Travellers' ChecksFilm location guides: your holiday destination on the big screen

Lonely Planet has just published the first edition of Film and TV Locations: A Spotter’s Guide. Probably of more interest to the average reader than last year’s companion volume Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide, it contains the international locations of supposedly “iconic scenes” from 92 feature films and 11 television series.

The photography is fine, and some of the selections are quite interesting, but at 18x18cm, it’s too small to be a coffee-table book, and details about the locations and the films themselves are sketchy. Visit shop.lonelyplanet.com for a preview.

Perhaps the most absorbing movie-location website is Reel Streets, which provides then-and-now comparison screenshots and photos of many thousands of film locations. Online for more than a decade, this site originally featured only British productions and charged a £10 annual membership fee, but it now includes international movies and is free of charge. Visitors are encouraged to contribute international location photos of their own, and make a donation.

Providing more focused and erudite coverage of your holiday destination, more than 40 titles are on offer in The University of Chicago Press’ World Film Locations series. Note that prices for these books are often much cheaper on Amazon.com, where some editions are also available in the Kindle format.