Poupoupidou. Marylin Monroe is (not) well and (no more) living in Mouthe, France

Nobody Else But You (Poupoupidou) is an amazing film directed by Gerald Hustache-Mathieu that tells in a very original and subtle manner the tragic fate of Candice Lecoeur, a small-town woman and aspiring model who thought she was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. Deeply rooted in Mouthe region in the Jura, famous for holding the…

Kiki la petite sorcière ou l’initiation à la lecture des cartes/ Kiki’s Delivery Service, an initiation to map reading

Kiki’s Delivery Service is an animated film directed in 1989 by Hayo Miyazaki, based on a book by Eiko Kadono and illustrated by Akiko Ayashi. The story is about a young witch who, at the age of 13, must leave her home, as all young witches do, and has to go to a new city for…

Ice Age, a new theory of the continental drift / L’Age des Glaces 4, une nouvelle théorie de la dérive des continents…

The fourth animation movie of the Ice Age series offers us a very fancy version of the theory of continental drift! Here, the upper mantle convection currents are no longer responsible for the movements of the crust. The cause is the rotation of a tiny core similar to a wheel in a hamster cage. Some other…

« Carte certifiée conforme à notre imagination ». La géographie parallèle de Marc Jurt et Michel Butor

In 1994 and 1995, the artist and engraver Marc Jurt and the writer Michel Butor initiated an artistic collaboration inspired by maps; all kind of maps : city maps or aerial photographs, world maps or topographic maps, aeronautical maps or meteorological maps. Marc Jurt started with geographical documents and  juxtaposed or superimposed  engravings or paintings…

Yucca Mountain – John d’Agata, une carte entre vérité et exactitude.

About a Mountain is an essay by John d’Agata about nuclear waste issue. The book has another title in the French edition (Yucca Mountain) and the cover represents a face drawn with the traditional cartographic symbols. The illustration does not exist on the original book’s cover. Why ? Publié en 2012 en France, Yucca Montain…

La baston – Missiaen

La baston is a 1985 french movie directed by Jean-Claude Missiaen. René Levasseur, ex-safecracker, accepts a last burglary to collect funds in order to bring his sick son to an US hospital for cardiac surgery. Unfortunately, things do not happen as expected. La baston est un film réalisé en 1985 par Jean-Claude Missiaen. René Levasseur,…

Moonrise Kingdom : Maps for Locating Places in a Film/ Des cartes pour suivre les lieux d’un film

Moonrise Kingdom is an American film directed by Wes Anderson, which was presented during the opening session of the 65th Cannes Film Festival 2012. The screenplay was written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford Coppola. Moonrise Kingdom is an unusual film, at once funny, touching and quirky. One can easily find…

Cleopatra – Joseph Mankiewicz / Cléopâtre

Cleopatra is an american movie from John Mankiewicz released in 1963 with Elisabeth Taylor in the main role. This  4 hours long sword-and-sandal movie recounts the tumultuous relationships between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar first, and then with Marc Antony. Cleopatra uses a model to run the battle from her ship. Cléopâtre est un film américain…

The Desert of the Tartars (Buzzati) : space and fiction of a military no man’s land / Le Désert des Tartares : espace et fiction d’un no man’s land militaire

Il deserto di Tartari (The Desert of the Tartars)  shot in 1976 by Valerio Zurlini is a French-German-Italian production. This film is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Dino Buzzati. The script is very similar in topic and atmosphere to the novel. It benefits from a good casting and a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.…

Une affaire d’état. Valette

Une affaire d’état is a 2009 french political thriller directed by Eric Valette. This movie is an adaptation of Dominque Manotti’s novel, Nos fantastiques années fric. It is about an affair of state, arms trafficking between France and Africa, covert financing, governmental security agencies, prostitution… and criminal investigation.We take a special interest in two characters.…

Duel (Spielberg) : cartographier la route du récit / mapping the road of the narrative

Duel, le premier film de Spielberg, qui raconte la poursuite d’une voiture par un camion fou est entièrement tourné au niveau du sol. Aucune vue aérienne, très peu de recul. La caméra est à hauteur des pare-chocs et de l’habitacle des véhicules, plus rarement sur un bas-côté à peine surélevé. Ce filmage  tangentiel  participe du…

Some news from Mona Lisa / Des nouvelles de la Joconde

La Croix and many other newspapers mentioned the discovery that the copy of the Mona Lisa in the Prado Museum in Madrid is older than it was previously thought and was painted in Da Vinci’s workshop itself. It appears the painting is contemporary with the original,and could be a preparatory study for Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.…

Invisible Target – Benny Chan

Invisible Target is a 2007 Hong-Kong action movie directed by Benny Chan. Three police officers join their forces together to fight  a mafioso organization. The main spatial machinery is a phone localization in order to identify his owner. Invisible Target est un film d’action hongkongais réalisé par Benny Chan et sorti en salles en 2007.…

Crossroads in Maus – Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman, creator of the graphic narrative Maus, is the President of the 39th Angoulême International Comics Festival in Angoulême. It is the opportunity to celebrate on (e)space & fiction this exceptional designer by presenting this deeply moving frame issued from page 127 in the first volume of Maus. The road network that forms a…

Babar and Father Christmas’s House/ Babar et la Maison du Père Noël – Jean de Brunhoff

Here is a seasonal post. Christmas time is for children and children’s stories. It is the perfect moment to present the simple and naive but very effective spatial machinery Jean de Brunhoff imagines when he relates the discovery of the house of Father Christmas by Babar in the album Babar and Father Christmas(1941). It illustrates…

Rio Baril – Florent Marchet

The French singer Florent Marchet, sometimes compared to Alain Souchon despite their very different universes, likes also to refer to places in his songs. His personal geography is located slightly further south than Souchon’s Sologne. Florent Marchet evokes his natal Berry in Gargilesse, an instrumental that refers to « one of the most beautiful villages in…