MOVIE LONDON/THE BIG CITY IN FILM

Pity it isn’t Christmas because with this one book you could cross half a dozen or more names off your present list.

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Obviously it would help if they were movie fanatics, the kind of people who not only find it amusing to discover where certain movie scenes were shot in London but actually absolutely MUST know!

But Movie London has the alluring charm of the best of the List type of books, which makes browsing fun for even the least cinematic.

And it covers enough films – more than 500 - that everyone, even someone who pretends to hate movies, will find dozens of familiar titles, if only from TV screenings.

There is ample attention to recent films, which are likely to attract the most attention, with notes on obvious choices such as Hugh Grant’s blue door in Notting Hill – you probably know it already – to more tricky locatons, including the settings for Children of Men.

But the past gets a look in too, with separate sections for Hitchcock’s London and Swinging Sixties London, as well as scenes from early horror films and gangster dramas.

The book should even be of interest to short-term visitors to London as it comes complete with some tourist information as well.

Author Reeves has no trouble covering the metropolis. He is, after all, also the mind behind the much more ambitious, and very popular Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations.

Movie London is out now in paperback, 160 pages, priced at £9.99.

For online help, Reeve runs a locations website

Posted May 28, 2008.