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…
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…
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) » 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,…
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…
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…
From 16 March to 12 May 2013, hold at the Hotel des Arts in Toulon, the exhibition « Mappamundi. Art & Cartography ». This exhibition proposed to address the many and multiple links between arts and mapping through twenty six major artists who have « worked the map and questioned mapping » for forty years. Du 16 mars au…
« The Trial » is a film directed by Orson Welles in 1962. In this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Franz Kafka, Orson Welles, who respected almost the entire story, shows distressing spaces of modern states bureaucracies after the Second World War and the experience of the atomic bomb.. « Le procès » est un film réalisé par…
Spy Game is a Tony Scott film where the map (and the satellite image) plays an important role both as an object of decoration that as a key element of the outcome of the plot. Spy Game est un film de Tony Scott où la carte (et l’image satellite) joue un rôle important tant comme…
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime film directed by Don Siegel. It’s the first in the Dirty Harry film series. San Franscico Police Department Inspector « Dirty » Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), opposes Scorpio, a serial killer (Andrew Robinson). We can find several spatial machineries in the movie : maps, plans, model. Moreover, we note many…
The Cubic site has relayed the announcement by Google that Hashima (or « Battleship ») Island is now visible on GoogleStreetView. The Hashima island is an old mine in the Japanese archipelago, located off Nagasaki, which was abandoned in 1974. Since that time no regular human activity takes place there. However the island has served as decor…
Here is an exhibition of Centre Pompidou in Metz which seems specially designed for (e)space&fiction. Views from above considers how an elevated perspective, from aerial photographs or satellite images, has transformed artists’ perception of the world since the mid-nineteenth century. A gold mine of images and ideas we have to visit later in details. L’exposition…
On April 27 was held at the BnF a conference entitled « Drift and psychogeography » which took place in the framework of the exhibition « Guy Debord. Un art de la guerrer » which takes place from 27 March to 13 July 2013 in Grande Galerie at the BNF (François Mitterrand Site). This conference was given by Emmanuel…
The meeting with Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten, that we announced here, was held on Thursday, April 11, 2013 from 14h to 20h in the small auditorium of the BnF. A beautiful afternoon with the creators of The cities of Fantastic. Les rencontres avec Benoît Peeters et François Schuiten, que nous avons annoncées ici, ont…
The Paul Dini Museum of Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône, France) presents from 03/23/2013 to 09/15/ 2013 an exhibition entitled « Landmark. » Le Musée Paul Dini de Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône, France) propose du 23 mars au 15 septembre 2013 une exposition temporaire intitulée : « Point de repère ».Le musée présente ainsi cette exposition : « Depuis que l’Homme est sur Terre,…
Peut-être (1999) is a film directed by Cédric Klapisch. This film takes place alternately in present time, the Eve of the Year 2000, and a future time, located in 2070. But the film exhibits also an apartment within an Haussmann type building in Paris, and outside of it, located in a wealthy neighborhood of Paris.…
Relief maps have a rather elegant rendering. Despite their decorative aspect, they are quite rare in fiction movies. This post attempts to begin an inventory of films with relief maps, beginning by 4 French movies. Les cartes en relief donnent un résultat assez élégant. Cependant il est plutôt rare d’en rencontrer dans les œuvres de…
Inception is a film written, directed and produced in 2010 by Christopher Nolan. The film tells the story of an « extractor », the hero, who enters the dreams of others to obtain information. Recruited for the sake of his faculties in the field of industrial espionage, the hero has lost his family and had to flee.…
Der Untergang (Downfall) is a 2004 German film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel that focuses on the last days of the Third Reich and the fall of Berlin. The movie is set in and around Hitler’s Bunker in late April 1945. It is a realistic reconstruction, based on eyewitness accounts, survivor memoirs and verified sources. Bruno…
The Iron Lady is a 2011 movie directed by Phyllida Lloyd. This movie is a biography of Margaret Thatcher played by Meryll Streep. Despite the very minor interest of this movie, an original spatial machinery is shown. This machinery makes a direct reference to the Falklands War in 1982, which played a major role in the political…
La Bandera is a 1935 French drama film directed by Julien Duvivier and based a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan. On the run after having committed a murder, Pierre Gilieth (Jean Gabin) enlists in the Spanish Foreign Legion, with a police informant, Fernando Lucas (Robert Le Vigan). A great scene shows us an original spatial…
Kafka is a film directed by Steven Soderbergh in 1991. The screenplay mixes events from the life of the Czech German speaking writer and themes of several of his major novels, mainly the absurdity of the world, especially in the context of bureaucracy. The use of black and white in a part of the film…
Donjon is a series of satirical fantasy comic books created and supervised by two famous French artists, Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim. Many other talented designers have contributed to this collective work: Manu Larcenet, Christophe Blain, Blutch or Andreas. The world of the series is extremely complex and changing, and the question of mapping this…
L’Enfer is a 2009 film directed by Serge Bromberg based on rushes of the unfinished film by Henri Georges Clouzot. Started in 1964, the project was never finished, due particularly to the director’s serious heart problems. Between 1964 and 2009, this film became a legend, based on the fact that it was never completed and…
Sébastien Caquard already pointed out here that James Bond used a geographic tracking device as early as in 1964 (Goldfinger). At that time, the idea of GPS technology was just emerging. At (e)space & fiction, we couldn’t keep ourselves from reacting to the debauchery of geospatial tools used in Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie, directed…
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…
The exhibition « Circuler. Quand nos mouvements façonnent les villes » held at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris from April 4, is ending August 26, 2012. This exhibition deals with urban spaces and with space between cities. It also presents how cities have evolved, both in their principles…
Æon Flux is a 2005 science fiction movie directed by Karyn Kusama. It is an adaptation of the animated television series created by Peter Chung. In 2011, a mortal virus eliminated 99 % of population on the Earth. Goodchild, a scientist, managed to create a vaccine and 400 years later, the survivors inhabit Bregna, a…
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,…
Game of Thrones is an American television series adapted from the G.R.R Martin’s series of fantasy novel A song of Ice and Fire, and has been broadcast since April 2011. Set in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, Game of Thrones chronicles the violent dynastic struggles among the kingdom’s noble families for control of the Iron…
(e)space & fiction 