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Welcome to Adriii’s film and TV shooting location tours! Now it’s time to take a look at where the last Oscar-winning movies were filmed. Hope you enjoy!

This year the Academy Awards were pretty interesting for a variety of reasons. First, the quality of many nominees was so good that it was hard to decide who deserved the awards. And the two most nominated films, Avatar and The Hurt Locker, were directed by James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, who used to be married.

At the end of the evening, The Hurt Locker ended up the big winner so let’s start with the locations where Kathryn Bigelow did her great directing work.

For the scenes taking place in Iraq, they shot in Jordan in Amman, Wihdat, Swaqa, Marka (in a Refugee camp) and downtown Zarqa. They also shot some of the desert scenes in Kuwait. The production crew said they shot some of the scenes less than three miles from Iraq’s Border. They scouted some locations in Morroco but Bigelow insisted on going to Jordan to get the most authenticity possible.

For the scenes set in the USA they went to Langley, Canada.

Let’s move on with Avatar, the James Cameron film that broke most box office records. After seeing the movie, you might think that with so much computer-generated imagery it would be impossible that they used real locations. Well, they did! And, as you can imagine, they’re beautiful.

For recreating the forest, they shot some scenes in Kaehua Arboretum, a vast lush area in Hawaii. Afterwards they added all the fictional touches to recreate Pandora. After shooting, the cast and crew rested in the Aston Aloha Beach Hotel.

The other amazing location for the film is located between Venezuela and Brasil and it’s called Canima National Park. The most famous spot here is the Roraima Mountain which Cameron used to create the floating mountains with the waterfalls on them.

Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for her role in The Blind Side, a movie based on the real life story of the American football player Michael Oher. Agnes Scott College is a middle/high school that has been used in several movies including this one. It’s the campus where Michael and other characters in the movie attended school.

An Oscar was awarded to Monique for her work in Precious, a movie that also won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Precious was entirely shot in New York City, throughout neighborhoods like Harlem and Brooklyn.

These Apartment buildings in Harlem were used to illustrate where Precious and her mother lived. Also, a lot of street scenes in which we see Precious walking around were shot in Inwood. Coney Island Hospital was used for the hospital scenes.

And now it’s time to turn to the guys! One of the most predictable wins went to Christoph Waltz for his work in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds.

Most of the scenes in the movie were shot in Bad Shandau, a small town in Germany, so if you walk around you’ll probably recognize some spots, such as the movie theater or the elevator. Close to Bad Shandau there is a tiny farmer’s village called Sebniz. On one of the hills you’ll find the wood cabin featured in the movie’s opening scene.

Another actor awarded an Oscar this year was Jeff Bridges for his work in Crazy Heart. Most filming was done at the Bishop’s Lodge near Santa Fe, a resort where the cast and crew spent nine days shooting most of the movie’s scenes. Other “Crazy Heart” locations are The Pavilion and the Evangelo’s Cocktail Lounge.

In the documentary category, the award for best documentary feature went to The Cove, a movie that shows how thousands of dolphins are killed in Taiji, Japan, every year.

I hope you enjoyed the tour! Do you have any ideas for our next tour? Tell us!