Yesterday was interesting. Dragged my bags across from Covent Garden to Golden Square where I was able to leave them at the Paramount offices. Saw Star Trek in the morning - complete with a security guard standing next to me with night goggles-machine to make sure that as a veteran of twenty years I didn't pull out a massive VCR an dstart recording the movie in the screneing room (he dropped them in the dark, irony's a bitch, isn't it?) The film is a good sci-fi romp. All the cast do well (gotta love Simon Pegg as Scotty) and the CGI explosions burst forth in just the right resolution and quantity. As with almost every J J Abrams production (think everything from Alias and Lost through to Mission Impossible) there are plot holes you could fly a whole Battlestar Galactica through and he's more interested in questions than delivering specific answers but he keeps things zipping along at a merry pace and with a big geeky grin, so much you'll hardly notice. It'll live long enough at the cinema and Hollywood will prosper etc etc.The press conference was an unmitigated mess. For some reason it appears SKY had turned the event into a programme for their movie channel and therefore we had a 'not-as-hip-as-he-thinks-he-is' host who fluffed the sound-schecks and started with a rather unprofessional 'Here's J J Abrams with... some of the cast...'. Equally we were told that Sky viewers had sent in questions and so it would be split 50/50 between our questions and theirs. Silly me, I thought this was a PRESS conference. After a false start, we began again with questions and answers being repeated word for word and the table we put our tape recorders on had a speaker that didn't work. It wasn't Paramount's fault per se, (PRs Debbie, Jenny and Sarah usually do us proud) but I get the feeling that after the press had gone (and our mobile phones were returned to us) J J probably unleashed some vulcanic nerve-pinches for the embarassment caused.
After having a drink with Paul Simpson, Johnny and Molly and managing to get a splinter down the nail of my finger (annoying rather than excrutiating), I picked up my bags and made my way to Yotel at Heathrow's Terminal 4 with relative ease and grabbed some dinner. Typed up as much as I could of the press conference, watched Ashes to Ashes (meh) then grabbed about 4-5hrs sleep before waking up around 4:00am and deciding to finish the article.
Now in Terminal 1, having checked in for the United flight pretty easily. The flight is ontime for a 10:35 departure and I hopefully have a bulkhead seat, so will be able to stretch out just a little bit.
I have my ritual Michael Connelly novel to read on the flight (an advance copy of his latest: The Scarecrow) and so all is good. However hoping the next 11 or so hours pass quickly and the real fun begins...
