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When films mangle your local geography

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    When films mangle your local geography

    There's three that rattled me personally.

    1. Brannigan is a not-very-good late-period John Wayne film set in London in the 1970s; he's a tough Chicago cop kicking ass in London (you know, doing things his way). Anyroad, there's a big car chase in it, where he drives east down York Road in Wandsworth, and turns left, about to go over Battersea Bridge (I know because I used to live there). Except he magically appears 10 miles east and races over Tower Bridge.

    2. Bridget Jones' Baby. Not a bad film, but at the end, Colin Firth and Patrick Dempsey carry her from Borough to University College Hospital (both places I used to work). According to Google Maps, this would take at least an hour (for a person not carrying a heavily pregnant woman).

    3. That Freddie Mercury biopic. Freddie had an apartment in the Glockenbach district of Munich. This is very near the city centre. In the film, however, he mysteriously has about an acre of garden.

    #2
    Holiday on the Buses - When Arthur and the family are heading toward Prestatyn's Butlins they travel over the bridge by Rhuddlan Castle and famously lose their luggage in the river. They're actually going over the bridge in the wrong direction if they'd wanted to get to Prestatyn.

    Roughly 95% the films (and TV series) that are said to be set in north Wales seem to think the locals all employ "Look yew, isn't it wet in the valeeeeees?" as their style of address.

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      #3
      Possiblu the reverse of this is that Basically all of the first hour of Barry lyndon is filmed within 10 miles of my home place. He travels from Ireland to prussia by going to the opposite end of the same field

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        #4
        There's a scene early on in The Theory of Everything (before Hawking's disease becomes apparent) where Hawking and a fellow student are whizzing down Trinity Lane on their bikes. Cut to another scene, with them still cycling, in the same conversation, but now crossing the Cam. Except, with tiresome chocolate box scene predictability, they're not cycling over the modern Garret Hostel Lane bridge which would be their inevitable river crossing location in the real world, but rather crossing over the old and pretty Clare bridge, which is in fact located within college grounds and probably never gets crossed by cyclists except on film sets. But the filmmakers will just have thought that the Cantabs will feel smug at spotting the nonsense and nobody else will know or care.

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          #5
          Inspector Morse in Oxford was always teleporting from The Eagle and Child to High Street or whatever. But that doesn't bother me as much as a lot of London-stuff which is only sort of London specific.

          I think it was London Has Fallen (along with a dreadful series of 24 that had a chunk in London) where people could drive from St Pauls to Knightsbridge in 10 minutes. But this happens a lot in films. See also London car chases - it wouldn't work, even the supposed weaving in and out of traffic (I'm looking at you, Kingsman) - that only works if the traffic is moving and not backed up, which it most certainly is on Picadilly heading towards Picadilly Circus and Regent Street.

          Also there are Peoples' Giant Flats in London. Obviously this happens in New York, but I never lived there. It's baffling that Hugh Grant somehow has an entire house off Portobello Road. That teachers and nurses have giant flats. (People in low paying jobs in LA also seem to have beautiful modernist homes looking out from the hills that none of them can actually afford).

          Then there's The Holiday. Obviously you're going to point out that it's a shit film - but that doesn't justify it having nice thickly settled snow in Surrey coming up to Christmas. I'm not sure that has ever actually happened.

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            #6
            Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
            Then there's The Holiday. Obviously you're going to point out that it's a shit film - but that doesn't justify it having nice thickly settled snow in Surrey coming up to Christmas. I'm not sure that has ever actually happened.
            1962 i'm pretty sure. Also probably 1947 (so I've been told.)

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              #7
              Three San Francisco ones:

              Bullitt: don't try and follow the path they drove, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

              The Wedding Planner: Somebody gets stuck in a traffic jam on a stretch of road near Fisherman's Wharf. It's a dead-end road.

              Vertigo: Famously (?), the apartment she lives in is very close to the 'mystery house'. They share a street corner. Scottie follows her around town to end up across the street.

              (DC probably has many, but I've blocked them from my brain I guess)

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                #8
                Streets of San Francisco was also a running continuity error

                As was Kojak here. My family used to watch it together, competing to be the first to point out the latest impossible transition.

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                  #9
                  Not a film, but Michael fassbender is pretty Filmy.



                  This guinness ad has a pretty strong story. Michael Fassbender is pottering around in an apartment, when he comes to a decision, he walks out of one of the entrances to my old apartment building on lime street (about 0.08 Seconds) and strides across ireland, swims to america, walks through new york, meets a guy in a pub, and says sorry .Nothing stops him when he gets going, he doesn't use roads, he literally jumps off the cliffs of moher, and you have to admire the fixity of his purpose. However, in order to be striding up the quays like that at 0.11 seconds, he's gone out the door of his flat, turned left down lime street, gone down to the river, gone in completely the wrong direction at the t-junction,, and is heading for england, we rejoin him after he has realised his error, probably in front of the state street office, and is has turned around and finally set off in the right direction.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by Kowalski View Post
                    Holiday on the Buses - When Arthur and the family are heading toward Prestatyn's Butlins they travel over the bridge by Rhuddlan Castle and famously lose their luggage in the river.
                    It's Pontins in Prestatyn; Butlins was Pwllheli.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                      Also there are Peoples' Giant Flats in London.
                      I rewatched American Werewolf in London for the first time in ages. Still holds up well, but how Jenny Agutter can afford a good-sized flat in what looks like Earl's Court/West Brompton, on a nurse's salary, is a head-scratcher.

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                        #12
                        On a bit of a tangent, with numerous films and shows using New Zealand as a stand-in for the USA over the years, I'm always searching for the background clues that they're on the wrong side of the road. Not the moving vehicles (that would be a bit of a giveaway) but roadside markings and signs. Pete's Dragon, Bridge to Terabithia, etc.

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                          #13
                          Peter Kay’s Car Share was all over the shop. One minute he’s driving past the Staff of Life in Bury, the next he’s in Trafford Park, the next he’s in the Lancashire countryside.

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                            #14
                            In Gone for Good currently showing on Netflix the lead character works for an underfunded ngo working with street kids as a sort of social worker. And also lives in this vast amazing apartment with a huge terrace overlooking Nice and the whole bay

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Kowalski View Post
                              Holiday on the Buses - When Arthur and the family are heading toward Prestatyn's Butlins they travel over the bridge by Rhuddlan Castle and famously lose their luggage in the river. They're actually going over the bridge in the wrong direction if they'd wanted to get to Prestatyn.

                              Roughly 95% the films (and TV series) that are said to be set in north Wales seem to think the locals all employ "Look yew, isn't it wet in the valeeeeees?" as their style of address.
                              Mad that, de. Bloody hwntws and Sais getting together to get us all chopsing. Gets me all moidered, laa. Need some proper Gogs or summat, that'd be tidy smart.

                              Right, jus' get me kecks on and go down town to get some tuck for me snap in.

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                                #16
                                In Pride, one of the characters is Welsh but lives in London. He travels to the South Wales valley where the miners are on strike and is persuaded to reconnect with his mum who lives in Rhyl. Now that may have happened but I doubt he drove from a South Wales location to Rhyl for Christmas dinner and then drove back again. In the 80s. It's over 4 hours each way now.

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                                  #17
                                  It was always fun seeing the characters in Torchwood snapping back and forth across Cardiff.

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                                    #18
                                    The funniest thing in Gavin and Stacey is how they angled the cameras to make Barry Island look amazing.

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                                      #19
                                      I think Inspector Morse was well known for showing the posh bits of Oxford, then when they wanted a surburban bit of that city, filming it in nearby Reading.

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                                        #20
                                        The West Ham fans local pub in top notch footie fighter Green Street is actually the Griffin in Brentford. Which would be acceptable apart from the fact that there's clearly a road sign saying London Borough of Hounslow in the background, meaning that they were drinking over an hour's drive from the match.

                                        Admittedly the filmmakers were hoping that we'd believe that weedy hobbit guy was a proper hooligan, so it didn't matter what other dross they put in there.

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                                          #21
                                          Famously Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman walked from Dover to Loxley via Hadrian's Wall in a day

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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
                                            1. Brannigan is a not-very-good late-period John Wayne film set in London in the 1970s; he's a tough Chicago cop kicking ass in London (you know, doing things his way). Anyroad, there's a big car chase in it, where he drives east down York Road in Wandsworth, and turns left, about to go over Battersea Bridge (I know because I used to live there). Except he magically appears 10 miles east and races over Tower Bridge.
                                            Brannigan is utter nonsense, but enormously enjoyable utter nonsense.

                                            Another late John Wayne maverick-cop vehicle is McQ, from a year after Brannigan. It's also utter nonsense (though less fun), and it has the title character apparently teleporting back and forth first across Seattle and later a sizeable chunk of Washington state.

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                                              #23
                                              Sheffield (The Wicker, The Moor) stood in for part of the route of the London Marathon in Four Lions

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                                Famously Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman walked from Dover to Loxley via Hadrian's Wall in a day
                                                Which he claimed was in Nottingham, didn't he?


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                                                  #25
                                                  Originally posted by Vicarious Thrillseeker View Post
                                                  It's Pontins in Prestatyn; Butlins was Pwllheli.
                                                  Silly me, a mishtake worthy of On the Buses.

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