The Beach is a 2000 drama film by Danny Boyle based on The Beach, a 1996 novel by Alex Garland. Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young American backpacking in Thailand, came to Southeast Asia with the intention of experiencing something radically different from his familiar life. He meets Daffy a crazy man (Robert Carlyle) who is…
Company man is a 2000 movie directed by Peter Askin and Douglas McGrath. Washington, 1962: the CIA agent Alan Quimp assisted by is immediate superior, the Officer Hickle are heard by two American Senators: Biggs and Farwoods. Quimp has to explain his implication in the crisis of Bay of Pigs. Two maps appear in the…
National Treasure (released in 2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (released in 2007) are two movies directed by Jon Turteltaub. Both films have the same narrative structure : Benjamin Gates (starring Nicolas Cage) goes to treasure hunt. By solving different clues he finds a treasure map. He succeeds in deciphering it to finally discover…
A lovely article by Gérard Lefort in Libération takes us on a tour of Jacques Demy’s Nantes, on the occasion of a tribute exhibition in the filmmaker’s childhood city. See also this post about the maps in Lola. Un joli papier de Gérard Lefort dans Libération qui nous fait visiter le Nantes de Jacques Demy,…
« The Social Network » . Excerpt of the trailer – Extrait de la bande-annonce How to visualize a virtual network in a movie? It is the question the director David Fincher had to answer with his new film The Social Network, that tells the story of the young and famous Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. There is…
The Hitch-Hiker is a film noir directed in 1953 by Ida Lupino. Two men in a car give a man a lift but the hitch-hiker turns out to be a psychopath who kidnaps them. The police tracks the criminal. Several maps are used in this movie. Le voyage de la peur est un film noir…
Garri Bardine is a Russian animation director. In 1990 he created Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood (Russian: » Серый волк энд Красная Шапочка, Krasnaya Chapotchka seriy Volk i »), a claymation film. The movie was adapted from the famous children’s story Little Red Riding Hood as a musical. Living in Moscow, the mother of…
The Movie Map is a website created in 2008 as a depository of films locations and other informations related to those locations. It uses Google’s Map API and users and movie fans can contribute. Another website lists films locations: the Movie Locations Guide. It presents maps of 3 towns at this time: New York, Los…
The Parallax View is a 1974 thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula. Newspaper reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is investigating a secret organization, the Parallax Corporation, whose objective is political assassination. A cause d’un assassinat est un thriller dirigé par Alan J. Pakula en 1974. Le reporter de presse Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) enquête…
16th June 2010 : the British PM David Cameron apologized to the families of victims for the killings that occurred on 30th January 1972 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The film Bloody Sunday directed in 2002 by Paul Greengrass narrates the events that occurred this day. Several scenes depict British officers annotating the progression of the…
In 2005, almost 30 years after Dawn of the dead (see this post) second part of his « Dead series », George Romero directed a fourth movie Land of the dead. No paper maps here … Time has passed and computers and GPS are now available. En 2005, presque 30 ans après avoir réalisé Zombie (voir ce…
Via the excellent pop-up-urbain.com, here is an amazing map of the places cited in Rap lyrics, offered byRap Genius, the site that helps to decrypt the words of Gangsta Rap. New-York, and overall Manhattan, stand at the top of the locations. The space of Rap lyrics is – unsurprisingly – mainly urban and almost exclusively…
The Annuity (1972) is a French comedy directed by Pierre Tchernia and based on a screenplay by Pierre Tchernia and René Goscinny. In this movie, two quick shots (a few seconds each) show two different maps: a school map of France drawn by hand and a topographic map. Le viager est une comédie française réalisée…
Alberto Antoniazzi, an Italian graphic designer, presents the history of Rock as a subway map where every line corresponds to a sub-genre and every group or musician corresponds to a station that may connect two lines. He uses all the codes of a subway map : colors, symbols, legend. You can see it on the…
With the release of their new album The Suburbs and the beginning of their new concert tour, the Montreal band Arcade Fire offers an interesting geospatial and interactive experience. By entering a place of your choice on the site, ideally your childhood home address, you generate a custom clip based on images from Google Maps…
M (dir. Fritz Lang 1931) tells the story of a serial killer who preys on children in 1930s Berlin, and who is on the run from police and an organized crime syndicate. The film begins with the murder of Elsie, the eighth child to be murdered. At the crime scene police find a paper bag…
Shannon Rankin is an American artist born 1971 in California who lives and works presently in Rangeley, Maine, USA. She created several series of artworks with maps as raw material, maps she cuts, disintegrates, sticks, connects with threads, pins… As she writes on her homepage: « I deconstruct maps to create new geographies, suggesting the potential…
« Who is the murderer of the subway? Who is this man who pushes innocents under the train? And who are its victims? » Such is the plot of the thriller written by Frederic H. Fajardie in 1982. Police inspector Padovani (recurring character in the work of Fajardie) investigates. During a briefing with his staff, he says:…
In 2006, Pan’s Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro) is released. The action takes place in Spain, in 1944, during the franquist period. The fascist army chases rebels hidden in the Spanish Maquis. The Captain Vidal (Sergi López), uses a map to organize the hunt. He reads it with a magnifying glass and puts landmarks on…
Fanfan la Tulipe is a French movie directed by Christian-Jaque, released in 1952. Set during a battle between the French King Louis XV and an unidentified enemy, several scenes take place in the headquarters of both armies. The generals on both sides use maps of the battlefield for discussing tactics and strategies. Fanfan la Tulipe…
In 1985, George Romero directed Day of the dead, the 3rd episode of his « Dead series ». In this episode, the spatial machinery is not as sophisticated as it was in Dawn of the dead. The function of the four maps dispayed in the movie is mainly decorative. En 1985, Georges Romero réalisait Le Jour des…
Between Toy Story 2 and 3, eleven years have passed and mapping techniques have tremendously changed. The inevitable G* Maps has replaced the paper map. Incidentally, is it possible to localize Tri County, the place of the movie, in the United-States ? Entre Toy Story 2 et 3, onze ans ont passé et les techniques…
In the name of the father (1993) is an Irish-British film directed by Jim Sheridan and adapted from the autobiographical book Proved Innocent by Gerry Conlon. In 1975, Gerry Conlon, a small time thief from Belfast, is arrested by the Police of London. He is accused of being the author of the IRA bombing in…
WithTournée (2010), M. Amalric received the Award for Best Director at Cannes Festival. This road movie tells the story of a team of New Burlesque US strip-tease performers on a tour across western France. The comedians hope to visit the country before to go to Paris, but they are puzzled by the erratic and irritable…
The subway is an important part of Paris urban landscape. It inspired many French song-writers, as shown in a compilation that can be heard on Amazon. There is even a sub-genre of the metropolitan song that is based on a constraint: tell a sex story through a series of puns with the names of metro…
In 1974, French Director Jean Yanne revisits the period of the occupation in France with a comedy where the Chinese army invades Europe. From Beijing, the ‘Central Revolutionary Committee is setting up its strategy. In committee’s premises, two types of maps are presented. En 1974, Jean Yanne revisite la période de l’occupation dans cette comédie…
Avatar – James Cameron’s film released in 2009 – takes place on the planet Pandora. The human coveted ore located beneath the natives’ village ground. At a briefing, soldiers try to localize their position with an interactive 3D holographic maps. Its handling is rather technical and tricky. The head of the crew fails to navigate…
The professional cartographer Jonah M. Adkins met the challenge of geographically depicting the fictitious Island of the TV Series LOST. Here is his story. Le cartographe professionnel Jonah Adkins a tenté de décrire géographiquement l’île fictionnelle de la série télévisée LOST et d’en dresser une carte. Voir cet article en français sur le site Ecrans…
In animated films, ways of representing space are unlimited. Everything is possible in an animated cartoon. From the beginning of the 20th century, animated movie makers have been inventing new ways of representing space (e.g. The flying house by Winsor McCay, 1921). Le dessin animé est un domaine dans lequel les formes de représentation de…
A really great idea ! Luke Lewis locates famous Rock ‘n’ roll album sleeves with Google Street View and begins a musical mapping of London. Une très jolie idée de Luke Lewis : localiser sur Google Street View les albums des groupes des années 60 et proposer ainsi un début de lever cartographique musical de…
(e)space & fiction 