Cultural Geography Blog

Out to Cinema City in Norwich yesterday to see the new Wes Anderson film on its opening weekend (and a week ahead of its UK opening). It was another typical Wes Anderson film, with his usual precision, symmetrical framing, brightly coloured cinematography, back-and-forth dialogue, detailed typography on signage and mapping, and unusual, dark humour.  The opening credits are a vertical look down at a bathroom where Zsa Zsa Korda, the main progagonist is bathing after surviving a plane crash - another assassination attempt. After these he briefly goes to heaven where he meets various characters including God, played by Bill Murray.  I also liked Michael Cera's performance as Bjorn. Source:  https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/a64793713/wes-anderson-phoenician-scheme-sets/ Image: TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. Here's the trailer, which gives little away of the actual plot. I also picked up a free film strip which were being given away on the op...

Very much looking forward to visiting this particular city...

Some of you will be familiar with the films of Wes Anderson. They are meticulously made and composed, with each shot having a particular visual style and often a symmetry about them.  His latest film is called 'The French Dispatch'. I saw it on opening weekend. There is a great deal of geographical interest here, from an early travelogue of the fictional city where the action takes place, to a later story involving the kidnapping of the son of the local Police inspector. The weekend before last, I travelled down to London to have a fairly cultural weekend with my son with a film focus, and one of the things we took in was an expedition at 180 Strand of props from the film. We had been to a previous exhibition of props from the animated film 'Isle of Dogs' which Wes made, but this was on a whole other level... once again there was a themed restaurant / cafe that was serving food. The whole film was told as you moved through the expedition with large spaces filled with p...

Caught the new Wes Anderson film  last weekend and it's rather wonderful.  There are the usual Wes Anderson touches, with immaculately framed scenes, shoot-outs, animation scenes and great performances from his usual ensemble cast with some new additions. I loved the Owen Wilson travelogue of Ennui, France. The cinema also had plenty of postcards of the lead characters to pick up and here's Owen Wilson 's tube-map themed one. I'm heading to an exhibition of the props from the film in London in a couple of weeks.I hope it's as good as the one for the 'Isle of Dogs' film. Here's a taster...

Very much looking forward to the release of this film. Wes Anderson is a visual genius and the reviews from Cannes have been excellent.

I've been telling everyone I've seen for the last month that they have to go and see Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs' . This is still showing in some cinemas as I write this blogpost, and is a real tour de force of creativity and filmmaking. It's a stop-motion animation which involved hundreds of people for a year and a half, and the creation of tens of thousand of bespoke props and different methods of filming at different scales. The story concerns the cat loving Kobayashi dynasty, and the fate of the Mayor's son and his dog, alongside a group of other dogs who have been exiled to Trash Island. My son and I visited the exhibition of sets and figures from the film, which had just opened at the time, and we were able to go in, and collect some memorabilia. We went to see it at Store X on the Strand in London, which was a temporary space. The exhibits, like the plane crash site above, were incredibly detailed and I loved the Taiko drummers who open the film....