Oil Drum Lane

Full confession. For a long time I had a professional involvement as well, on the sidelines of the housebuilding and regeneration business.  This is a country in which property ownership is an addiction. One result is that we have some of the world's highest land values and more of the price you pay goes into paying for the site and less into the building itself. (Dry economics. I will unpack it in a postscript). A result is that most of the buildings are small and unattractive so a dark art must be used to pe rsuade people that they are worth the price. I call it pyschotropicgeography. Psychogeography is about how places affect our emotions and behaviour. You will find my view of it here: Psychogeography - Without Enthusiasm    It suggests that you build an image of a place to please yourself, with arcane and hidden histories, ley lines, ghosts or whatever.  Psychotropic drugs have the same aim.  Psychotropicgeography marries the two in the interest of sel...

  Long ago, before films became movies, I was a Marvel comics fan, so I went to see their self-satirising film Deadpool & Wolverine. Part of the attraction was the imagined parallel ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’, difficult to realise in a comic, and which in this viewing was a bleak and apocalyptic place. The screenplay comes second to the scenery for me, but this offered plenty of laughs and had an unexpected star in ‘Dogpool’, real name Peg, who had been named the ‘Ugliest Dog in Britain’. Dogpool and Deadpool  It seemed unlikely that they would ship Peg from Britain to Hollywood, so I went down the rabbit hole to discover that a large part of this Hollywood blockbuster had in fact been filmed at Bovingdon, an old airfield near Hemel and the M25 and which was no stranger to filmmakers. Years ago, Superman’s adopted family home was built there. Smallville. Near Hemel.  While most blockbuster films are conceived, written and acted by Americans, a surprising amount of th...

Hogwarts at Leavesden You will have guessed that the Potter films were masterminded from the Warner Studios at Leavesden near Watford. It is one of many films brought to life in the studios around London.  Here are just a few that you wouldn't have thought would be among them.   All focus on the creation of imagined worlds. Most  are blockbusters, but others are here simply because I admired their creativity.    Barbie (2023) The Warner studios in Leavesden near Watford are far more than the Harry Potter experience which, by the way, is fun, even for old gits like me who haven't seen most of the films. They are also huge, but not quite the size of Pinewood. Link:  Warner Bros Leavesden Barbieland is another example of Hollywood satirising itself. It was created in Leavesden, Watford as a physical set, slightly out of scale with the actors to exacerbate the 'toy' effect and augmented by CGI. The scenes set in the Disney HQ in Los Angeles were in Los Angeles,...