On Location Archives - Page 3 of 4

November 30, 2011 By iluvcinema 6 Comments

On Location with On Location Tours

As many of my readers have gathered from many of my posts, I am almost equally as passionate about travel as I am about cinema. On several occasions I have attempted to marry the two loves of my life in a set of featured articles tagged as On Location.

This month, I spent a balmy Saturday afternoon in the borough of Brooklyn, NYC. It was all part of an excursion put on by a touring company aptly named On Location Tours.

Founded in 1999 by Georgette Blau, On Location Tours has grown to become one of the largest media orientated tour operators in the world!

According to the press kit, On Location Tours is:

“… a one-of-a kind sightseeing company specializing in TV and movie location tours, brings fans closer to their favorite on-screen characters. The company’s stated mission is “to create tours that allow people to straddle the border between fiction and reality, letting them feel as though they are part of the show, ultimately bringing them closer to the characters and TV history itself.”

A visit to their website, http://www.screentours.com, reveals a variety of options of tours:

Sex and the City Hotspots;
Gossip Girl Sites;
Central Park TV & Movie Sites and
Sopranos Sites, to name a few.

And if you find yourself in Boston, you can book a Boston TV and Movie Sites tour!

For my trial run I decided to on the Brooklyn TV & Movie Sites Bus Tour. The tour originated in Manhattan and focused mostly in the area of downtown and Northern Brooklyn – DUMBO (aka, Down under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), Boernum Heights, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, etc.

Brooklyn Bridge

The tour was an informative, entertaining exploration into this eclectic and diverse borough and its place in film history.

At the start of our three-hour-tour, we made stops at Junior’s (Sex and the City), the coffee shop (now named Marybelle’s) where Nic Cage’s character works in Moonstruck, and the dock in DUMBO – a site featured in several films, including Coming to America, What Happens in Vegas, and Two for the Money.

Junior’s Restaurant (exterior)

We also made passing stops by a bookstore featured in Eat, Pray Love, the firehouse featured in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and, notably, the Hotel St. George, which was seen in The Godfather.

As we travelled from place to place, we received on-board entertainment in the form of video clips from the places featured along the tour route. As an added treat (and surely to keep our blood sugar up) we each received a piece of Junior’s cheesecake. Do not fret: each tour has a similarly themed “treat” that its participants receive. I suspect, however, that on the Brooklyn tour, we fared the best! 🙂 And sorry there is no photo of the actual cheesecake … it was inhaled.

From our tour guide, we learned that Brooklyn has also stood in for other cities/locales – Boston (The Departed), Georgetown, Washington, D.C. (Burn After Reading), New England (Mona Lisa Smile) and even Paris, France (in Julie and Julia).

I have not even mentioned the ‘small screen’ (television) portion of our tour. Allow me o do so now. We learned about the various television shows that film in part or in whole in Brooklyn (Bored to Death, White Collar, 30 Rock, etc.).

One interesting factoid: while The Cosby Show was filmed in a studio in Brooklyn (and later, Queens), the exterior shot of the iconic “Huxtable Brownstone” was in fact of a home over the bridge in Manhattan’s West Village.

Our last major stop was a drive-by of the largest film production studio outside of Hollywood – Steiner Studios – on the site of the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Steiner Studios

As the day wound down and we crossed the Manhattan Bridge on our way back to lower Manhattan, we reflected on all the sights that we have seen; it surely gave me anew, interesting and different perspective of the borough.

If any of you get the opportunity, I recommend that you seek out these types of tours, no matter the city you live in. I have lived in the greater New York area for the majority of my life and a lot of the information I received on this tour was new to me. And of course, when you are New York City or Boston, check out On Location Tours.

One last thing, for anyone who is interested in booking any of On Location Tours’ tours, you can go to their site and enter the following code, LUVCINEMA10, to receive an exclusive, 10% discount on your booking.

* Note: if you are to take any of the tours mentioned, the stops may vary.

July 14, 2011 By iluvcinema 9 Comments

Favorite Films Set in Berlin

As many readers may know, I have recently returned from a trip to London. A natural consequence of my excursions is a renewed wanderlust – no sooner am I back in the States am I contemplating my next trip.

After some deliberation and consideration I have decided on Central Europe. In anticipation of this trip, I have put together a list of my favorite films from each of the cities I plan to visit. Over the next several months I will compile lists of my favorite films from each of these locales.

The first location I will focus on is Berlin. The criteria I have used in the case of Berlin is a bit loose in that the film only needed to be set in Berlin and not necessarily shot there – although I think that at minimum that criteria is met.

Without further ado .. here are my SIX films (stills below):

M (Fritz Lang, 1931) German Expressionism at its finest.

A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948) Fine example of what a romantic comedy should be. The film was principally shot in Soviet occupied zone (source: Wikipedia). Features one of my favorite leading ladies of the era, Jean Arthur.

The Big Lift (George Seaton, 1950) As the title suggests, the Big Lift takes places during the Berlin Air Lift (1948-9). Shot on location in Berlin, really seems to capture the scale of devastation and the recovery efforts made post-war.

Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966) While not one of his finest outings, there are some great set pieces. One that immediately springs to mind is the scene where Paul Newman and a civilian go about the very difficult task of killing a baddie. According to Hitchcock, he wanted to show just how difficult it is to kill someone. This also marks the one-time-only pairing of one of my favorite directors and actors (Newman).

Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004) A frenetically paced spy-story. In many ways, breathed new life into a somewhat stale genre.

The Lives of Others or Das Leben der Anderen in German (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) Don’t know what to say about this film except that I really really liked it. It was my first glimpse into seeing what life in GDR was probably like.

What do you think of the list? Is there anything that you think I left out? And before anyone says Wings of Desire or Run Lola Run please note I have not seen either (I know, for shame!)

UPDATE: Honorable mention to The Edukators and The Baader Meinhof Complex

July 10, 2009 By idawson Leave a Comment

On Location – NYC

Since I live in the greater NYC area, I have a wealth of “On Locations” to report. This first installment is probably one of my favorites from a favorite director of mine.

I already have featured one location from the masterpiece that is Vertigo. The second Hitchcock film I will refer to is “North by Northwest.”
Here is a photo of the corner of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street as it is now (from my cell phone) …

42nd 55th new

… and a few years back when Nat Sherman was there ….

In the film, it was a passing shot pretty early on. There are plenty of other NYC locations that Hitchcock used throughout the filming of NbNW, but for me, a frequent passerby of the area, I felt a nice little connection to the location. In my research it is no doubt a “shout out” to the store. According to Cigar Aficionado, Hitch was a huge fan of cigars.

As for Nat Sherman, it has moved a few hundred feet to a less conspicuous location – along 42nd Street.

Here is a really cool site I discovered that listed many of the location shots from North by Northwest.

I also found this awesome compendium of film locations. Using this guide as a resource, you may even be able to plan a nice trip around a film or two!