The moon still rises on everybody else

[sovay]

I don't want to make any claims for stamina in case tomorrow when I have an appointment I can't leave the house, but for months it has reliably exhausted me to walk around my own neighborhood and after two days out and about I did spend most of this one curled up, but I also left the house in the midafternoon to acquire a plate of baba dip from Noor because I was jonesing for eggplant and later walked back out on a fish-oriented supermarket run in the thickening rain. I stayed an extra hour at my desk because Hestia was in full Llyan mode, swattily objecting when I ceased from petting her as she purred like a turbine underneath the mermaid lamp. The evening's bedmaking was similarly delayed by her commandeering of the clean laundry with her precise and possessively kneading small paws. It does feel like a change that I am not utterly wiped out by household chores. Now if my brain would just decide to rejoin the party. In that vague direction, I am continuing to enjoy Apple TV's Widow's Bay (2026–) which delighted me beyond measure this week not even by featuring a sea hag who explodes when spear-gunned into tide-flat brine—I treasured a Magic card along those lines—but by having shot a scene at Half Moon Beach in Gloucester. I recognized it from its boulders of Cape Ann granite: I have climbed over their tectonic jumble and dozed on them and been photographed on them by spatch, the sticky basement rock of my local microcontinent. I am not used to fictitious islands confected out of coasts I know. It makes me want to visit them. In the meantime I read about the doused and sunken chain of the New England Seamounts.

Comments

[naraht]

Wonderful that it's actually shot in New England, that's so rare with American shows. I don't think I've ever seen anything on screen that looks like where I grew up in New Hampshire,* and I always feel resentful of that lack of representation when I watch British shows that are so faithful to the many different places in the UK.

(Slow Horses for example: season 2 had a train journey to Stroud, and not only did they actually film in Stroud, but they filmed at the correct London train station. And their chase scenes around London are actually geographically consistent, as far as I can tell, which is amazing.)

(* Everyone always says On Golden Pond which, fair enough, but also it's a lake. Not much in the way of human geography.)

[sovay]

Wonderful that it's actually shot in New England, that's so rare with American shows.

Yes! I spent as much time during the first two episodes exclaiming over the geography of the show as discussing its premise and plot. It's entirely, instantly recognizable. The angle of the light, the color of the ocean, the telephone poles and wires, the architecture of the houses. The granite. I believe the whole thing to have been shot in Massachusetts. Some of the rest of the island is identifiably Rockport and I haven't been there since 2012.

I don't think I've ever seen anything on screen that looks like where I grew up in New Hampshire, and I always feel resentful of that lack of representation when I watch British shows that are so faithful to the many different places in the UK.

I sort of collect Boston-set movies that inhabit the real city—The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) and Between the Lines (1977) are the first off the top of my head, although Mystery Street (1950) captured the only location footage I have ever seen of Scollay Square. The Europeans (1979) is accurately set in the wider suburbs of Greater Boston except for the ringer of the Customs House in Salem which was too fun to object to. In terms of television, however, I agree with you that every single street shot in Leverage (2008–12) was rough.

(Slow Horses for example: season 2 had a train journey to Stroud, and not only did they actually film in Stroud, but they filmed at the correct London train station. And their chase scenes around London are actually geographically consistent, as far as I can tell, which is amazing.)

(I am delighted to hear it. I have seen the first four seasons of Slow Horses, but for obvious reasons cannot evaluate their psychogeography myself.)

Everyone always says On Golden Pond which, fair enough, but also it's a lake. Not much in the way of human geography.

I will shout out if I ever see anything in that region for lived-in real!

filmed in Gloucester (but not)

[lauradi7dw]

Not really recommending, but I was going to say "The Proposal" (2009) with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds was filmed in Gloucester. I just looked and it was actually Manchester-by-the-Sea and Rockport standing in for Sitka, AK. Thanks, MA film incentives.

Re: filmed in Gloucester (but not)

[sovay]

"The Proposal" (2009) with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds was filmed in Gloucester. I just looked and it was actually Manchester-by-the-Sea and Rockport standing in for Sitka, AK. Thanks, MA film incentives.

I feel like viewers from the North Shore and viewers from Sitka would both be confused by the ecology.