IT’S not often that Westminster City Council has the opportunity to get lots of love from a single decision but that’s what’s on offer when it comes to vote on the fate of the Curzon Mayfair over the coming months. On the one side are the anonymous owners who want to reduce the space from two screens — a huge and a tiny — to one, thereby cutting the audience capacity by 100 and the number of daily screenings from six to three. On the other is the Curzon group, which wants to refurbish the whole thing, restore its historic features — there’s been a cinema there since 1934 —and introduce swanky new sound systems.
Tough one, huh? And behind the Curzon are the umpteen celebrity actors and directors who don’t just feature there by way of their films but actually go to the pictures there. My daughter, 16, who haunts the place, saw Robert Pattinson there once. And in case you’re wondering how a 16-year-old can afford central London ticket prices — I nearly fainted when I saw that it was close to 20 quid to see Oppenheimer — the answer is that her Curzon membership works out at a few quid a film.
