In the red corner, Planet Hollywood a once prime London tourist attraction overlooked by Arnie, Willis and Stallone - now a rotting restaurant housing a disabled disability lift which has shown as little movement as it's past carriers for over 2 years. In the blue corner, Cirque nightclub replacing the Hippodrome a few years ago a popular weekend venue for the London clubbers. If you were a film star which attraction out of these two would you choose to hold your Premiere party?
The answer isn't as easy to you think, especially when you are the past CO-owner of Planet Hollywood. Sylvester asked the film company to his current movie, Rocky Balboa to have the after show at his old restaurant. An agreement between the star and MGM led to a night at Cirque with P.Hollywood catering. Oh, and significant wheelchair access!
Providing we haven't lost count, this is the sixth Rocky movie and sees Mr. Balboa crouching out of retirement and back into the ring against heavyweight champion, Mason "The Line" Dixon. The film is now on general releases/ on DVD/ TV this Christmas (depending on which year you are actually reading this article!). Anyway, released on January 19th fans of the first five movies who are still agile enough will no doubt enjoy it!
The second round of this review comes from ringside seats at the party, or to be more accurate on Melinda Messenger's table. She called us over for a chat, so blanking Saturday morning presenters and Pop Idol rejects, Sam & Mark we accepted Mel's offer. Well, we needed to rest our feet from our past travels downstairs with a crowd of invited guests gawping at the VIP area where Syvlester was hiding alongside professional boxers, Amir Khan, Nigel Benn and Joe Calzaghe. Callum Best managed to blag a few tickets as well as Jennifer Ellison and Lisa Snowdon. Snowdon was photographed earlier outside the VUE cinema smacking a kiss on Sly's cheek. Another advantage sitting with Melinda was we could chomp away at chicken, spicy ribs, spring rolls and vegetable stuff in little boxes whilst listening to Mel rabbiting on about her recent visit to Africa for Comic Relief. We didn't pay much attention but she brought up the words 'Poor' and 'Poverty' quite a bit. After we finished off her food we gave Mel a kiss, right in front of her husband and moved on. Apparently she stays in quite a bit now looking after her kids, but we should leave that kind of useless tat for Heat Magazine to print.
Making our way around the club there wasn't much effort which actually went into the party itself to make it more of a theme decor. OK a few punch bags were scattered around upstairs with boxing gloves and the DJ was situated inside a Boxing Ring, but as Premiere parties go - we have attended much better and the effort which had been set aside certainly didn't make tonight's party stand out from the rest. That was done by Sylvester Stallone himself..
At these kind of parties the film star normally hibernates in the VIP room for an hour before making a swift exit. Tonight Sylvester did the same, but before settling down in his sectioned off area he made a brisk lap around downstairs shaking hands thrust in front of him. The famous Rocky tune was played in the background as Stallone made his way around the floor meeting the party guests until he was safety back to his area.
The arrival of canapé trays laid with chocolate cakes was a polite gesture telling guests to fight their way through the streets of London and go home. The party wasn't such a knockout as we hoped, but if there is ever another rematch we will most defiantly have our ringside seats again for Rocky 7.
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