Great places in movies that you want to visit or live in

Cafe Society
1

What’s a great location you’ve seen on film - fictitious or real - that you absolutely love, want to visit or live in?

My picks -

Lothlorien from the Lord of the Rings trilogy - I want a house in the trees with all that beautiful Elven architecture.

Dickie Greenleaf’s villa from The Talented Mr Ripley - and if Dickie (Jude Law) himself comes with it, all the better.

The library from Wings of Desire - Seeing libraries and bookshops in films make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Frank Doyle’s (Anthony Hopkins) antiquarian bookshop and Helene Hanff’s (Anne Bancroft) writer’s digs in 84 Charing Cross Road.

Kate Wheeler’s (Cate Blanchett) kitchen in Bandits - I love big kitchens.

The seaside house from Dying Young - I watched this movie over and over because I loved all the houses in it. And yes, that’s the official story.

  • Skijumper
2

In real life, I have to get to San Francisco one of these days. I think I’ll like it a lot. Lot of naturally beautiful spots I need to see - the Painted Desert comes to mind. Angel Falls. Hell, I live in the same state as Niagara Falls and haven’t been there - though it’s a LONG-ass way from me.

3

Shortly after I moved out here, a friend of mine took me on a Harold & Maude tour through San Francisco and Marin. The thing about SF is that it’s actually cooler (in both senses) than it looks in the movies. Make sure you visit the Mechanical Museum at Sutro point, and make sure you bring a jacket.

My choices would be:
The Overlook Hotel from The Shining
Toontown from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Coruscant from Attack of the Clones (assuming I didn’t have to interact with any of the cast…)
Rivendell from The Fellowship of the Rings
The bathhouse from Spirited Away

4

I’ve had serious house-lust for:

Bag End in LOTR. With just a little more ceiling height, I think I could live there happily.

Howard’s End in Howard’s End.

Manderly in the 1939 Rebecca, but I’d need an enormous staff to keep the place up so it really wouldn’t be feasible these days. Sigh.

5

NYC

6

There are actually 2 Bag End sets. One is Hobbit-sized (so Gandalf hits his head) and the other is large so that normal sized people will appear Hobbit-sized. They were going to trash the whole thing after shooting was finished, so Peter Jackson bought it (the big one). He has it in storage and plans to have it put together somewhere, someday.

As you say “Sigh.” Now if it could just really BE in Hobbiton.

7

The house in the bay on Capri in Le Mepris (Contempt) with Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccolli. It’s a secluded beach house on a rock overseeing a gorgeous light blue sea. I’m actually considering going to Capri for the holidays to see what it’s like.

8

For fantasy I would love to see earth in the time of the STNG of Picard et al. (tho the constant threat of it being destroyed would make me a bit nervous).

As for a real place, the final scene in the Bourne Identity takes place in seaside town which may or may not be Mykonos, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=125307&highlight=bourne It is one of the coolest looking most beautiful things I have ever seen.

9

You can!

Timberline Lodge, Mt Hood, Oregon

10

Rivendell.

11

Ever since I saw Jim Jarmusch’s “Night on Earth,” I’ve wanted to visit Helsinki.
I was living in beautiful sunny California when I saw the movie with a friend. During the Helsinki segment, my friend whispered, “I miss snow.”

12

Just about anywhere in Middle Earth from Lord of the Rings: Mines of Moria, Misty Mountains, Anduin River, Hobbiton, Helm’s Deep, Bree, Lothlorien, Rivendell…

Any or all of those off-the-beaten-path Caribbean locations in Captain Ron.

And since no one’s mentioned it yet… HOGWARTS!

13

Prince Edward Island from Anne of Green Gables-and it really exists! I would love to live in Avonlea!

The estate in The Secret Garden.

The beautiful villa on Naboo in Attack of the Clones.

14

Edoras, Rivendell or Minas Tirith. (The Two Towers and FOTR)

15

The Great Chocolate Factory

16

Superman’s ice palace

So many to chose from in the Star Trek Universe, but if I could track down that Nexus ribbon (from the movie Generations) I would be happy.

17

Tatooine

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My first thought on the thread title, Hobbiton. So I’d live there and take the odd vacation to the bath house from Spirited Away. I just hope I don’t get put next to a stench demon.

19

The first apartment Woody Allen’s character inhabits, in Manhattan – the one with the abundant bookshelves and the cast-iron[IIRC] spiral staircase. Also, the beachhouse from Interiors.

Most of the locations in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate – especially the exquisitely ruined Portuguese villa and the luxuriously appointed office/library of the Paris collector. Also the Sanmartin compound outside of Paris… now, that’s serious real estate!

Pedro Almodovar’s Madrid – to take a tour of the locations and interiors in general. Everything would likely be very colorful and a bit over-the-top. Of course, I’d get around in the “Mambo Taxi” … :slight_smile:

The Florence pensione from A Room With a View, preferably as a newlywed.

From The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda’s tiny home in the Degobah swamp. Taking Force lessons from the Master Jedi himself… it’s the ultimate sabbatical trip! :smiley:

The ski chalet on top of a very big Swiss Alp, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. (Great views, but I don’t know what I’d do there, since I don’t know how to ski. Probably suffer ze altitude sickness and play ze shuffleboard.)

The English mansion in the detective-genre spoof Murder By Death, and the Transylvanian Gothic castle in Young Frankenstein – for their funhouse layouts and kitschy decor.

John Cusack’s Chicago apartment and store (“Championship Vinyl”) from High Fidelity. Just to, you know, hang out with Rob Gordon for a few hours… look through his personal record collection, admire the posters, go through the used bins, score a couple of rarities, chat about the music scene…

The run-down, rustic Penrith cottage from Withnail & I. Oddly enough, I read about three years ago that the cottage had recently come up for sale (and was still in the same condition it had been in the movie) and was attracting fans of the cult film from Sweden, Germany, the USA, Australia, Japan, Brazil,… all of them telling God-knows-what stories in order to get a tour. (Doubtless they were saying, “I’m not from London, you know.”) The real estate agent must’ve been going nuts!

“French Castle” from Monty Python & the Holy Grail. (This would be the ultimate geek tourist videocamera joke… go up to the top, lean your face over the wall, and let loose with a barrage of insults een zis out-RAG-ous akzent…) [Yes, I know the DVD has a locations tour and shows us armchair travellers what that castle is really like, and what it’s really called.]

20

Absolutely, SolGrundy. Everytime I see that movie, either one, (or read the book, for that matter), I think of how cool it would be to live there.

And I’ve got to second Guinastasia’s pick of Mistelthwaite (sp?} Manor from The Secret Garden. I think part of the attraction to that one is that the place is half-abandoned, and abandoned houses have always been particularly interesting to me (and then there’s the added bonuses that it’s located on the moors in England, has tons of property and is enormous, of course).

[hijack]Wasn’t the house used in the movie version of The Secret Gardem also used as the setting for the movie version of Manderly in Rebecca? Either way (whether it’s the same house or not, or whether you’re talking the book or the movie)…Manderly, too. [/hijack].

In addition, I think it would also be pretty cool to live in:

  1. Roland’s world in The Dark Tower Series, even if it is twisted and terrifying.

  2. Any of the big manor houses from Wuthering Heights.

  3. From the little I’ve heard about the place out in California that the Jefferson Airplane had…you can add that to my list.

  4. The place the hunter in the short-story The Most Dangerous Game lives in.

  5. Narnia. Can’t believe nobody’s said that yet.

  6. Tara, from Gone With the Wind. (Although…my real first name is Tara and it would be sort of weird having the same name as the house you live in…“Hey, we’re all having dinner in Tara tonight, you coming?” or, “I spent the night in Tara.” Wait…maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.)

  7. The Beast’s castle in Beauty and the Beast.

  8. The library in The Pagemaster.

By the way, great thread, Skijumper!