England : London Sunday London Ride Goes to the Movies - 15 April

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Salty seadog

Space Cadet...(3rd Class...)
I trust it's single speed friendly Ross?

Anyone doing it ss?
 

Lavender Rose

Specialized Fan Girl
Location
Ashford, Kent
Sorry guys. My plans have changed. My bf is home from the navy which I was not expecting till next weekend so ImI unable to attend .

Good luck guys .Gutted I can't come!
 

topcat1

vintage Mercian 2012
Location
here
SLR goes to the movies the gang

P1000883.JPG
 
OP
OP
rb58

rb58

Enigma
Location
Bexley, Kent
Nice to see so many on the Sunday London Ride Goes To The Movies today. In case you’re interested, this was our route.
And here are the highlights of the tour:

Genevieve (1953): 17 Rutland Mews South.
The home of Alan and Wendy McKim (John Gregson and Dinah Sheridan).
The mews were once stables, and the name derives from the falcons that were kept there.

TRIVIA:
  • John Gregson couldn’t drive;
  • references to ‘spend a penny’ had to be removed for the US version;
  • The car was originally called Annie, but was changed after the film
https://www.flickr.com/photos/26746798@N08/3044640591

Number 10 was later home to June ‘George’ Buckridge (Beryl Reid) and Childie (Suzanna York) in The Killing Of Sister George (1968).


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzwwgoM5MSo
[Walks into the Mews at 4’30].

The Hole in the wall. Rutland Estate.
From 1853 – 9 the whole of southern Rutland Gate was built up by Elger, together with Rutland Mews East and West and a roadway linking Rutland Gate with his development on the Kingston House estate to the west. It was presumably at this time that the high brick wall along the south side of Ennismore Street was built, shutting off Brompton Road and its northern hinterland from the exclusive culs-de-sac opposite Hyde Park. Since the Second World War a footway has been opened between Rutland Mews East and Rutland Street, which goes some way to alleviating the isolation of Rutland Gate from Brompton Road and the area of Montpelier Square.

Skyfall (2012): 82 Cadogan Square.
M’s home.

Was John Barry’s actual home, but he died before production began, so they decided to film some scenes there. After the funeral of the victims from the MI6 building explosion, M returns to her house located at 82 Cadogan Square in London. Here, she finds James Bond who decided to come back from the dead after hearing about the attack.

TRIVIA:
  • First use of the F word in a Bond movie.
  • CocaCola was sprayed on the roads in Turkey to stop the motorbikes sliding over
  • 85 taylor made Tom Ford suits were used in filming the train sequence at the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIaauiVU4To

Repulsion (1965): 1-3 Pelham Street.
Catherine Deneuve was taken for lunch: ‘Dino’s’ – now Muriel’s Kitchen.
Set in a bleakly grey London, Roman Polanski’s brilliant, cold and terrifying case history sees sexually repressed and mystifyingly psychotic Carole Ledoux killing off predatory males, while well-heeled South Kensington has never appeared so unsettling.

TRIVIA:
  • First female orgasm (sound only) to be allowed by the censor.
  • Roman Polanski has a cameo dressed as a woman


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxZUrWkWZpE
[Walks through the area at 27’]

A Fish Called Wanda (1988): 69 Onslow Gardens.
The attempts on the life of the old lady.

Known as 69 Basil Street in the film (an ‘in-joke’), this is where Michael Palin finally manages to rub out Patricia Hayes after mistakenly knocking off her terriers one by one. He shoots from number 74.

TRIVIA:
  • Archie Leach was Cary Grant’s real name. Cleese chose it in homage as they were both born in Bristol.
  • The ‘chips up the nose’ scene was responsible for the death of a guy in Denmark who had a heart attack due to laughing too much


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVGMsMws9Y


An American Werewolf in London (1981) 64 Redcliffe Square/Coleherne Road, Earl's Court:
David Kessler (David Naughton) goes through changes in the flat of nurse Alex Price (Jenny Agattur).

TRIVIA:
  • First film to get an academy award for best make-up


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTOo4BVF4KM


Notting Hill (1999). 280 Westbourne Park Road, Notting Hill. William Thacker's flat (Hugh Grant).
The title is the setting, though the famously cosmopolitan locale seems to have been ethnically cleansed: the film is the whitest Notting Hill you’ll ever see. During the Fifties, Notting Hill was bedsit-land – cheap, rundown accommodation for the largely West Indian immigrants, and became the site of notorious race riots when locals clashed with racist Teddy Boys.

TRIVIA:
  • The ‘blue door’ flat was owned by Richard Curtis.
  • The original blue door was sold shortly after the film - this is a replacement
  • The restaurant ‘telling off’ off scene was ad-libbed - although Julia Roberts actually was paid $15m dollars for the film


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EsJVIbJPPs


Notting Hill (1999). 142 Portobello Road. William Thacker’s ‘travel bookshop’:
There is no ‘Travel Book Company’ on Portobello Road, the down-at-heel shop owned by William Thacker. The store was Nicholls Antique Arcade, then furniture store Gong, it’s now a shoe shop, sensibly called – yes – Notting Hill, 142 Portobello Road (and rather cheekily replicating the film’s typeface).

The real Travel Bookshop, on which William’s establishment was based, was around the corner. It really was called The Travel Bookshop, 13-15 Blenheim Crescent, just off Portobello, but rising costs in the area (ironically bumped up by the success of the film) and the continued rise of online selling meant that the shop closed its doors in 2011. The premises has since reopened as a book store once again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArlsU2_cUbg

Alfie (1966): 29 St Stephen’s Gardens, Chepstow Road.

Alfie started out as a stage play by Bill Naughton, and it was a bold decision of director Lewis Gilbert to break naturalistic conventions and film the monologues and asides straight to camera: ‘I suppose you think you’re goin’ to see the bleedin’ titles now…’.

Alfie's rather seedy bedsit hasn’t really changed at all, apart from the inevitable gentrification and pedestrianisation of the area, which means that Annie (Jane Asher) would no longer be able to jump straight onto a convenient bus.

TRIVIA:
  • End credits song was sung by Cilla for UK release and Cher for US release
  • But Dionne Warwick had the hit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYfnp2GsRs8 at 4’45.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXhb7agsw84 at 4’30

About A Boy. 1 St Stephen’s Crescent.
Rachel Weisz’s flat opposite St Stephens Church where Hugh Grant asks Nicholas Hoult to be his son.

Hard Day’s Night. Marylebone station (dubbing as Liverpool Lime Street during the opening credits). When they arrived in London, this was also filmed at Marylebone.

TRIVIA:
  • The only Beatles film to be filmed in B&W
  • The fall at the beginning was accidental, but they decided to keep it in. George needed a new suit
  • Originally a wheeze to allow the producers to release a sound track in the UK, it became one of the highest percentage grossing film (versus cost).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imYGd8jqT2k

Kings Speech (2011): 33 Portland Place.
In London, the Duke and Duchess (Helena Bonham Carter) lived at ‘145 Piccadilly’, near Hyde Park Corner. The actual house was destroyed in a bombing raid during WWII, but the house seen in the film is 33 Portland Place - a remarkable Robert Adam house, dating from 1775, which has had a colourful history – including once being home to the embassy of the Government of Sierra Leone.
The interior of Logue’s practice, though, the extraordinary consulting room with striking windows and wonderfully distressed wallpaper is, amazingly, part of the same elegant Georgian house at 33 Portland Place that provided the royal couple’s ‘Piccadilly’ home (the same room featured in the 2006 Amy Winehouse video for Rehab). The house was recently used as one of London’s most idiosyncratic party venues.

TRIVIA:
  • First Australian film to win an Oscar for best picture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYoSQkfrjfA

Also. Geoffrey Rush visits his agent and meets his fourth wife here in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. And Emelda Staunton descents these steps to the basements as Vera Drake.

Batman Begins (2005): Senate House, Malet Street, Russell Square.
‘Gotham City’ (recreated on sets for the Tim Burton films) is a mix of sinisterly deco locations around Chicago and London, knitted seamlessly together, as well as some pretty impressive sets at Shepperton Studios and in one of the two gigantic airship hangars at Cardington, a couple of miles southeast of Bedford.

The ‘Gotham courts’ lobby, in which Chill is gunned down by one of Falcone’s lackeys before a vengeful Bruce Wayne can do the job himself, is Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, also seen as ‘New York’ in Tony Scott's vampire flick The Hunger and as the CIA HQ in the same director’s Spy Game, as as well as the king’s bunker in Richard Loncraine's Richard III, with Ian McKellen, and more recently as ‘the best restaurant in Moscow’ in Kenneth Branagh’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. The location is revisited for sequel The Dark Knight. Its brutalist exterior is said to have inspired the look of the ‘Ministry of Truth’ in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and indeed it is used in Michael Radford’s 1984 film version. It’s not normally open to the public.

TRIVIA:
  • Christian Bale did all promo interviews in an american accent
  • Wayne Manor is Mentmore Towers in Bucks (Rothschild’s former home) and also features in Mummy Returns, Brazil, Eyes Wide Shut, Johnny English and many more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQGJ4RFwSA (at 1’)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001). The interior of ‘Gringott’s Bank’: Australia House.
Scenes for Gringotts Wizarding Bank (the only known bank of the wizarding world) in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were filmed in the grand interior of Australia House on Strand in central London. A major landmark on this famous street, Australia House was officially opened by King George V in 1918.

TRIVIA:
  • J K Rowling insisted in a British and Irish cast - even turning down Robin Williams who requested a part
  • Dumbledor is old English for bumblebee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwC6IFi6RuU

Batman Begins (2005). ‘Gotham City Police Station’ – and the ‘Shanghai’ warehouse: The Farmiloe Building, 28-36 St John Street, Clerkenwell.
The first floor offices of the The Farmiloe Building were transformed into ‘Gotham City Police Station’, in which Sergeant Gordon (Gary Oldman) works and, with an eye to economy, the film’s ‘Shanghai’ warehouse was filmed in the same building, and both sequels, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, return to the location.

Christopher Nolan also used the Farmiloe as the pharmacy in Inception. You might have seen the Italianate Victorian frontage of the building as the ‘Trans Siberian’ restaurant of ruthless patriarch Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises.

Skyfall (2012): Smithfield Market car park. Entrance to standby underground facility after MI6 is blown up.
With the Vauxhall HQ out of action, Bond is taken to the standby underground facility, apparently entered by the underground Smithfield Car Park in West Smithfield, EC1, alongside the famous Smithfield Meat Market. The subterranean interior is, as you might expect, a different locale. The brick corridors and training area are the Old Vic Tunnels, 30,000 square feet of disused railway vaults hidden beneath Waterloo Station on the South Bank, which were recently acquired by the Old Vic theatre as a performance space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrEbPv-7iLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmeHwn9_DCs

Four Weddings and a funeral (1994): Wedding number four. St Bartholemew The Great, Smithfield
Non-wedding No. 4, at ‘St Julian’s’, the church where Charles has second thoughts, is St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, hidden away behind its gatehouse.

TRIVIA:
  • Andie McDowell waived her fee in return for a percentage. She earned $2m compared to Hugh Grant’s $100k
  • Budget was tiny and extras had to bring their own clothes to the weddings
  • The F word is used 28 times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBIIKCaK5PM

The interior can also be seen in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, where it stands in for ‘Nottingham Cathedral’; in Neil Jordan’s The End Of The Affair; Shakespeare in Love; The Other Boleyn Girl; Amazing Grace; as the site of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Elizabeth: The Golden Age; and even as ‘St Paul’s Cathedral’ in Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes.

Batman Begins (2005). Bruce Wayne arrives at the ‘Gotham City’ restaurant: CityPoint, Ropemaker Street, London EC2.
The exterior of the restaurant isn’t Docklands at all, but CityPoint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6poX_8CT9kM

The same striking ‘eyelid’ entrance also stands in for Docklands as the quarantined area in 28 Weeks Later...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4i5sxU0pG4

This is also where Woody Allen and Scarlett Johansson spy on Hugh Jackman in Scoop.

Junction of Dock Street and Cable Street is where Clive Owns is released by the kidnappers in Children of Men (2006).

Wilton’s Music Hall. Is a nightclub on The Krays (1990); In Chaplin (1992) Geraldine Chaplin is boo-ed before her 5-year old son (Charlie) takes over and turns the audience around.

TRIVIA:
  • Originally five separate houses built in 1690s
  • Combined by John Wilton in 1860s
  • Largest house was originally an ale house which secured a performance licence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jktyIH7JMa4 at 38’ (interior shots)

Also featured in Importance of Being Earnest (2002), Nicholas Nicely (2003), Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (2000).

Sparrow’s Can’t Sing (1963).
Barbara Windsor, pushing a pram, gets caught on the swing bridge on Narrow Street. Barbara was nominated for a BAFTA for her performance.

TRIVIA:
  • First English language film to be released in the US with sub-titles
  • Baby in the pram is James Booth’s real daughter
28 Days Later (2002): St Anne’s Church, Limehouse. Jim (Cillian Murphy) is attacked by the priest, bodies strewn all over the place and he escapes by running down the steps to St Anne’s Passage.

TRIVIA:
  • Film was shot entirely in sequence
  • Storyline is a mirror of Day of the Triffids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqLMEr10rU8 at 13’

World is not Enough (1999): Glengall Bridge. Bond dives under the closing bridge.
West of the Dockland Light Railway’s Crossharbour Station, in the shadow of the London Arena, is Glengall Bridge across Millwall Inner Dock, the bridge under which Bond dives as it closes, on the Isle of Dogs – the great loop in the Thames, which Bond appears to use as a shortcut.

TRIVIA:
  • 35 boats were used in the chase down the Thames
  • It took 7 weeks to film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZekeE9TsL4 at 3’

Da Vinci Code (2006): Orchard Place, Trinity Buoy Wharf.
Remy is betrayed.

This is also where Bond crashes through a restaurant in the boat chase sequence in The World Is Not Enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZekeE9TsL4 at 4’30

Sliding Doors (1998): Fat Boys Diner.
Such a definitive slice of Americana has not gone unnoticed – the diner has featured in photo shoots for Vogue, and has even had music videos filmed inside. When your heart’s been broken, sometimes an escape from reality is just what the doctor ordered. In Sliding Doors (1998), Fatboy’s Diner was the scene for Gwyneth Paltrow’s date with John Hannah after her disastrous break-up. Sipping a milkshake in a little slice of 1940’s Americana, coupled with some well-timed comic relief from John, proved to be the perfect tonic for Gwyneth, and showed the viewer that a little comfort food and company can go a long way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj93sTcEJYA
 
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