The Sandmen (2000) is a French thriller movie directed by Pierre Salvadori and set in the 18th Arrondissement of Paris. When the film starts Alain (Serge Riaboukine) is giving a statement to the police. The scene ends with a shot of a map hang on the wall of the Police Station that shows the precinct.…
Funeral in Berlin is a 1966 British spy film directed by Guy Hamilton. British secret agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is sent to Berlin to arrange the defection of Colonel Stok (Oskar Homolka), an important Soviet officer who is in charge of the security of a part of the Berlin Wall. Some maps appearsduring the…
The Italian movies of 50s, 60s and 70s invented a new way to depict geography of Italy after second world war, especially urban landscapes. By describing what was supposed to become the geography of the new Italy, as well as its new architecture, urbanism and land planning, the Italian filmmakers wanted to show future face…
(e)space&fiction Info : the post about Isla das Floras has been edited and completed by including the comments of POM and TJ . (e)space&fiction Info: le billet sur l’Île aux Fleurs a été remanié et étendu en intégrant les commentaires de POM et TJ.
Bob le flambeur is a French movie directed in 1955 by Jean-Pierre Melville. Bob, an old gangster and gambler, is almost broke now. In spite of the warnings of a friend, a high police official, he decides to rob a Casino in Dauville. Everything is carefully planed, but the police is informed about the coup.…
« Paris en toutes lettres » that will take place between the 5th and the 8th of May 2011 proposes a literary mapping web site to set up a collaborative inventory of the places where lived some fictitious characters of literature. Le site de la 3ème édition de « Paris en toutes lettres » a lieu du 5 au…
Mississippi Mermaid is a 1969 movie directed by François Truffaut. It is an adaptation of a William Irish’s novel, Waltz into Darkness. It tells the story of the absolute love of Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo) for Marion Bergamo (Catherine Deneuve) and takes the form of a long pursuit in suffering and passion. The movie is…
The Cine-Tourist is a website about connections between maps and films. This site is chiefly about films made in Paris, Geneva and London (especially Muswell Hill). The Cine-Tourist only writes about places that he knows, what is not always our case! The Cine-Tourist est un site Web sur les connexions entre les cartes et les…
Ces jours-ci la chaîne de télévision franco-allemande ARTE diffuse les épisodes de la série Twin Peaks, réalisée à la fin des années 80 par David Lynch et Mark Frost. Cette série, comprenant un pilote de 90 minutes, un épisode de 90 minutes et 28 épisodes de 45 minutes, fut diffusée pour la première fois entre…
Sherlock Holmes is a 2009 action mystery film based on the character of the same name created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The film was directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Joel Silver, Lionel Wigram, Susan Downey and Dan Lin. The screenplay by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg was developed from…
In Meangirls, a 2004 American teen comedy film, we find an interesting example of social mapping. Cady is a new student who does not know anyone yet in North Shore high school. Janis draws for her a map of the cafeteria that presents the various groups of students and where they sit. It is indeed very…
Village of the damned is a 1960 movie directed by Wolf Rilla. It is an adaptation of John Wyndham’s science fiction novel, The Midwich Cuckoos. All inhabitants and animals of Midwich, UK, fall unconscious for several hours. Anyone entering in a perimeter around the village loses consciousness too. A few months later, all women and…
Isle of Flowers is a 1989 Brazilian short film by Jorge Furtado about globalization.You can watch it (12 min) on line. Here are the part one and the part two in English). The film starts with a spinning globe and the next shot focuses on a field of tomatoes. A voice locates the action very…
The Good, the Bad and the Weird (dir. Ji-woon Kim, 2008) is a remake of Sergio Leone’s masterpiece The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966). Beyond the fact that both versions unfold in different locations and at different times (1860s American civil war and 1930s Mandchuria), the presence of maps in both versions leads…
Released in 1966, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (It buono, brutto it, it cattivo) is a western directed by Sergio Leone. It is the last Sergio Leone’s westerns with Clint Eastwood. In this film he co-starred with Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. The three protagonists are in search of a treasure. One…
Many today American TV series are very close to a B-movie from the end of the 40s, He walked by night (1948), directed by Alfred L. Werker (and Anthony Mann (uncredited)). This incredibly modern movie presents all the codes of the detective series and movies (solidarities, widowhood, systematic police track down, suspicion of murderous cop,…
Elective Affinities (1996) is a movie directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani based on the novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Edouard (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Charlotte (Isabelle Huppert), a couple of aristocrats, invited a childhood friend of Edouard (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) to join them in their villa in Tuscany. This friend is an architect. In the…
Released in 1965 Le corniaud is a French road-movie directed by Gérard Oury. Leopold Saroyan, godfather of a syndicate of gangsters, persuades Antoine Maréchal to drive a Cadillac from Naples to Bordeaux. He does not know that various illicit substances are hidden in the vehicle in order to cross illegally the border. During a meeting,…
In Evil Dead, Sam Raimi uses two ways to indicate where the characters of his movie are coming from and where they are. Dans Evil Dead, Sam Raimi nous donne indirectement deux informations : d’où viennent les protagonistes et où ils se trouvent.
Predator is a 1987 movie directed by John McTiernan. In Val Verde, a country bordering Guatemala, a joint task force, led by Major Alan « Dutch » Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is assigned to rescue hostages in the jungle. The group is hunted by an extraterrestrial creature: the Predator. Two spatial machineries appear in the movie. One is…
The X-Men are a group of superheroes created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. There adventures were published in X-Men # 1 by Marvel Comics in September 1963. The book was adapted for three movies released in 2000, 2003 and 2006 (plus a prequel in 2009 telling the story of one of the main characters:…
Short Cuts, another movie of Robert Altman (see this post about The Gingerbread Man), is adapted from short stories of Raymond Carver transposed to Los Angeles. When the stories of Carver about several couples were independent, Altman connects them by inventing family or neighborhood links or by making a character the cause of events that…
The stairs in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art are very famous as the training ground of Rocky Balboa, in the 1976 movie Rocky, directed by John G. Avildsen. The stairs appear successively in Rocky II (directed by Sylverster Stallone in 1979), Rocky III (Sylverster Stallone, 1985), Rocky V (John G. Avildsen, 1990) and…
The Gingerbread Man (1998) is a thriller directed by Robert Altman. The lawyer Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh) helps young and pretty Mallory Doss, harassed by his father. He launches a procedure to confine him to a mental institution. Several maps are shown in the movie. The Gingerbread Man est un thriller réalisé par Robert Altman…
The Potemkin Stairs are a giant stairway in Odessa, Ukraine. This stairway marks the formal entrance into the city from the direction of the sea and is the most famous symbol of Odessa. It was constructed between 1837 and 1841. Originally known as Richelieu Steps, because of the monument located at the top of the…
Lola is a sort of abstract ballet movie whose the scene is the town of Nantes. The film is about wait and boredom, planned departures and expected returns . There are two world maps in the film, both of them related to the character Roland Cassard. Both are a bit mysterious and fully cinematic. Both…
Braveheart is an American historical movie directed by and starring Mel Gibson and released in 1995. The film refers to the life of William Wallace, hero and symbol of Scottish independence. In the late thirteenth century, Wallace united the Scottish clans and fought the forces of King Edward Ist of England, who attempted to invade…
After the Nakatomi Plaza (see this post), the Washington Dulles International Airport is the new John McClane’s playground in this second opus of the Die Hard series directed in 1990 by Renny Harlin. Terrorists try to exfiltrate Ramon Esperanza, a general in exile from Val Verde, awaiting his trial in the United States. There are…
Suddenly is an American movie directed by Lewis Allen and released in 1954. In the late 40’s, Tod Shaw, the sheriff of Suddenly in California learns that a special train with the President of the United States on board is going to stop in the small town. Shortly afterwards, a Secret Service team arrives, led…
Kendama is the second short-movie of Jam Films, a project bringing together seven Japanese directors. A kendama is a Japanese cup-and-ball game… In this film, a company director offers his employee one of this object to show his gratitude … But it is actually hiding the plan of a treasure hunt that leads to the…
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