Cultural Geography Blog

It's 35 years since I started listening to Bob... and he's a powerhouse live...

Thanks to Rafael De Miguel González , President of EuroGeo for the tipoff to a newish AI tool to explore how 'ready' a particular area is for becoming a 15 minute city.  He recently met the architect of the idea: Carlos Moreño. 15 min city AI is a nice free AI tool. It explores a range of amenities including transportation connections, healthcare and entertainment, and how accessible these are from each part of the area within 15 minutes travel time.  It would perhaps be a good basis for starting to look at '15 minute cities' and students could then carry out local fieldwork to 'ground truth' the accuracy of the tool. Ely scores 75% , which is quite a good score.  You can see its rating below and the reasons why it scored as it did. How well does your local place score? 

Nosferatu was my first film seen at the cinema this year: the latest from Robert Eggers. I've seeen all his previous films, and he set the tone for his output with 'The Lighthouse'. Nosferatu was an atmospheric retelling of the Dracula story, particularly the unofficial silent film made in 1922. There are a few maps, including one of Transylvania , which is never named, but shown.  The lighting, costumes etc are excellent at providing the atmosphere, particularly Count Orlok. The film particularly comes to life when Willem Dafoe arrives, as an alchemist.  There is also an excellent scene on the ship carrying Orlok to his new home, and crashing into the dock with thousands of live rats carrying the plague. The film is described as being "fuelled by folklore". Willem Dafoe is interviewed here. The Independent gave it five stars. Source:  https://jacobin.com/2024/12/nosferatu-robert-eggers-film-review The trailer is here:

A Christmas Day  TV highlight was the first new Wallace and Gromit film for many years. At their fastest rate, the 200-person production team for "Vengeance Most Fowl" produced two minutes of film per week. Vengeance most Fowl brought back Feathers McGraw, and managed to fit in a great many film references and nods to other programs and earlier scenarios. It was a wonderful achievement. There were some comments on AI as well. Norbot is described as an AI villain. "I love the fact that we have technology.  We have to just sometimes ask: is it always enhancing our lives and our relationships, or is it somehow diminishing them in some way?" Nick Park

  2025 is a time to take stock. We are a quarter of the way through the century, and the last few years have been a bit of a roller coaster ride for the planet, and not in a good way. Whatever you are up to, don't forget to sign up to my new Substack, which is now available for you to read. For years, this blog had an option to subscribe using Feedburner. This sent an email digest of posts to anyone who subscribed. Blogger removed that option, and there hasn't been anything to replace it, so I'm hoping that my new Substack will fill that gap. I've started my new Substack account, and you can visit it now. Wednesday will be the day that I publish each new weekly update. This will include a number of features: blog digest update on projects some nice images And other elements as the year progresses...

“Writing is a hypnotic act.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez As it's the first week of the Christmas holidays, I've been diving into a series I've been anticipating for a while. I've also been re-reading some of the reviews and the genesis of this adaptation of a book that Garcia-Marquez himself felt was unadaptable. He said that any film of the book would need to be a hundred years long to do it justice... It's the Netflix adaptation of the classic 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' - a masterpiece. It tells the story of the Buendia family over five generations. It is dense and magical and powerful in its description of the growth of Macondo, a town which is founded by the Buendias and others, and slowly gets drawn into the politics of the country in a story as complicated as the family tree. I'm four hours in, and so far it's doing a good job of capturing the myriad storylines and set piece moments. Vanity Fair piece goes into detail on the production of th...