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Bruce Lee self-guided Tours (work in progress)

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - Harrison Ford (1984) - Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, Macau

Okay, so here is one that I can take a bit more of the credit for finding and it's the location of the car chase that immediately follows Indiana Jones' escape from Club Obi Wan as his car is pursued by Lao Che and his gun-toting henchmen.

What follows are brief glimpses of one of my favourite roads in Macau - Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro - or known locally as San Ma Lo (lit: new road). It's my favourite road because its lined with those great looking shophouse buildings on either side of the road - that's probably why the film makers thought it would be a good double for Shanghai (although I'm not sure how prevalent they were there).

So in no particular order we can start with the following screen grab which shows the baddies car driving past our first location. It's where the cars first pull onto San Ma Lo at the junction with Travessa do Mastro. It looks slightly different these days (no thanks to the truck obscuring the view in Streetview) but there are still some clues in there to make the match including the shape of the building on the right.



The next one is quite easy to spot because the building behind the car hasn't changed much at all, although now it is home to a company (or person?) called Kuong Weng Wong. Look at the Streetview grab below and you can see the same shop on the left, by the open space.



Next up is a building that I actually once wrote a post about on my old blog and will (at some point in the near future) post it up again. It's the Cheung Tai Dai On pawnshop (Casa De Penhores) with its very distinctive arched front facade. It's unique along this road and so made it very easy to spot. You can see the lower part of it in the screen grab below (to the left of the car) and I have tried to match the angle on Streetview without much success.


Never mind, here is a closeup of it from a stitched photo I did a few years back. Sorry for the bend but that's just the old camera lens distorting it.



Actually, it was this building that initially helped me to figure out which road this filming was done on. I did read somewhere (I think an old Rough Guide from 1996) that the car chase was filmed on Rua De Felicidades, however, once I saw this building on  screen I knew that it wasn't correct. Some filming may have been done on that smaller road but I have to be able to positively identify anywhere.

Moving on to the next bit and we see a shot of Indy's car going up the road with a nice long row of shophouses in view. Believe it or not, some of the decor on the front of these shops can still be seen. In the screengrab below, the shop that is directly next to the Indy's car has a (what looks like) diamond pattern above the columns, and the one next to it (further away) has a striped board that can still be see.


So, we can see the same striped pattern on the fourth shop down on the right and the diamond pattern one shop closer to us. The cow on the modern Streetview corresponds to the shop second up from the right on the screen grab. If you look close enough under the cow you can see the same vertical grooves that can be seen on the film.

Finally, our last shot was taken a bit further on but looking back up the other way down the road. Look closely and you can see the same shops I just described, but now behind the baddies car in the background (well, at least the stripey- and diamond-patterned ones).


So it isn't too great a leap to get an almost similar angle on Streetview below - although the picture below does include a bit more. The red lettered column in the film grab above is actually the first grey column on the left (under the yellow horizontal banner).

2 comments:

Marcus W said...

Looks like the cow sign is out the 'Yee Shun Dairy Company' - they have a store on Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro:

http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g664891-d3945580-Reviews-Yee_Shun_Dairy_Company_Avenida_de_Almeida_Ribeiro-Macau.html

Phil said...

Well spotted Marcus!

Moooo!

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