Wired.com presents "9 Nerdy Film Locations to Visit in a Lifetime"

As part of their 9 for 9 series, Underwire (Wired.com's pop culture blog) is presenting a "collection of galleries intended to help people become better geeks nine items at a time."  Their most recent installment is an "almost-top-ten" list of 9 Nerdy Film Locations to Visit in a Lifetime.
 

Mikey's house from THE GOONIES in Astoria, Oregon.  Photo: Tim Rodenberg featured on Wired.com

Read more about the Wired.com's 9 Nerdy Film Locations, after the jump:

A few honorable mentions from the list of 9 include the Hook and Ladder Firehouse used in Ghostbusters, the stunning white clapboard with the wrap around porch that was Mikey's house in The Goonies, New Zealand's Tongariro National Park which provided the sweeping landscapes for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Philadelphia's own Eastern State Penitentiary which was featured as...well, you guessed it, a prison in 12 Monkeys.

While Wired.com's 9 locations are exotic and diverse, being a nerd living in Philadelphia, I am obligated to mention my personal favorite movie location, historic Independence Hall.  Along with Reading Terminal Market, Independence Hall was most memorably featured in the film National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage and Diane Kruger.  And, while you're already making a list of places to visit in your lifetime, I suggest the hall that hosted the founding fathers drafting our nation's Declaration of Independence rank at least in your personal top five...despite whether a movie was filmed there or not.

Of course, several other equally popular movies were also filmed in the city of Brotherly Love thanks to talented filmmakers such as Sylvester Stallone (Rocky) and M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense).  A more extensive list and a tour of popular movies filmed in Philadelphia, if you ever find yourself in town, can be found at http://moviesitestour.com/sites.

Also, if you are interested in becoming active in preserving historical film locations, or just really like movies, please visit http://www.fixthechapel.com/ to help save the Evans City Cemetery Chapel famously featured in the horror classic Night of the Living Dead.