up to my trip, I am echoeing Claude's sentiments but I got answers here that I probably never would have found on my own.

Glad to hear that Claude was likely not affected by the happenings of the flight from Beijing. I am sure he is enjoying his time in London, as I will be doing in about a week or so. I get on my plane in 7 days and 3 hours, my time. I think I will celebrate my arrival with a pint, can you get a pint at 7 am?

BTW, I am not too worried about the Passport Cues, there can't be that many people who want to go to London in January, can there?

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