The mist-shrouded canals of Venice in Don't Look Now. The romance of the Greek island of Cephalonia in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The gamine Jean Seberg selling the New York Herald-Tribune on the streets of Paris in A Bout De Souffle. The breathtaking, volcanic landscapes of New Zealand in Lord of the Rings. The rugged Scottish coastline and red telephone box in Local Hero. When it comes to making a classic, it's fair to say the location of a film can be as important as good costumes and Daniel Day-Lewis.

The latest destination to gain fame through celluloid incarnation is the Belgian town of Bruges. With its fairytale-esque labyrinth of canals, winding cobbled streets and medieval buildings, it provides the backdrop for Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's feature-length film adaptation of his screenplay, In Bruges.

The film follows two hitmen who have been sent to hide out in the town after a botched job. The setting becomes key as the two main characters, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), quickly develop polar opposite views on the bolthole they've been ordered to by their furious crimelord boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes).

While Ken is all for making the most of their impromptu holiday, Farrell's character, Ray, having grudgingly taken a canal boat ride, mooched around the bustling Market Square and gazed disdainfully at the pretty Belfry tower, utters the damning words: "If I had grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't."

So the die is cast. Ray also declares Bruges to be "a sh**hole" and dismisses the paintings in the Groeninge Museum as rubbish. He later muses: "Maybe that's what hell is. The entire rest of eternity spent in Bruges."

Still, while Ray may not exactly be a poster boy for the delights of Bruges, Farrell himself is somewhat more upbeat. "No, it's certainly not a sh**hole," he says. "It is an incredibly beautiful city, the people are all really welcoming and really warm," he says. "You kind of project on to a place whatever you are feeling at any given time. You could go to the same place at two different periods in your life and find that the place has two different energies.

"So just in keeping with my character Ray's thing, I did enjoy slagging it a bit every day and Brendan Gleeson, who plays Ken would stick up for it, so we had that banter going on. But I did love many of the aspects of the director Martin's take on it.

"I really felt like it was a very self-contained community and that the world we were inhabiting when we were shooting the film was the same world that we inhabited when we weren't. So the line between reality and fiction was dissipated somewhat, it paled into the distance."

The town's tourist chiefs don't seem too perturbed. "We're delighted Bruges is showcased in the film and hope it will not only encourage past visitors to come again, but also bring Bruges to the attention of a new audience," says Dawn Page, UK director for Tourism Flanders. "The majority of our visitors, like Ken and Harry, fall under the city's spell and Colin Farrell's character, Ray, is very much in the minority."

Film locations are definitely big business. There's even a name for the die-hard breed of movie fan who travels to their favourite film's location: the set-jetter.

Take Braveheart, for example. In the year following the film's release, the Wallace Monument in Stirling saw visitor numbers rise four-fold while a fifth of all American tourists claimed it was their motivation for visiting Scotland. Not bad for a movie filmed partly in Ireland.

Among the most recent destinations to be bathed in the glow of Hollywood are the legendary Stampede Trail in Alaska - which featured in Into the Wild, Sean Penn's film based on Jon Krakauer's book of the same name - and the desolate, wide-open badlands of Texas in multiple Oscar-winner No Country for Old Men.

Likewise, Colombia, thanks to the big-screen adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, Love in the Time of Cholera. Set in and around Cartagena, it is apparently inspiring people to visit the country.

Several travel companies are reporting a marked interest in the South American hotspot. The tour operator Bales Worldwide is offering Colombia as a stand-alone holiday destination for the first time in 2008. "There's no doubt that the increased attention on Colombia as a result of Love in the Time of Cholera has significantly increased travel enquiries to the country," says Steve Bray, Bales Worldwide product manager for Latin America. "We anticipate interest to grow as this appeal widens and more people enjoy the film's locations, which showcase areas such as the beautiful colonial city of Cartagena."

While some locations are new to the movie game, others, such as New York, are old hands. The city is a ubiquitously popular movie backdrop with hundreds of films set there over the years, including classics such as An Affair to Remember, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Taxi Driver and Annie Hall.

It has also played host to its fair share of disaster flicks, such as King Kong, Deep Impact and the thriller Cloverfield, as well as just about every slushy rom-com going, including the recently-released 27 Dresses and The Accidental Husband.

The spotlight will fall on New York again as the long-awaited Sex and the City: The Movie arrives in cinemas in May. The show's creator and former executive producer, Darren Star, has fondly said of New York in the past: "The city to me was always the fifth character on the show", so expect to see the Big Apple in all its pacey and glorious technicolour.

Others films to watch out for include Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming period epic Australia starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. Filmed in Luhrmann's native Australia, key locations include Sydney, Bowen in Queensland and Kununurra, Western Australia. Now in post-production, it is scheduled for release later this year.

Also tipped to turn heads is Mumbai with the big-screen version of Shantaram, based on Gregory David Roberts's epic India-set novel and starring Johnny Depp, scheduled for release next year.
In Bruges is released on April 18. See The Herald Magazine on Saturday for an interview with Brendan Gleeson.

SCOTLAND ON FILM

Trainspotting (1996)
Visitors to the capital may know the Royal Mile and Edinburgh Castle but that all changed with this adaptation of Irvine Welsh's gritty novel. Although set in Leith, the majority was actually filmed in Glasgow, including Rouken Glen Park in Thornliebank and Cafe d'Jaconelli, Maryhill.

Whisky Galore (1949)
Novelist Compton Mackenzie was inspired by the real-life SS Politician, which ran aground with its cargo of whisky off the Hebridean island of Eriskay in 1941. The movie was filmed on Barra, home to traditional crofts and beautiful sandy beaches.

Rob Roy (1995)
This epic tale of heroism is a perfect showcase for Scotland's charms. Key locations include Glencoe, Rannoch Moor, Castle Tioram, Loch Morar and Glen Nevis. Enough to overlook the technicality that the leading man - Liam Neeson - is Irish.

I Know Where I'm Going (1945)
The vibrant backdrop of Argyll is unmistakable including Carsaig Pier and Duart Castle in Mull, the Western Isles Hotel, Tobermory and the Gulf of Corryvreckan between Jura and Scarba. Then there's that glorious final scene at Moy Castle when the skirl of the bagpipes comes in.