During my time at Microsoft I submitted a code review with an updated mapping library we got from a 3rd party. The auto review bot flagged the the changes with a "Geopolitical Issue" or something like that. Turned out it was an icon for Taiwan's flag.

I don't remember if we deleted the icon or just renamed it, but the product never ended up shipping, so it probably doesn't matter much.

At least 30% of my enjoyment of Venom came from it being set in SF and me going “Hey look I know that corner!” or “Wow we’ve been to that restaurant, they totally used a different place for that shop front!”

Seeing your town in a movie is incredibly rewarding. Just like a musician is basically required to shout “Hello $PLACE” at some point during a performance

PS: for the downvoters, that’s what the linked article cites as the reason that movie gets extra scenes in China. Chinese audiences liked seeing their city in a scene that Western audiences didn’t care about.

A good chunk of the latest Mission Impossible movie was this for me with Paris, especially with places where I've walked around, like the seat of the ministry of finance along the Seine. Of course the path taken didn't make any sense, but that wasn't much of an issue.

Also I had a reaction like "that's not how French cops operate when moving an inmate!"

There is also that the CCP won’t approve a movie for release in China unless it has Chinese scenes.

It's not the only conditions, there's also conditions like positive portrayal of the CCP gov and no Chinese as a bad guy and so on.

Yea, it's one of the fun things about living in New York. Me watching the first Avengers: How'd they get from Upper East to Washington Sq in like 20 seconds?

It's one of the terrible things about TV shows and movies in my opinion. So boring seeing NYC over and over again, not to mention all the inconsistencies that pull you out of the movie. I'm even tired of all the Apple TV screensavers of NYC/SF/Dubai.

Let's see some new places from South America or Africa or Europe or anywhere else.

And how do the protagonists in US TV series and films always just immediately get a parking spot just in front of their destination??

They have film permits, of course.

Maren Ade’s excellent movie “Toni Erdman” [1] from a few years ago was taking place in the city I live in, Bucharest, and one of the scenes was set in a mall at whose cinema Multiplex I actually saw the film. It was strange, when that scene came up I said to myself: “hey, this is happening just a few meters away from I where bought the popcorn”.

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4048272/?ref_=m_nmfmd_dr_1

One of my favourite Youtube channels, Every Frame A Painting, talks about this in Vancouver - except that the movies are rarely set in Vancouver:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU

You have movies where the country of the 'bad guys' was changed in post-production to North Korea to appease China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_(2012_film)

Fawlty Towers when dubbed in Spain changed Manuel (a dumb waiter from Barcelona I think) to be Mexican.

But the Swedish Chef is still, surprisingly, the Swedish Chef in Sweden, which seems to be a cruel joke. https://slate.com/culture/2012/08/swedish-chef-what-do-swede...

In the Italian version of A Fish Called Wanda the mock-Italian is replaced with mock-Spanish.

I don't remember a lot about Looper but I feel like more exposition of JGL's "downward spiral" would have really helped clear things up for me -- for example, how anybody can go from looking like JGL to looking like 2010s Bruce Willis.