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!

Read the rest of Oscar Winners 2010 Location Tour on I Wanna Go There.

Lost just premiered its sixth and last season just a few weeks ago so I thought the timing was perfect for a location tour of this show that has so many fans all over the planet. I’m sure you already know that Lost is filmed in Hawaii. Some people thing they get of the island to shoot some “flashback” scenes but they don’t. Everything is set in Hawaii so doing this tour is great not just because of the Lost stuff

First of all I have to warn you. If you haven’t watched every season of Lost including episode 4 of season 6, don’t keep reading if you care about being spoiled.

Let’s start on the beaches. The first beach to visit is the Plane crash beach. It was the one where the plane crashed and it’s also a famous surfing beach. But the plane’s tail crashed on a different part of the island. This was shot on Mokuleia Beach.

Eventually, the survivors begin to build a camp in the beach. This is shot in Papai’loa beach. Do you remember when we meet The Others for the first time in season 2? They used Waiale’e Beach for these shots and other beach moments on the series, like Jin fishing.

A very picturesque beach is the China walls coastline. Though it does not look like a beach, it is one… but there is rock instead of sand. We’ve seen this beach several times, usually when the losties are heading somewhere.

Moving inside the island, a recommendable place is the Kapena Falls. It’s a beautiful place in the forest where we’ve seen the losties several times in different episodes and seasons. Also in the woods we have the YMCA Erdman Camp, also known as “The Others Village”. Every scene involving the village, even some interiors, is shot here. There’s other recognizable place for the others and it’s the bunker and the cages where they locked Kate, Sawyer and Jack. This is shot in Paradise Park.

There is a ranch called Moli’i Gardens. This place has forest, great lawns and a lake so it’s been the set for several Lost scenes like Juliet’s arrival to the island or Jin’s father fishing pier. Talking about pier, I’m sure you remember second season finale, with the losties kidnapped by the others and Michael escaping with Walt. This was at Waikane Pier.

Let’s end with some houses and urban spaces. The first one that comes to my mind is the Byodo-inn Temple. This appeared in some Sun and Jin flashbacks and it’s a gorgeous place. You can also visit Yemi’s Church, Hurley’s mental institute and the building Locke fell down and cracked his spine or the Bishop Museum where Desmond and Penny took their famous picture.

There’re also some sixth (and last) season locations like the school where Locke meets Ben or the parking lot where he meets Hurley.

But, again, this is just some things I pointed out so you know what to expect, but you can check every spot at the actual guide. There are 35 different places (beaches, houses, forests, restaurants…) waiting for you!

Lost location tour

Read the rest of LOST Location Tour on I Wanna Go There.

Its time for Halloween and we made a Special Halloween Guide for you.

Do you like scary and spooky places? Well, we found the creepiest places on iwannagothere.com.
If you don’t mind to meet Witches, Skeletons and Ghosts click here to get to the guide…

Scary & Spooky Halloween is a customized guide by brina

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Read the rest of Scary & Spooky Halloween guide on I Wanna Go There.