Star Wars / La guerre des étoiles. Episode IV
Les nombreux dispositifs spatiaux de La guerre des étoiles. Episode IV /\ The profuse spatial machineries in Starwars. Episode IV.
La vie très privée de Monsieur Sim (Michel Leclerc)
Dans ce film, les cartes sont partout : dans le nom du personnage Monsieur Sim, dans les menus et dans sa voiture où la voix du GPS tient un rôle majeur /\ « Cartes » (in French the same word is used for maps, cards and menus) are everywhere in this movie, adapted from Jonathan Coe’s novel Mr Sim.
Exposition Martin Scorsese à la Cinémathèque française : « un sens inné de l’espace »/Martin Scorsese exhibition at Cinémathèque française : « an innate sense of space »
From 16 October 2015 to 14 February 2016, the Cinémathèque française presents the exhibition « Scorsese, l’exposition ». This exhibition which opened on October 14 in the presence of American film maker Martin Scorsese and the President of the French République F. Hollande, offers an opportunity to return to the life and work of this Sicilian immigrant’s…
The war lover / L’homme qui aimait la guerre – Leacock
The war lover is an 1962 American film directed by Philip Leacock. The storie takes place during the Second World War, on an English air base. It focuses on captain Buzz Rickson’s personality (Steve McQueen), pilot of a B-17 called The Body, and his relationship with people and life. With his co-pilot, Lieutenant Ed Bolland (Robert Wagner),…
Traces de films en Campanie : 1) Le facteur à Procida
This post about Procida, a small island in the Bay of Naples, is the first of three dedicated to relations between places and cinema written after a trip through Campania. Ce petit tour sur l’île de Procida, dans la baie de Naples, inaugure une série de trois billets tirés d’un voyage en Campanie, qui décrivent…
Megaforce – Needham
Megaforce is a 1982 american action film directed by Hal Needham. It is a real nanar, French expression for saying that a movie is so bad that it becomes rare. To make the pitch simple, it is the story of flying bikes (Megaforce, « a phantom army of super elite fighting men whose weapons are the…
A Self-Made Hero / Un héros très discret. Audiard (2)
(e)space&fiction already mentioned the London Underground map that Albert Dehousse learned by heart to enhance the credibility of his false engagement in the Resistance. One can found another very brilliant sequence later in the film when the « hero » travels to Germany for a military mission. Nous avons déjà mentionné dans (e)space&fiction le dispositif de la carte du…
Non ho sonno / Le sang des innocents / Sleepless – Argento
Non ho sonno (Sleepless) is a 2001 Italian giallo film directed by Dario Argento. Seventeen years ago, in Turin, Italia, Giacomo’s mother was murdered. The alleged murderer was found dead and the investigation was closed. Unfortunately, a serial killer sows again terror in a same way, leaving small paper animal figurine by the side of bodies.…
Paname Urbex : lieux de tournages à Paris / filming locations in Paris
Since 2013, the Facebook community Paname Urbex makes an inventory of filming locations in Paris, France. Actuals photographs and movies screenshots are matched up, often superimposed. This work is extended to albums covers, in particular those of the French singer Renaud. Note in USA Delta Bravo Urban Exploration Team have the same goal. Depuis 2013,…
La Classe américaine : Le Grand Détournement… cartographique – Hazanavicius et Mézerette
La Classe américaine (American Class) also known as Le Grand Détournement is a 1993 French television film directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) and Dominique Mézerette. It is exclusively made of excerpts of old Warner’s movies (plus one extract of the French TV series Maigret). All of them are combined and dubbed with new lines.…
Le premier SIG du cinéma ? Le Mystère Andromède / First GIS in Cinema ? The Andromeda Strain
The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science-fiction film directed by Robert Wise and based on the novel The Andromeda Strain published in 1969 by Michael Crichton. It tells the story of a four-day major American scientific crisis, in a very structured way. Many and various spatial machineries support the narration : split screen, text…
Trap Street
A trap street, or errata, is a fictitious street inserted into maps to purposefully trap potential copyright violators of the map. Normally quite innocuous, these fictitious bits of information are used as proof to spot where plagiarism has taken place. The recent chinese feature film « Trap Street » inverts the usual meaning of this expression, becoming…
« Brazil » de Terry Gilliam, un film qui n’a rien à voir avec le football/ »Brazil » by Terry Gilliam, a film which has nothing to do with football
With the opening today of the World Football in Brazil, the sports news offers an opportunity to discuss a world famous movie: Brazil, a film made in 1985 by Terry Gilliam. Brazil has been seared on the kind of anticipation films, himself taking his legacy of previous genre films, including Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life…
« Supermap » returns ! (and « Batmap » as well…)
Superpowers might give superheroes a very specific experience of space. Some examples of spatial machineries in comic books and movies confirm this idea. The superheroes are often confronted with original cartographic issues and often invent very precursory geospatial devices. So here are already Supermap and Batmap, before possibly, if you dig into your old Marvel magazines to find…
Doctor Who’s TARDIS in Google Street View
Quand la Google car a parcouru Earl’s Court Road, à Londre, elle surpris le TARDIS, célèbre machine à voyager dans le temps et l’espace, aux allures de « Police Box », utilisée par le Doctor Who. /\ When the Google car mapped Short Earl’s Court Road, London, it caught the TARDIS, famous Doctor Who’s time machine and spacecraft, which looks like a Police Box.
The Grand Budapest Hotel : grandeur et décadence d’un grand hôtel d’après Wes Anderson / « The Grand Budapest Hotel » : the rise and fall of a great hotel by Wes Anderson
The Grand Budapest Hotel is a comedy-drama written and directed in 2014 by Wes Anderson, and inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig.This movie was entirely filmed in Görlitz and other parts of Saxony as well as at Studio Babelsberg. This film tells the story of a grand hotel in Art Deco style, which experienced…
Metropolis : Superman and Lois Lane statues / Les statues de Superman et Lois Lane
Rocky, Yoda or The Little Prince are not the only fictional characters who have been materialized. Superman and Lois Lane have also their own materialization. Even if Metropolis, the city where Superman lives is fictional, a city in Illinois has the same name and beyond this resemblance, the city host… Superman and Lois Lane! Rocky, Yoda…
Festival GéoCinéma 2014
Avec « Chaos : ordre et désordre » l’édition 2014 de Géocinéma, le festival de cinéma organisé par les géographes bordelais, invite les spectateurs à plonger dans l’abîme et la confusion pour revenir ensuite à la lumière et au monde. Dans un temps marqué par l’incertitude, la figure du chaos révèle la crise de l‘ordre qu’il soit social,…
Napoléon : la polyvision d’Abel Gance/ Abel Gance’s Polyvision
In 1925, Abel Gance was the first director to use three cameras for shooting his movie Napoleon. By the juxtaposition of the three images he obtained a very large screen, three times the traditional format. This process, called « Polyvision », allows to increase not only the area shown by the images, but also to multiply the…
Wayne’s world 1 & 2
Wayne’s World and Wayne’s World 2 are 1992 and 1993 movies realized respectively by Penelope Spheeris and Stephen Surjik. The first one tells the adventures of Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) who host a TV program from a cellar in Aurora, Illinois, USA. They attract an unreliable producer’s attention. Moreover, Wayne…
L’arme à gauche / The Dictator’s Guns – Claude Sautet
The Dictator’s Guns is a 1965 French aventure movie directed by Claude Sautet. Jacques Cournot (Lino Ventura) is requested to assess the Dragoon, Mrs Osborne’s yacht, in the Caribbean. When the ship is stolen, Cournot is given the mission to find it. During the search, Cournot uses several maps. L’Arme à gauche est un film…
Casse-tête chinois / Chinese puzzle. Klapisch
Chinese puzzle, the latest film by Cédric Klapisch is certainly not the first film to put Google Maps on screen. We did not attempt a systematic inventory of the Google map service apparitions in movies, but in 2010 Where are the Morgans? already used a sort of fake of Google Maps. Chinese puzzle may be…
Till Roeskens’ Videomappings / Les vidéocartographies de Till Roeskens
All works of the artist Till Roeskens proceed at the beginning from geography. When he chooses to use maps or landscape views, this is less for their aesthetic quality as for their primary function: restoring the form and the arrangement of space. But Till Roeskens always place « at man’s reach », i.e. at the level of…
The Hunger Games (Gary Ross)
While the 2nd opus of the movie « Hunger Games » is released in France, we come back to the first part (2012). Alors que le deuxième opus du film « Hunger Games » est à l’affiche fin novembre en France, nous revenons ici sur le premier volet sorti en mars 2012.
Immortel (ad Vitam) : les espaces d’une dictature à New-York en 2095/ New York dictatorship’s space in 2095
« Immortel (Ad Vitam) » is a French sci-fi movie directed in 2004 by Enki Bilal, designer of world famous comics. It is one of three films directed by Enki Bilal, all directly inspired by his works, the atmosphere that emerges and their imaginary geographies. The stories all take place in a more or less distant future,…
Gravity, film géospatial/Geospatial Movie
There is no representational spatial machinery in Gravity, the very impressive film by Alfonso Cuarón. No map, no device for locating characters, no screen for designatind targets. There is no computing tool in this sophisticated but somewhat abandoned technological world where manuals are in binders and where you crank up the retrorockets. In Gravity, you…
The Emperor’s New Groove / Kuzco l’empereur mégalo. Mark Dindal
The Emperor’s New Groove is a Disney picture on screen in 2000. Transformed into a llama by his servant Ysma he just fired, Kuzko starts a race to find an antidote into the palace. The race is represented on a map by the routes of different characters … The map joins the territory when the line…
Exposition « Pasolini Roma » à la Cinémathèque française /Exhibition « Pasolini Roma » at the Cinémathèque française
From 16 October 2013 to 26 January 2014, the exhibition « Pasolini Roma » holds at the Cinémathèque française in Paris. This exhibition proposes six sections corresponding to different periods of Pasolini’s life, especially in Roma, which was both the place where he lived from 1950 to his death in 1975, and the place where he made…
Exposition « Astérix à la BnF » /Exhibition « Astérix at the BnF »
From 16 October 2013 to 19 January 2014, the exhibition « Astérix at the BnF » holds at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris,. This exhibition proposes a wide number of original sketches, videos and many by-products of Asterix’s world. It gives an occasion to pinpoint the use of maps and spatial means in one…
Playtime de Tati. La rationalisation des espaces modernes/Playtime by Tati. The rationalisation of modern spaces
Jacques Tati directed Playtime in 1967. It his one of the 6 full-length movies of Tati that are briefly presented on this site. Modern space has always been a question of Tati’s cinema. Playtime is one of his movie where he develops an actual spatial thought. Playtime est un film réalisé par Jacques Tati en…
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