Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Stop Me If You’ve Seen This One Before…



I love this street corner. It’s the backdrop for so many low-budget movies. It’s a go-to for video game designers. Heck, it’s so famous it appears in more than one graphic novel too.


Nothing says “historical fantasy” like spotting this street corner. Clearly, timber and plaster cross all time-space continuums.  Hey, if I got sucked into a vortex and survived being spat out the other side, I would be relieved, relieved, to see my favorite street corner.

Firstly, there’s a good chance that there are inhabitants with questionable hygiene beyond those doors. This is beneficial for me, because I’ve likely wet myself during my interstellar travel. I’ll blend right in.

Secondly, the timber is not charred. This means the residents of said street corner have not pissed off the dragon or the dragoons. This buys me a little time before I get chained up in someone’s or something’s dungeon/cave.

Thirdly, note the absence of offal and personal refuse on the streets. There is some sort of sanitation plan at work here. There’s a good chance I will not be struck down by whatever highly communicable plague.  

So, tell me, does this street corner look familiar to you? Let me know the book /movie / cartoon / game / comic / Halloween village / etc.

P.S. Mad props to the artist Sangit for rendering of this more detailed depiction of the very popular street.

9 comments:

  1. Looks vaguely familiar, but I'm not *sure* I've ever been there -

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  2. I'm thinking...Van Helsing? That looks an awful lot like the village in Van Helsing that the vampires descended upon.

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  3. Lawzy, lawzy, Hairy Hugh! ~fans self~ Oh, we were talking about the set. Right, right, right.

    I think Kerry needs a late night viewing of that set (any manly morphing is purely a fringe benefit, you can thank Laura later).

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  4. Looks like Hogsmeade (or whatever that wizard village is called) to me. Don't see Snape though..... *sigh*

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  5. That's so funny. I always wondered how that particular architecture got so iconic - was it the streudel fantasies?

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  6. Oh, Snape! I confess to being a Sirius Black fangurl...and a strudel fan, as a matter of fact.

    (wait for it...)

    A Sirius Strudel fan.

    ~flees~

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  7. It looks like the quiet village just before they gather into a mob and race torch-laden after the Frankenstein monster (in whichever version you like best). Maybe those early horror movies started the icon.

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  8. Oh, well spotted, BE! Mary Shelly may have written that famous book while staring at Lake Geneva, but clearly film producers couldn't leave ye' ol' medieval streets out of the production!

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