Come Here To Me!

World Film Locations: Dublin Edited by Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan (Intellect, Oct 2011)

Images of Dublin city in film and music videos has always been an interest of mine. Over time, I’ve tried to do features on both on this blog. The latter (see end of page) being far more successful.

Thankfully a duo have put together a remarkable 128 page book, focusing on films either shot or set in Dublin, which is so far beyond anything that I could ever wish to do on CHTM!

Entitled World Film Locations: Dublin and part of the series of the same name, the book is a “collection of over forty reviews of scenes from films … illustrated by images from the scenes in question, and photographs of locations, often as they are today.”

I’ve been lucky enough to have a quick glance at the finished piece. It features many of my favourite Dublin related movies – Educating Rita (1983), The Commitments (1991), The Snapper (1993), The General (1998), Intermission (2003) and Once (2006) but also many more that I have never heard of or got around to seeing yet – Girl With Green Eyes (1964), Pigs (1984), A Man Of No Importance (1994), Accelerator (1999) and Six Shooter (2004).

Each film is given two pages, the first an introduction to the movie itself and a background to the scene while the second page gives vividly, clear screen grabs of the scenes in question (with a timecode for the true anoraks!)

The book also includes seven two-page essays by leading Irish film critics and writers, the most interesting being on the representation of Dublin’s music scene on the big screen, Dublin films concerned with revolution and rebellion and the image of the  gangster figure in Dublin cinema.

Kudos to Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan for bringing out such a fascinating and much needed piece of work.

You can pre-order the book (RRP £9.95) at the publisher’s website here.