filming locations Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Last week I went to see American Gangster and had a terrible problem figuring out where certain scenes were supposed to be taking place. Basically, I kept seeing familiar Brooklyn locations and assuming the scenes took place in Brooklyn. But in reality these scenes were supposed to be accepted as being in New Jersey. So, throughout the first half of the movie, I didn't get that Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) lived and worked in the Garden State. Instead, I kept associating him with McCarren Park and other Williamsburg locales. The main confusion, though, stemmed from one early scene in particular, which features the Williamsburg Bridge prominently in the background. Where in New Jersey could this be intended to be? Sure, I can understand filming in Brooklyn and pretending it's elsewhere, but to use such a glaring landmark seems strange. Had the scene been shot from the opposite direction, the bridge wouldn't have been there. And this is a film that apparently used a computer to digitally add in the World Trade Center. So, there had to be some seriousness when it came to the film's locations.

Many of us have watched movies where we know the exact filming location of a particular scene. Often, we notice the movie has taken liberties with the location, such as when a character leaves a familiar building and then appears to walk across the street, yet the other side of the street is (known to us to be) actually somewhere across town. Whatever, that's the magic of the movies. But it's different when the movie is substituting one location for another yet includes a well-known structure such as a bridge. On an elevated level, it'd be like filming in San Franciso and calling it Seattle, yet clearly featuring the Golden Gate Bridge in a number of shots. Okay, that is obviously a too extreme case, as everyone recognizes the Golden Gate and maybe only us New Yorkers recognize the Williamsburg. In any event, I ask you: when have a movie's filming locations been so off that they disrupted your whole sense of setting?

With shooting currently underway in New Haven, Connecticut, the Unofficial Indiana Jones Movie Blog has received an email from someone who claims to know where production will be heading once they're done filming in and around New Haven and on Yale's Old Campus. Here's what the scooper had to say: "I was at the Essex Steam Train in Connecticut today with my wife and son. There were signs going up for Bedford Train Station and Western Union. Essex Steam Train is a tourist attraction with an old steam engine that generally brings tourists and sightseers up and down the Connecticut River Valley. The train travels up to Deep River Connecticut to let passengers off to ride the Beck Thatcher River boat up the Connecticut River."

The spy goes on to say that Genre Productions crew members were all over the place, hanging signs and painting the station. Another interesting note for anyone looking to sneak in a few pics is that, according to the spy, "the layout of the area would make it difficult for the crew to completely seal off the area as there are multiple ways to approach the facility." I imagine all this is being set up for some sort of train station scene -- but apart from that, we have no idea how it figures into the plot. The blog also has a few links up to a number of photos from the New Haven set, including one crystal clear pic of the motorcycle Shia LaBeouf's character is riding in the photos leaked earlier this past weekend. Should anyone have information on this new location, definitely let us know. Indiana Jones 4 is set to hit theaters on May 22, 2008.