Tag Archives: Article

Mapping Fountain of Youth – Map-It

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TL;DR – Today, we map the journey of the crew in Fountain of Youth.

Mapping the Fountain of Youth –

I realised today, as I was watching today’s titular movie, that I had not made a map in a while. Sure, I have a couple that I am still working on that you should see soon, but a fresh map with a fresh source that has been a while. Now, if you have read our review of Fountain of Youth, you will know that we did not have a great time with the film. But that does not mean that there is nothing worth mapping.

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Explosions, Guns, and Punches, Oh My. The Best Action of 2024

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A good action sequence is genuinely impressive to watch, as it can be as expansive as explosions crashing across the screen or more intimate, like a duel between two people. This gives the best action scenes such a range, and in 2024, we were given some unique spectacles.

For me, the best action scenes excel in every element, whether that be live actions, special effects, digital effects, or animation, and bring every facet to shine. It is also the category that looks at some of the department’s people don’t often fully understand, like stunt coordination or the 2nd unit.

2024 was the year that action dominated both the big and small screen, so much so it was hard to get this category down to a shortlist, given how many good examples we got. However, power through I must, and here we go with the rich and varied world of action.  

Our Highly Commended Films in 2024 are: A Quiet Place: Day One, Civil War, Deadpool & Wolverine, Dune: Part Two, The Fall Guy, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Jackpot!, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Sixty Minutes & Thelma

Our Highly Commended TV in 2024 are: Black Doves, Citadel Honey Bunny, Dune Prophecy, Fallout, The Gentlemen, Halo, Reacher, Shōgun & X-Men ’97

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Ellie and Joel’s Journey in The Last of Us Season 1 – Map-It

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TL;DR – We chart Ellie and Joel’s Journey and the world of The Last of Us Season 1

Running for safety.

Mapping The Last of Us –

I have fundamentally enjoyed the first season of The Last of Us and its romp across a ruined America. Knowing that we would start in Boston and end up in [spoilers] Salt Lake City, I wanted to chart their route across the continent.

To do that, I needed to update the North American map, given it needed to be the main focus, and for the first time, all the necessary state markers were to be shown. I was glad that all the episodes lined up with the geography.

I have noted every location visited in the show, as well as any that were mentioned in the dialogue. We did get to see a Fireflies map Kin. However, it is not clear what the locations on the map equate to. Are they radio towers, safe houses, or cells in QZs? We don’t know, so I have flagged them with an icon unless more information becomes apparent.    If I missed a reference in the show, please let me know because I want this to be the most complete map possible.

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PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 1 – Explore-It

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TL;DR – We dip our toes into what Melbourne has to offer.

Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.

The Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre

PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 1 –

When you work in the games and pop culture space, you hear of the joy that is PAX, but I have never experienced it myself. I had set my sights on visiting it back in 2020, but you know what happened in 2021. But there was hope that 2022 was the year for me. So I booked my tickets back in March and hoped that the world would hold itself together till then and it kind of did. So in today’s and the next couple of Explore-It’s, we will take a look at our time down past the daylight savings divide to a city that has an entirely different seagull-to-pigeon ratio than I have ever seen.

Dune Messiah

However, before you can explore Melbourne, you need to get there, and since we still do not have any high-speed rail in Australia, it is time to board a plane. Given the time stuck waiting, I thought I would catch up on some reading, and when in doubt, it is Dune time.

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Humankind – Map-It

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TL;DR – We map all of the eras of Humankind all in one map … okay many maps.

The Mediterranean Map

Mapping Humankind

One of the joys I get is mapping out universes, while I have charted out movie universes like the MCU and Grand Designs. However, one of my favourite things has been charting how 4X video games explore the world and its history. Today we are looking at the next entry in this series, charting all of Humankind from Amplitude Studios and Sega.

I had started making this map several times before running into roadblocks, like how do you make a map that shows Russia/Soviet Union or England/Great Britain? The way I previously fixed this issue with my Civilization map didn’t work here, and I started to wonder if I was Wile E. Coyote hitting my head against every ACME invention. However, one day it all clicked together, so I started down this road.

I worked it out by having a separate map for each era, all the cities, cultures, independent peoples, and wonders. Then we smashed it all together at the end in a wild kaleidoscope of overlapping entries. While putting this all together, I was still concerned it would not work. However, it kind of does. Before we start, I have to thank the Humankind Wiki for collating all the cities for me so I did not have to dive into the code. With that in mind, let us dive into the world of Humankind, which includes all the information from the base game and the Cultures of Africa Pack and Cultures of Latin America Pack DLCs. You can also see links to all the information in the map in our Humankind Cartographic Educational Database.

While all attempts have been made to ensure that everything is accurately placed, putting this together meant working from multiple sources, map projections, and sometimes not firm locations. As such, no matter how much you try, there might be slight discrepancies. With that in mind, let us dive into the maps.

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Mapping Infinity: The Cartography of the MCU Spider-Man: No Way Home Update – Map-It

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TL;DR – We continue our goal to map the Marvel Cinematic Universe by mapping Phase 4 up to Spider-Man: No Way Home

Spider-Man: No Way Home. Image Credit: Sony Pictures.

Mapping Infinity –

Back in 2018, when the Black Panther can out, I took the first attempt to chart the MCU. That first Map was quite basic compared to the work I would do with cartography going forward, but it is a nice step on my cartography journey. We updated the Map in 2019 when Endgame came out, and already New York was getting dense, but we have yet to look at Phase Four. Well, that is something we fix today.       

From the Map, the first thing that should be clear is that we have only charted the locations visited on Earth (Earth-199999 or Midgard, or Terra or Planet C-53, to be specific). So, my apologies to Xandar and Old Asgard in advance that we will not be looking at the greater galactic universe. But it does mean that every film is represented in this Map, though Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 only make one entry.   

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Article – Masters of Cinematic Music: Ramin Djawadi

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TL;DR – We explore the wonders of Ramin Djawadi’s musical score through the lens of Light of the Seven

Masters of Cinematic Music: Ramin Djawadi. Image Credit: HBO.

Article –

Today we are starting out the first entry in a series about modern cinematic composers. For me at least, one of the factors that emotionally connects me to a piece of visual media, whether that be, a video game, a television show, or a film is the music. The right musical choice can make or break scenes and can be one of the factors that make these moments resonate across the media landscape. We all remember that first time we heard the Imperial March or The Avengers theme explodes onto the screen. They help us get lost on the high seas, traverse galaxies far, far away, or in our first example help us delve into a world of fire and ice. Because this is an article about music, I have added links to the songs in question so you can listen along.

Ramin Djawadi is a German/Iranian composer and the key musical voice of Game of Thrones, the hugely successful HBO series based of George RR Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series. As a composer, Ramin has been working for a long time in the musical world starting first as an assistant and then creating addition music for films such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Ned Kelly, working under one of the defining voices in modern composition Hans Zimmer. Before moving onto working on his own films like Iron Man and Pacific Rim.

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Article – Films, an Exercise in Selling you Stuff.

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TL;DR – While films are here to entertain, they also have an increased chance of selling you all sorts of things

CAT in Skyfall. Image Credit: MGM.

Article –

Today one of the biggest films in recent memory Avengers: Endgame has launched and with it comes reviews, calls for no spoilers, marketing and PR, but also a similar trend we see with every major movie release recently and that is comments about product placement. This is something that is not new for the movie universe, indeed it was being lampooned all the way back in 1992 in Wayne’s World. However, it does feel like it is becoming more of an issue these days, or at the very least it is more in your face.

So why is this important? Well, for many reasons, the first being that companies are using films to pepper you with ads when your subconscious has lowered its usual defences that it uses to ignore advertisements. Sometimes these are very obvious like when on Chuck they would stop to explain the Subway sandwich they are having, or on Cougar Town when they would stop to explain the Subway sandwich they are having, or on Community when they … okay look Subway does this a lot. Fun fact, when writing this article I double checked I was right about the Subway integration and lo and behold before the YouTube videos of the shows was a new ad for Subway. While this is all a bit silly, it is also important because advertisers pay a lot of money to do it. PQ Media found a 14% increase in spending on product placement in 2017 alone.

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Map-It – Slow Mo Time: Mapping Planet Slow Mo

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TL;DR – Today we chart every location visited during the Slow Mo Guy’s ‘Planet Slow Mo’ series

Tank shooting. Image Credit: The Slow Mo Guys.

Article –

Article –

Today we are exploring something close to my heart. One of my first ever dives into the world of YouTube back in the day was this little channel (well not so little anymore) of these two guys out of Britain filming things in slow motion.

As a film making technique I have always been captivated by slow motion and to see it used to capture weird and wonderful sights is something I have always love. Over the years whenever there is a new video I always make time to watch it and to this day they are always amazing like creating a fire tornado or blowing up 10ft balloons or even exploding airbags.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine First Look and Analysis – Civilization VI: Gathering Storm

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Eleanor’s Bonuses

Eleanor of Aquitaine leader of France in Civilisation 6 Gathering Storm


Civilization Leader: Eleanor of Aquitaine
Leader Agenda: 
English Capital: 
French Capital:  
Leader Bonus: Court of Love – Great works in Eleanor’s cities leads to a loyalty deficient in other civilization cities withing 9 tiles. If a city leaves a civilizastion and Eleanor is the the Civ with the most loyalty pressure the city skips the Free City phase.

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