An evening in Leicester Square

Most days, it’s actually relatively easy to forget that we live in a huge, global city.  We wake up in our quiet neighborhood, I go off to the archives (I’m at the National Archives these days, which means I’m never near central London), Becca goes to her office (or works from home), and we’re back in our quiet neighborhood at 7 or 8 o’clock at night.

But then there are days when you come across this:

 

Those are flames, by the way, not just over-exposed bright lights.

(See here for far better photos.)

I don’t think we would have made a special trip to Leicester Square just for the premiere, but a friend of a friend was in London for the red carpet festivities, so we figured we’d go along and see what all the fuss was about.

If anything, I was struck by how small the whole thing was.  For the world premiere of the latest installment of a film franchise that’s already made more than a billion dollars, I’d expect teeming masses.  But instead, it was probably no more than a few hundred people, maybe a thousand.  The terrible weather surely had something to do with that.

But among the fans that were there, there was passion.  Every few minutes a cheer went up for yet another minor character.  Outside of Daniel Radcliffe, Tom Felton (aka Draco aka Stuart Broad) probably got the biggest cheer of all.

A few more thoughts:

• Emma Watson – shouldn’t she be in class?
• Ian McKellen – We’re not sure why he was there.  But, as Becca put it, perhaps he simply has lifetime wizarding credentials.  UPDATE: As Kathy points out in the comments, this is, of course, a picture of John Hurt.  But in our defense, the Guardian had it wrong initially, too.
• The Brothers Phelps – Glad to see they’re not pushing the identical angle too hard.
• Tom Felton was really pushing the English country gentleman look.  Apparently he wants to study fishery management (when was the last time you heard an American actor say something like that?), so I think he can just pull it off.