Blog: On Locations

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Over Christmas The Doors On My Advent Calendar and I watched a whole bunch of films. Most of these were, of course, highly intellectual motion pictures about French people cycling and staring into the distance etc etc but we also managed to watch "Bridget Jones' Baby". It was FUN, but did feature a lot of London Landmarks In The Wrong Places.

What I mean is that everything that happened seemed to happen near to An Iconic London Landmark, which is all well and good, except that these landmarks always seemed to be weirdly close to each other and/or in the wrong place. For instance, the character Bridget Jones lives in London Bridge, but her local Antenatal Class seemed to be at the swimming pool from the Olympics, which is MILES away. Similarly Colin Firth and The Other Bloke managed to carry her over Tower Bridge and then arrive at UCL Hospital which is a) near my work and therefore b) nowhere NEAR the river.

It was really weird and it KEPT HAPPENING. I know that film crews use locations all over the place to film things and that these don't have to be anywhere near each other, but it did seem a bit strange to deliberately pick such well known places and then wantonly move them around the city. We all KNOW these ICONICAL buildings - those of us who live here AND those of us who come to visit - and so MILLIONS of people watching would know roughly where they ARE too. Why would you do it so wrong?!?

At least Bridget Jones is an International Film, so I guess they'd argue that people in the rest of the world would not necessarily be bothered by it - a similar argument was used to explain THOR getting the wrong tube line during "Thor: The Dark World" - but the same excuse cannot be used by the television programme "Hard Sun" what I started watching this weekend. It's all jolly good fun, but they too seem to be OBSESSED with using London Landmarks In The Wrong Places. In the second episode they had a FIGHT on the south bank of the Thames, then walked onto the road to get into a TAXI near the Cheese Grater (which is NOWHERE NEAR there), drove past UCLH (again, MILES away) on the way to a building next to St Pancras Station (going in exactly the WRONG DIRECTION). It happened so much that it became UNSETTLING. I know that not everybody is aware of where UCLH is in relation to the Thames, but by choosing SO MANY places that MILLIONS of people are familiar with, it borders on ARROGANCE to assume that they are too DIM to realise where they are.

Having said all that, I did quite enjoy it. I don't usually watch Cop Shows (except for Brooklyn 99 obvs) so THOROUGHLY enjoyed all the MASSIVE CLICHES, especially the way that the Possibly Corrupt Male Lead With A Complicated Personal Life semi-whispers everything. Is that a thing that still happens in cop shows then? Also, I wonder if anybody has ever really covered an entire wall in photographs and bits of string, with post-it notes that say "GUILTY?" stuck all over the place. I do hope so!

posted 25/1/2018 by MJ Hibbett

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