Any movie that depicts the pyramids of Giza as being in the middle of pristine deep desert is kind of funny. I mean, when you look up pictures online they are always angled to give the impression. It adds mystique to think the pyramids are at least a little difficult to reach. The reality is that the city goes basically right up to them. You can take a taxi from the city and get within American walking distance.
The pyramids are of course flooded with tourists, so any daring adventurer would in reality have to push their way past a family of six from Iowa to get to the hidden chamber of the pyramid.
Thank you for posting this. Reminds of pictures taken from a fast-food chain (don't remember which one) where you can see the pyramids through the window
The view Frasier has of the Seattle skyline was completely impossible without rearranging city blocks and moving buildings around the city.
Are you suggesting the show was all some sort of extended Twilight Zone bit where Fraiser had the consciousnesses of everyone else trapped inside of a world where he was essentially a god, and forced them to play out petty interactions, never letting the facade slip lest they incur his wrath?
Is Maris a living example of what happens when Fraiser is angered to the point of punishment? Is that why we never see her? Is her visage as a being that has no mouth but must scream so horrific that it must be hidden from the viewing audience at all costs?
Plus, one of them pronounced Lake Chelan like She-lawn, not, She-laan...and that just ruined it for me.
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Brazil is always misrepresented everywhere, but two funny cases come to mind:
There was a House episode where Dr. House was treating a CIA officer who had been to Bolivia and had eaten a lot of nuts. At the end of the episode House realized the officer has actually been to Brazil and not Bolivia and then figures out that he ate Brazil Nuts, which could cause all the symptoms he had. In reality Brazil Nuts are much more common in Bolivia than they are in Brazil (or anywhere else).
The other case was Westworld, Vincent Cassel speaks perfect Portuguese while playing an American character, talking to a Brazilian character whose actor speaks it incorrectly and with an extremely loaded accent.
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Fast and Furious 5 comes to mind, with the awful portuguese and the stupid american desert that’s apparently around Rio de Janeiro.
They always show India incorrectly, way more colourful and cleaner than it is. I think mostly not shot here too. Especially in older movies. Also the people speak English in an accent that only Indians abroad speak in.
Also the people speak English in an accent that only Indians abroad speak in.
Curious about this, are the local accents very different?
In Supernatural they went to Longmont Colorado, and it was in the middle of lush (obviously Canadian) forest. There is no forest anywhere really near Longmont. It would’ve been more accurate had they shot that shit in LA.
I was going to to say Sioux Falls, SD in Supernatural being basically a bar and junkyard where exeryone knows each other. It's a town of 200,000 people.
Midsommar got pretty much nothing right. They also decided it should take place in Hälsingland because I guess that sounds cool to Americans.
The SciFi channel show "Resident Alien" is supposed to take place in Colorado. It is clearly shot in Canada.
A lot of movies do a good job of showing Vancouver, because that's where a lot of them are filmed.
There was this show called “Night Shift” that was supposed to be set in San Antonio… complete with mountains in the background. (It was filmed in Albuquerque and San Antonio has no mountains near it)
Stargate SG-1 portraying Colorado Springs as though it's flat terrain with no mountains in the background
First example is probably going to be Emily in Paris, it's a running gag on French media how distorted the image of the city is in that show.
The finnish youth movie Pitkä Kuuma Kesä, set in 1980's Joensuu, really portrays the cops in far too positive light. They werent as jovial and unviolent as in the movie - they employed their rubber batongs much more freely irl. I know from experience.
They are luckily far less violent and authoritarian in current times, per my own experience and being told by my friends.
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When I lived in San Francisco, I watched a movie in theater and an SF scene appeared. The audience cheered just from seeing the golden gate Bridge. The geography of the areas around the bridge are what get misrepresented the most, since most media slaps the bridge in the background.
I haven't seen one for my city yet. They've pretty much called it out as the shithole it is the few times I have seen my city mentioned by name in some popular media.
I'm American so I could list so many movies from Hollywood (ie made by my own country) that misrepresent this country. Just pick anything at random, really. They all make it look better than it is, even when showing off what sucks.
I went to the Museum of Liverpool today and they have a big section on the city in film and TV and it has appeared in a lot more than media than you'd think but largely standing in for elsewhere.
When it is featured as itself, the depictions are usually pretty accurate because they've been written by locals. I suppose the worst example is 51st State but that is over-the-top and so everything is rather cartoonish - my brother's friend was an extra in that gang of punks but was largely left on the cutting floor.
1940s New York for a chemically enhanced all American soldier, get yourself down to Liverpool docks. 😁
Yes, that is one of the more high profile example, along with places like St George's Hall standing in for Gotham in Batman. First Avenger was filmed in the Stanley Dock area and the adjacent dock road - apart from the big "Brooklyn" sign it's actually pretty unaltered as there's some interesting buildings down there (not sure if the hexagonal clock gets screentime you see the box bridge, the main dock walls, etc). There's even a nice family connection as my grandfather (who would go on to be a gateman on the dry dock further down the road) learned to swim in the Bramley Docks which are the next ones along.
That's lovely. You've reminded me, I live near Tilbury Docks which they passed off as Venice for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Just along the road from there is the Tilbury Fort which was turned into the Tibetan prison for Batman Begins.
Stuffs everywhere!
They are some great examples because most local people don't give it a second thought but some location scout saw that and went "well there's our Tibetan prison.
Liverpool has done well as a location because we were rather ignored for decades so the Victorian dock complex was left untouched, where, elsewhere, they'd have just been demolished and some soulless glass and concrete apartment blocks would have been built all over it.
Every single day an actor tries to do a Southern accent but most are cringeworthy to a Southerner. (US)
That's ok, southern accents are cringeworthy to the rest of us. Automatically knocks 30 points off someone's IQ.
Portlandia, there are definitely a lot more homeless here and there is certain neighborhoods you don't want to be in at night.
In the first season of peaky blinders. Whenever they spoke the Romani, they actually spoke really broken Romanian. They fixed it later on, but still.
There's an EP of South Park with some Romanian gymnast kids that didn't make much sense, they probably just picked a little known eastern european country at random for the joke and that was it. Then recently they made a parody of Andrew Tate and said he was romanian. That was a bit sad as well :p
Beyond that just references to Romania and Transylvania whenever there's a vampire or werewolf or whatever. Even Ron Weasley has a brother that studies dragons there, iirc. But those are amusing and fairly cool references so whatever.