Paris Filming Locations: The Bourne Identity (2002)

The first of the Bourne trilogy was filmed mostly in Paris with a few scenes done in the Czech Republic which appeared in last years ‘Prague Pt II’ post. The action soon moves on to the French capital with Jason and Marie arriving from “Switzerland” in her red mini at night where they sleep in the car at Quai de la Tornelle (below) on 36 minutes.

        

They arrive at Bourne’s apartment (below) on 38 minutes which is 104 Avenue Kléber and not 104 Rue du Jardin as portrayed in the film. Trocadero is the nearest Metro station and this was my first port of call back in January. Its here that Bourne learns someone wants him out of the way and after an exciting fight which leaves Marie shocked they both exit his apartment on 47 minutes.

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Featured below are the various screenshots and views which we see during those brief movie moments. The photo is the view we see of Bourne from the inside of the apartment minus the metal door frame getting in the way.

  

The Treadstone safehouse (below) on 47 minutes where Nicky gets her instructions following the altercation at Bourne’s place is 2 Place du Marché St Catherine.

 

Far easier to find (obviously!) was the Gare du Nord (below) which is Europe’s busiest railway station and my final destination as it was where I was to get the Eurostar back to Britain.

  

Bourne leaves Marie outside pondering whether to stick with him or not while he goes inside the station to deposit his red bag (full of his many identities and national currencies) in one of the lockers. It appears on screen after 49 minutes and also pops up again briefly in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum‘.

 

Unlike the 007 films, the Bourne franchise doesn’t like to take place amid a places most famous landmarks but it does often feature them in the distant background. One such example of that is where the Eiffel Tower is seen in the screenshots and my comparison photos below which are of Wombosi the dictators mansion. It is seen on screen after 63 minutes when he is assassinated by The Professor. The address is 11 Place des États Unis and is a short walk up the road from the aforementioned Bourne home.

     

Next up is Hotel Regina at 2 Place des Pyramides (below) on 64 minutes which is where Bourne fills Marie in on his detailed plan for her to go inside and get information concerning his alter ego John Michael Kane.

  

Marie enters the hotels grand lobby which I was surprised to notice was almost identical to that seen in the film even down to the tree in the corner.

      

Jardin des Tuilerres is across the road from Hotel Regina (below) and appears on 66 minutes when Marie knocks on the phone box (a fake set piece by the way) and surprises Bourne and tells him that she ignored his detailed planning and had just got Kane’s phone records from the reception desk. Subtle humour and a kind of swipe at the usual elaborate ways of acquiring such information in films.

     

La Defense Grand Arche (below) pops up on screen after 69 mins for a brief second as Bourne follows the lead given to him by Marie. The place he’s going to is called ‘Alliance Securite Maritime’ and was nearly missed by me altogether as for some reason I didn’t have it in my notes or on my iPad google map page.

  

Luckily I saw this scene on my PSP copy of the movie which I was using for the match-ups and took the metro out to the western side of Paris to see this gigantic hollow cube.

  

Bourne sets up a meeting with Treadstone Chief Alex Conklin on Pont Neuf (below) after 95 minutes.

  

As ever he’s on top of things and notices all the extra people dotted around the area keeping an eye on things and promptly flees the area.

  

Rain had been hanging in the air all day whilst I was in Paris and on the whole I got quite lucky but the weather was awful while I was in the vicinity of Pont Neuf and the Samaritaine building seen in the background below.

 

The Treadstone operation is closed down at Rue de Jarante (below) on 108 minutes when Conklin meets his maker. The aforementioned Treadstone safe house is actually behind this street.

     

Bourne crosses the Pont des Arts (below) walking away from Treadstone and mysteriously disappears on 109 mins. Of course he reappears a few minutes later as he tracks Marie down in the ‘Little Venice’ area of Mykonos in Greece where she is running a motorcycle rental shop. The excellent ‘Extreme Ways‘ by Moby then kicks in and the end credits roll.

 

You can see my Berlin ‘Bourne Supremacy’ locations here.

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Paris Filming Locations: Amélie (2001)

This site goes all cultured as it moves into French cinema though admittedly this film did transcend across the English Channel to become something of a hit in the UK. Whenever I go on location to find these filming spots I do my research which includes many things but the most important one is of course to have seen the movie! However, I must confess that when I was in Paris at the start of this year visiting some of these locations I hadn’t actually seen Amélie! The reason was that I couldn’t find a streaming of it or pick up a dvd (with English subtitles) cheap enough but on my return to Tokyo I was alerted by a colleague that it was on YouTube of all places. So simple and obvious but I’d never given that site a thought.

This 2001 film takes the viewers around the Montmartre area of Paris amid this surreal tale of of love found in life’s little things. Amélie Poulain is a 23 year old who works as a waitress at Cafe des Deux Moulins (below) at 15 Rue Lepic just round the corner from the the world famous Moulin Rouge.

  

As part of her vow to help others she escorts a blind man en-route to Lamarck-Caulaincourt Metro station (below) and its double staircase. Her description of the bustling market lets him ‘see’ the sights of his daily walk to the station.

  

Amélie’s apartment (below) can be found at 56 Rue des Trois-Freres and just round the corner as part of the same building on Passage des Abbesses is the fruit and vegetable store run by Collignon who she gets revenge on for his cruelty to his hapless Algerian assistant Lucien.

     

The sex shop where Nino works isn’t too far down the road from Moulin Rouge. Palace Video in the film is now Toys Palace (below) and the address is 37 Boulevard de Clichy in the neon-lit Pigalle district. For some reason I didn’t go inside the place and thats one reason why one should never do the locations of a film they haven’t seen! Having seen it since I am well aware that there was a scene filmed inside the shop though you would maybe assume that that bit was filmed in the studio.

  

Sacré-Coeur (below) is of course a famous landmark in Paris and the only one I saw on this particular trip to the French capital. Its around this area that Amélie plays a game of telephone tag with Nino as she goes about the process of getting his album of passport photos back to him in a mysterious, unconventional way.

   

Canal St Martin, Gare de l’est, La Motte-Picqet-Grenelle metro station, Au Clown de la Republique (11 Boulevard St Martin) and La Verre a Pied (118 Bis Rue Mouffetard) are the various other Amélie locations used throughout the film which I didn’t make it to as I only had a day in Paris and so had to prioritise the places I would try and hunt down.

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TF Film Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

I hadn’t even heard of this film until I went back to England at Christmas and saw the posters on billboards all over London in anticipation of its Boxing Day release. I then saw the trilogy of books by Stieg Larsson on my parents bookshelf which they’d read and enjoyed. With not enough time to read them I turned my attention to the original Swedish films which by luck were on sale in HMV at Heathrow Airport before I returned to Japan. I snapped them up and asked about the third one but unfortunately they didn’t have that.

    

It was quite nice watching a film without any knowledge of the storyline so that everything which happened was a complete surprise. This international re-make (or whatever you want to call it!) follows the original film closely to the extent that there is very little difference in the films apart from the fact that its in English. Therein lies a problem in where one may question what the point of this David Fincher adaptation is when there is already a fine Swedish/Danish one out there. Are western audiences really not prepared to watch any film with English subtitles if the language is not English. Well it seems so which is a shame as there are some great foreign language movies out there.

Furthermore, this 2011 version is also set in Sweden and stars many actors from that country playing Swedish characters speaking English which seems a little odd to me. I was thinking that this re-make would be moved to the United States or another English-speaking country with the same story played out in a different environment. Given that its not I see very little point in this one being made.

Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoyed this newer adaptation of the book and it entertained me albeit not quite as much as the original which has me on tenterhooks throughout as I was watching with baited breath for what was to come in each scene.

As for the sexual content, well I was pretty horrified when I saw the strong images in the original but I knew what was coming this time and this one didn’t shy away from copying those aversive scenes. I would have loved to have turned around to see the reaction of the Japanese during those moments.

Once I got beyond the fact that Daniel Craig wasn’t playing James Bond I very much got into his character Mikael Blomkvist who is the investigative journalist trying to crack an unsolved ‘who-done-it?’ mystery from 40 years ago on an isolated island in the north of Sweden.

Of course the real star of the film is Rooney Mara who follows in the footsteps of Noomi Rapace and delivers a more aggressive but equally fine performance as the enigmatic 23 year old bisexual computer hacker Lisbeth Salander; possibly the first screen heroine since Lara Croft. Of course I was comparing them from the offset and it took a while for her to grow on me but thats probably the idea with a character of such a unique personality and appearance.

The film played out a casual pace for the first couple of hours and seemingly sped up a bit in the final 40 minutes of a 158 minute film which just didn’t seem to want to end. I thought that it was gonna finish a few times before it did with an ending that is different to the Swedish one.

Tokyo Fox Rating 8/10

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‘Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace’ Filming Locations

With the release of the Star Wars saga in 3D hitting the big screen this month (March in Japan) I thought it would be a nice idea to compile the (almost) complete shooting locations for the first of the prequel films released back in the Summer of 1999.

Theed Palace in Naboo can be seen 9 minutes into the film when we see the big window below, which in reality is the Caserta Palace in Caserta, just north of Naples in Italy. I  visited this palace in August 2009 as it has played it’s part in Hollywood cinema countless times with ‘Mission Impossible III‘ (2006) and ‘Angels & Demons‘ (2009) among others also being filmed there.

 

The next location to appear is not quite so glamorous as it’s Watford which is just north of London. Whippendale Wood (below) on Grove Mill Lane was the setting for the Naboo forest where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan bump into Jar Jar Binks after 11 minutes and end up saving his life a couple of times. More on this English forest later.

 

It’s back to Italy on 20 minutes as the Trade Federation, using an army of battle droids, descend the stairs of Caserta Palace having taken over Queen Amidala’s peaceful Royal Palace.

      

With the Naboo cruisers hyperdrive leaking the Jedi are forced to land on Tatooine and it’s the Yardangs (below) which are first seen on the half hour mark. These strange shaped rock formations are located in Tozeur very, very close to the Mos Espa set.

  

Mos Esp appears moments later as Qui-Gon, R2D2, Jar Jar Binks and Padmé hike their way across the desert and enter this spaceport.

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The foursome come across Watto the Toydarian who runs a junk shop (below) selling used ship parts which they desperately need so they can make it to Coruscant.

 

The backlot of the junk shop is through the arch seen below but is now all but empty.

 

The young Anakin Skywalker runs in to Watto’s workshop and on to our screens for the first time just after the half hour mark and I was very happy to meet the actor Jake Lloyd nine years later (below) when he was in town for the ‘Star Wars Celebration Japan‘ event. We had a short chat (as he was tired from promotional duties) and he was very nice posing for a photo and signing my iconic image.

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Also at that event was Ray Park who makes his first appearance on screen after 40 minutes in his role as Sith apprentice Darth Maul; the character who is quite possibly the icon of the first episode.

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The alley where Gui-Gon calls Obi-Wan is on screen on 35 minutes and just after that we see the cafe terrace where we’re introduced to Sebulba (who would go on to race against Anakin at the Boonta Eve Pod Race) following an altercation with Jar Jar and a bowl of soup. Thankfully young Ani intervenes to save the clumsy Gungan. Take a closer look and you can see me inside the building.

      

Jira is the old lady who warns Anakin and co on 37 mins about the sandstorm coming their way. Her fruit stall is on the left almost as soon as you enter the Mos Espa set.

  

Anakin leads the Jedi to his home during this sandstorm on 38 mins but the screenshots below are of its appearance after 75 mins when he has to say a sad farewell to his mother Shmi. This place is the alley behind Ksar Medenine and is not as nice as it looks on screen where the crew covered the floor in sand to make it look more desert-like. No set dressing was remaining when I was there and it looked like people actually lived there.

     

Qui-Gon and Anakin’s mother discuss the boys father (or lack of one rather!) at Ksar Hadada (also known as Ksar Hedada) in Tunisia which is actually a fair distance from Ksar Medenine but unlike that place it now looks nothing remotely like its appearance in the film on 46 mins. This place is now part hotel, part Ksar and part building site and so made it difficult to locate the exact filming shots.

    

Ong Jemal (a.k.a. camelhead rock) appears on screen a couple of times in scenes with Darth Maul on 51 and 76 mins respectively. This can be found near the Mos Espa set and is included in many tours from Tozeur. The temperature was at 45 degrees celsius when I was there! It can also be seen in ‘The English Patient‘ and is found in the salty desert Chott El Gharsa.

     

The dessert landscapes of Tunisia are left behind for good as it’s back to England and Whippendell Wood where Padmé reveals she is Queen Amidala and forms an alliance with Boss Nass. This location is not exactly simple to find but if you take the right path when you enter the woods from the car park then you eventually come to the tree with the dimple and the clearing area.

      

Across from the car park on the other side of the road and over the country lane is what looks like a golf course where a few scenes were filmed and are quite easy to locate as they’re all in one place but just shot from slightly different angles. This is where Amidala and the rebels make plans on 102 minutes to attack Naboo’s capital city of Theed.

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Having killed Qui-Gon its up to Obi-Wan to avenge the Sith apprentice Darth Maul which he does after a lightsaber duel which sends him to his death…or does it?! Clone Wars Season 3 reveals a bit more about this! On a slightly tedious connection, I was given a Darth Maul birthday cake in 1999 by my younger sister and parents on their visit to see me, and erm that cake was destroyed too if you know what I mean!

 

You can see other Star Wars Traveller entries by clicking on the following:

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London Filming Locations: Quadrophenia (1979)

Theres no doubt that this movie had a big influence on music culture and fashion as captured vividly by director Franc Roddam. It’s a mix of 60’s music and violence which follows Jimmy (Phil Daniels) on a voyage of discovery that is occasionally funny but also very sad at times and anyone searching for identity and purpose can sympathise with him.

Like many people of my age I first knew the films stars Phil Daniels and Leslie Ash respectively as that bloke on Blur’s ‘Parklife’ record and that woman who lived upstairs from Gary and Tony in the BBC sitcom ‘Men Behave Badly‘ and didn’t get round to seeing this film till much, much later in life.

Jimmy’s house is 115 (*) Wells House Road (below) and is a 20 minute walk from North Acton Station on the Central Line. I left empty handed the first time I tried to find this place but I tried again and with the aid of a map it was a bit easier……. although it still took me a while to find my bearings.

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At 48 Goldhawk Road is ‘A. Cooke’s‘ pie and mash shop (below) which is a far more typical London dish than fish and chips. This is where Jimmy and his mate Kevin eat 10 minutes into the film following their surprising re-union in the bath-house. I took some time-out from my hectic location-hunting schedule to have pie and mash with a bit of parsley sauce for four pounds and it went down very well too.

     

The ‘Kitchener Road’ party which Jimmy attends on 14 mins is actually on Clarendon Road (below) in Wembley.

  

Quadrophenia‘ hits the 31 minute mark when Jimmy gives Steph (Leslie Ash) a ride on his scooter along Goldhawk Road (below) somewhere between Bamborough Gardens and Woodger Road.

  

The Mods hangout was ‘s&m cafe’ which stands for sausage and mash by the way and not what many of you may be thinking! It was at 4-6 Essex Road (below) near Angel Station and I use the word ‘was’ as since I took this photo in December 2010 it has closed down. It appeared on screen after 33 mins.

 

Just a few metres away from A. Cookes on Goldhawk Road is Shepherd’s Bush Market (below) near Goldhawk Road station. This can be seen on 36 mins albeit in very dark fashion as is much of the movie which is mostly set in the night which isn’t so good for someone like me hoping to show and compare screenshots with their modern day equivalent. The bustling market street is a fairly narrow place and is the passage where the Mods chase the leatherclad rocker Kevin and beat him up.

         

Paddington Station appears next as we see Jimmy, and indeed the rest of the film, moving down to Brighton where Sting makes his appearance as Ace. The Sussex locations used included Grand Hotel, Palace Pier, Waterfront Cafe and the dancehall where Jimmy leaps from the balcony is now the Brighton Sea Life Centre.

(*) Thanks to Shawn from Brisbane who informed me that Jimmys’ house was number 75 and not 115. They both look the same but 75 has the train tracks closer at the rear. Also Phil Daniels celebrated his 19th birthday cake with the crew outside number 77.

For other London filming locations click on the links below:

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace    Trainspotting    Mission: Impossible    Lara Croft Tomb Raider    The Bourne Ultimatum   Harry Potter & The Philosophers Stone   James Bond    About A Boy    Bridget Jones’s Diary    Goodnight Sweetheart    Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels    Basic Instinct 2    Batman Begins/The Dark Knight    The Italian Job    Snatch    Rom-Com Special    Skyfall    Notting Hill    The World Is Not Enough

Posted in London Film Locations, Movie Locations | Tagged , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

If Star Wars Was Set In Japan……

1. There just wouldn’t be a rebellion against the Empire.

2. Mos Eisley would have a lot more speeder accidents.

3. The deicison to hunt the droids would take the Empire years.

4. There would be a new emperor every 12-18 months.

5. Admiral Motti would have been let off the hook after apologizing with a deep bow rather than being force choked.

6. Local hunters would kill and eat the Sarlacc and claim it was both “culturally important” and “scientific research”.

7. Han and Chewie would turn themselves into the authorities despite the fact that the investigators had absolutely no clue how to catch them.

8. Textbooks would fail to mention the “Alderaan incident” but, when pressed, the writers will claim it was done to alleviate poverty on the planet.

9. Darth Vader would have tentacles and his interrogation of Leia would have been……..erm, different.

10. Every non-human looking alien would have big eyes, huge t*ts and not wear much.

11. Dagobah would be completely covered in concrete with vending machines as far as the eye can see.

12. Mace Windu would have to smile more or everyone would think he was “kowai” (scary).

13. The locals would constantly ask Han Solo stupid questions like “Do you have Ewoks on your planet?” and “Can you eat Tauntaun?”

14. Princess Leia would wear her metal bikini on Hoth whilst constantly saying “samui” (cold).

15. The Millenium Falcon would have a line of furry ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and ‘Hello Kitty’ toys in the cockpit.

16. Greedo would still be alive as neither he nor Han would dare to shoot first and upset the Wa.

17. Speeder bikes would veer all over the place as their pilots tried to ride them while holding an umbrella in one hand and sending an e-mail on their phone with the other.

18. Admiral Ackbar would be a delicacy.

19. The members of the cantina band would also be on every single commercial and TV show, despite having no discernable singing or acting talent whatsoever.

20. Princess Leia, as pretty much the only female in the entire galaxy, would have to get up ridiculously early in the morning to make lunch boxes for everyone.

21. The dark side would have it’s origins in Korea.

22. The death star would have thousands of unprotected weak spots as the bureaucracy argued over whose responsibility it was to fix them. The sheer volume of paperwork generated would take the bulk of the stormtrooper ranks just to haul back and forth between departments.

23. No-one would leave their home planet except to vist nearby, safety planets where everybody could speak their language.

24. Han Solo would still live with his parents.

25. There would only be `Japanooine` All else would simply be referred to as `Outsideraan`

26. Stormtroopers would never leave their starships except to check Outsideraanians speeders and ID badges.

27. The galaxy wide fireworks display at the end of Episode VI would have disastrous consequences as everyone shouted “Sugoooooooooooi” at once while furiously clapping their hands one inch in front of their faces. The shock wave would crumble most planetary infrastructure…but nobody would notice until the show was over.

28. The giant worm thing that lives in the asteroid cave would definitely be pixelated.

29. Greedo and Han would never be able have their conversation in the Cantina. Although Han would have studied Greedo’s language for 6 years in school, he wouldn’t be able to hold a basic conversation and would just nod his head the whole time instead….. and then he’d complain to the Mos Eisley cantina staff.

30. Luke and Leia would never be born because Anakin wasn’t interested in sex and thought relationships were ‘mendokusai’ (troublesome).

31. ‘May the force be with you’ would become ‘May you not disturb the wa’

32. Only certain people would be able to appreciate the changing seasons, or eat food with sticks.

33. There would be dire need for ‘women only’ escape pods.

34. Han Solo would constantly be complemented on his proficiency with a blaster and asked if they have blasters on his home planet.

35. The ewoks would compliment C3PO on his Japanese Ewokian ability, but then comment to each other about he still sounded like a forienger, and the ewok language of clicks and whistles is very difficult, if not the most difficult language in the Empire.

36. Death Stars would be getting built at the rate of one a week, only to be torn down after a few years and rebuilt again in a week. They’d have column upon column of neon signs going up the side of them, huge TV screens broadcasting the latest intergalactic hits from the Imperial charts (I-Pop), and lots of cute girls in Tie Fighters flying around outside handing out tissues.

37. Travelling by hyperspace would be a real drag during rush-hours, with thousands upon thousands of spacecrafts all piling in there.

38. Other questions the Ewoks would ask Han would include “Where are you from?”, “Why did you come to Endor?”, “Do you like Endorian food?”, “Do you like Ewoks?”, “Can you speak Ewokian?”, and “When are you going back to Tatooine?”. Han would get extremely riled by this, smile politely, then go and bitch about it to Chewie afterwards.

39. Boba fett would have to wait until Han Solo got a face change before catching him.

40. Older Ewoks would explain to Outsideerians that there are four seasons and constantly ask if their planet has four seasons too.

41. The secret plans to the Death Star would not be hidden in R2D2. Leia would write it all on her hands!

42. One of the most common beginnings to Ewok sentences would be “We Ewoks…”

43. Or “On Endor…”. The Endor way of doing things would always be the best, despite the fact that none of them had ever been more than 5km away from their home tree and seen any other life forms in generations.

44. The people living on the planet with the second biggest economy in the galaxy would sit at their desks looking busy for all hours of the day, yet actually achieving very little, while smaller less developed planets slowly but surely catch them up and overtake them.

45. There would be one or two storm troopers at work building the Death Star, while 20 or 30 others guided starships around them in exactly the same pattern as the landing strips and lights already placed there for the exact same purpose.

46. Travel more than 20 miles, and you would need C3PO and all 6 million of his languages and dialects to get around.

47. The Jedi schools would be full of teachers who could`t actually use a light sabre but knew all the theory behind it so everyone would ace it on the written test but fail miserably at the thrust and parry in practical usage. To remedy this the alliance would import thousands of “native Jedis” but would resist any attempts at real teaching.

48. Padawans would just say “muzukashii”, “dekinai” or “lightsaber no tsukaikata zen zen wakannai!”.

49. Nobody would ever notice Vader’s breathing due to all the snot-snorting, noodle-slurping and teeth-sucking.

50. Outsideraans would comment on many things but would be told they couldnt possibly understand as they werent Ewoks.

52. Whilst rushing to escape from the Giant Space Worm the the Millennium Falcon would already be full so Han et al would have to reverse themselves on at the top of the boarding ramp pushing their way on in the process.

53. Luke and Ben Kenobi would remove their shoes when they enter the Cantina.

54. The garbage in the trash compactor would have been properly separated.

55. Stormtroopers would never even draw their blasters.

56. The Battle of Hoth would be postponed due to it being “Samui!”

57. The stormtrooper would say “itai” when he smacks his head on the doorframe.

58. The Millenium Falcon wouldn’t be able to blast off until other spaceships have arrived so as not to upset the flight timetables.

59. The cantina band at Mos Eisley wouldn’t have been playing instruments. They would have been lip-synching and dancing choeographically.

60. Vader: “Luke, I am your father”
Luke: “eeeeeeee”

61. The names would be changed to Luke-kun, Han-chan, Chew-chan, Leia-chan (she`s very cute), Darth-sama, Yoda-kun (technically speaking he should be sama given his standing but he is just too kawaii to not be called kun or chan). Lando would just be called Land.

62. The Millennium Falcon would be shortened to Mi-fa, speedbike becomes spi-bai, Landspeeder, la-spi and so on. Everyone would refer to their blasters as burasutaa-chan.

63. All the AT-ATs would have baskets on them.

64. Han and Luke would hold umbrellas on the remote ice-world of Hoth.

65. Luke would utter the word “oishii” before drinking his blue milk.

66. Luke Skywalker would never, ever turn off the GPS Navi system in his X-wing fighter.

67. Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader would bow before their dual.

68. Luke and Uncle Owen would have bough their droids from ‘Droid Off’ rather than from Jawas.

69. Darth Vader would have one of those vaporiser things from ‘Tokyu Hands’ to sort out that terrible rasping throat.

70. Luke would have been too busy going to juku to shoot wamprats.

71. Stormtroopers wouldn’t carry their buraasta-chan loaded.

72. Every time Luke mentions joining the Academy his uncle just inhales deeply through his teeth and mutters or whines about any old thing.

We Love You Japan xx

I can not stress enough my gratitude to the message boarders on the ‘Lets’s Japan.org’ website whose many ideas contributed to this article. You know who you are.
** This article relies heavily on stereotypes and is just for fun and not intended to cause offence to Japanese people.
*** This ‘fun’ article was ready to publish about a year ago but then the awful events that began on March 11th happened and it just didn’t seem right to make even light-hearted fun of the Japanese at that time.
Posted in Films, Japan Life, Quirky Japan, Star Wars | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

London Filming Locations: About A Boy (2002)

I’m no bookworm but there is one author’s work who I always read and that is Nick Hornby’s and so its always interesting to see the film adaptations of his books such as Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About A Boy which, as the title suggests, is what this locations feature is on.

Hugh Grant plays Will who lives a comfortable, relaxed life due to the royalties which pour in from a Christmas song his dad wrote. As a result he has never worked and spends a lot of time reading about pop culture and watching TV in his apartment which is at 16-18 St James’ Walk (below) a little north of Farringdon station. All is not quite as it seems though as the entrance door was a specially constructed set-piece at the buildings side entrance. When you look at the screenshot it does look a bit strange that the front door is blocking the path!

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31 Oseney Crescent in Kentish Town (below) is the home to Marcus and his depressive hippy mum Fiona played by Toni Collette.

  

The Comptoir Gascon (below) at 63 Charterhouse Street is where Will shops at when Marcus is tailing him as he suspects that he doesn’t actually have a son.

Will takes single-mother Rachel to dinner at Hakkasan at 8 Hanway Place (below) just off Tottenham Court Road. This is where he comes clean and admits that Marcus isn’t actually his son in an attempt to be honest with her but it doesn’t quite turn out how he planned.

  

Rachel herself lives at 1 St Stephens Crescent (below) near Bayswater station and before the aforementioned date is the place where Will took Marcus and pretended that he was his son so she would find him more interesting.

 

For other London filming locations click on the links below:

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace    Trainspotting    Mission: Impossible    Lara Croft Tomb Raider    The Bourne Ultimatum   Harry Potter & The Philosophers Stone   James Bond    Quadrophenia    Bridget Jones’s Diary    Goodnight Sweetheart    Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels    Basic Instinct 2    Batman Begins/The Dark Knight    The Italian Job    Snatch    Rom-Com Special    Skyfall    Notting Hill    The World Is Not Enough

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Living The i-Life!

I can’t say I’d had too much desire to get an iPhone as I use the internet enough without checking Facebook and Twitter in between lessons. However, when my phone charger broke a few months ago I thought it was maybe a good chance to make the switch. At the same time I also got an iPad2 as Softbank (the Japanese mobile phone operator) had a special offer for them with the iPhone.

Despite initially struggling with the new way of typing mails (known as text messages in just about every other country in the world!) I soon got used to both that and the automatic error correction which can still be annoying sometimes but all-in-all the service probably works more in my favour than against it.

One reason I wanted an iPhone was for the map service which will hopefully be very useful when I embark on my cycling trips around Tokyo in search of certain places such as filming locations. However, I am still yet to use or even try using the maps feature as I don’t really like the idea of being tracked by google in any way.

Certainly not essential but adding to life’s satisfaction is the ability to access the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, hotmail, Google, YouTube, iTunes and a host of other things whilst on the move. The app which I’ve used the most has been the TuneIn Radio one which enables me to listen to hundreds of stations around the world. Needless to say, I am more than happy to settle for just listening to the BBC stations with the added bonus that 5 Live’s football commentaries don’t cut out at kick-off as they do on the BBC iPlayer.

 

The iPad was a bit of a godsend while I was in Paris, Edinburgh, London and my hometown over the festive period as many places and friends houses have wi-fi in Europe unlike Japan where, apart from McDonalds, very few places seem to offer free wi-fi service. When you’re inside its much nicer to use this contraption for surfing the net due to its clipboard size. It was great for watching UK television online whilst I was back in my homeland.

With my family having been on Skype for many years its been so nice to be able to chat to them via video on the iPad which I was never able to do on my old laptop which couldn’t handle that particular application.

The major downside of the iPhone and iPad is that Apple didnt allow them to work with Flash Player meaning that I couldn’t watch streaming of TV programmes and films as well as content put on many websites. Furthermore, the iPad is not really convenient for typing anything more than a sentence or two on social media sites. For these two reasons and the fact that my old, ageing laptop had pretty much conked out I decided to splash out last weekend on a MacBook Pro laptop having got used to using my girlfriends Mac. One big benefit was a very easy way of capturing screenshots of some of the various movie locations which I visit thereby enabling one to show a comparison of my photo in the modern day and the film-shot I try to replicate.

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Review: Films Set In Japan – Mr Baseball (1992)

As I was watching Brad Pitt in ‘Moneyball‘ on the way back to England recently I found it very hard to not keep comparing it to ‘Mr Baseball’ which, as far as I’m concerned, is the greatest baseball movie out there. Admittedly, I’m in a minority on that one and it’s fair to say that when I settled down to watch this light, sports comedy my mind was very sceptical as I had never really watched anything with Tom Selleck in (maybe I was frightened off by his huge moustache!) and I don’t like baseball! Ultimately though I ended up enjoying it.

Jack Elliot (Selleck) is an aging Major League baseball player who only has one offer on the table and that is in Japan with the Chunichi Dragons from Nagoya. As someone who has lived here for many years now, it is maybe more easy to understand and relate to the jokes and references to the differences between western life and life in the east. Not only that but it also includes differences between the two codes of the game not that I have a clue about that kind of thing!

Sure, this film features some of the regular jokes such as him knocking his head on the ceiling on his arrival in the land of ‘lots of little people walking and talking fast’ and cultural mis-haps like not taking off his shoes indoors, using the Japanese-style squat toilets, exchanging business cards (he gives his picture baseball cards in return) and getting in the bath before washing himself first which the only other gaijin team-mate compares to being like ‘jerking off before having sex!’

The Japanese are famous for eating their noodles noisily and when given the green light to follow suit he does in typical exaggerated fashion which really did have me laughing out loud as his slurping is so ridiculous. Selleck plays the rude, bad-tempered and arrogant American so well as he struggles to fit in to a society which is a world away from what he knows. In one particular scene he is fined for his attitude and promptly stumps up the cash with a bit extra thrown in for good measure. When asked what that money is for he says its for the next time and then he proceeds to put his bat through some locker room equipment.

Furthermore, he says what he thinks, particularly at his first press conference, but his interpreter changes his words to save face. However, he is left bemused when Selleck uses the ‘it aint over till the fat lady sings’ idiom which he isn’t aware of and so tells the rest of the team that a fat lady will sing for them after the game!

Unbeknown to him he starts dating the daughter of his coach played by Ken Takakura (who was in ‘Black Rain‘ and ‘The Yakuza‘) which results in him changing character in rather predictable fashion. As much as one can tell what’s going to happen in this film its a fun movie and one which anyone who has been here will be able to identify with in some way.

Tokyo Fox Rating 8/10

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Friends Reunited

Whilst back in the UK over Christmas I met up with more friends than I usually bother to which was really nice. Sherwood is a lifelong friend and I have known Sam since I was about nine and we always meet up every Christmas when we’re all back in town visiting our parents. This year we were out in our regular local pub on Christmas Eve when we bumped into Abby who was at the same schools as me throughout my 18 years in Market Harborough but other than a few Facebook updates I’d not really kept in touch with over the last decade or so.

     

As well as staying with my sister in London for three nights I also made my annual visit to Richard and Mizuki’s apartment in North London to catch up with them. I met Richard (above) through my work back in 2005 and a few years later I met his better half who became his wife. I spent a couple of nights with them (below) and a couple of nights with Marchy down in south-east London in the New Year. He is another friend who I’ve known since meeting in the boy scouts in the mid-late 1980’s and by chance we ended up in the same class at secondary school (along with the aforementioned Sam and Abby). He even followed (?) me on up to Hull a year after I had started University there.

     

On my trip up to Scotland I stayed with ‘Willy’ Steve who was a mate towards the end of my university days (although we did meet during our first year in Hull) and in the years after that when our Uni crew often met up for drunken nights out in Leeds where he lived back then in the late 90’s. Back in England a few days later I was on the train going to London when I bumped into another old mate from Primary school in the form of Richard (above) who I hadn’t seen for years and years. I was on my way to the capital city to fly back to Tokyo the day after but first I met up with two ex-colleagues. First was Bridget (below) who I worked with in 2007-2008 which was a great laugh and we became good friends and vaguely stayed in touch with each other over these last few years. We had lunch and a couple of drinks in Clapham before I moved on to Kingston where I had a couple more (and very expensive) drinks with James who only left Japan a few months ago.

 

It was really great meeting up with all of these people as well as my family and I will try and make more effort to see them and some other friends the next time I’m back in my homeland.

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